A PERSONAL MATTER FOR EACH PARENT

Let some parent in each locality make it his or her business to get the
names and addresses of all other parents of deaf children in the
vicinity. Induce them to come together some evening and choose a
chairman and an executive committee of three. Let these four people make
a point of studying the education of the deaf as conducted in the most
advanced communities. Let the executive committees of the several local
associations get together once or twice a year for a sort of state
convention of parents. Let them invite leading educators to address
them, and let them appoint committees to visit schools in other states
where different methods are employed. If such a movement was once
started there would be found plenty of subject-matter for discussion,
and plenty of opportunities to work for a betterment of conditions. The
author of this little book would be glad to give any aid in his power to
such a movement, and to place the results of his twenty-five years of
experience at the disposal of any parent, or parents' organization.

The first efforts should be directed to inducing, or compelling, the
so-called "Combined Schools" for the deaf throughout the United States
to wholly segregate at least a small oral department from the manually
taught pupils. The orally taught pupils should never come in contact
during their school life, either in the shops, dining rooms,
playgrounds, or schoolrooms, with those pupils with whom finger spelling
and signs are employed. All employees, whether superintendents,
teachers, supervisors, teachers of trades, or servants, who have to do
with the orally taught pupils should be _compelled_ to use only speech
and lip reading (and writing, if absolutely necessary) under penalty of
dismissal for failing to do so. Only by means of such segregation, and
the enforcement of speech as a universal medium of communication, can
the appropriations for oral work be made really productive of good
results in what are now called "Combined Schools." This can be done on a
small scale at the beginning, with the little entering beginners. Then
if all beginners are put into this oral department it will gradually
grow at the expense of the manual department, until, after a period of
eight or ten years, the entire school will have become oral.

This is the only method of procedure by which satisfactory results in
speech teaching for practical purposes can be obtained in ret