A very considerable number of schools for the deaf in the United States
and Canada still use manual, or silent, methods of instruction, at least
in part. But the speech, or oral, method is steadily growing in
popularity, and gradually supplanting manual spelling and gestural
signs. The time will certainly come when the public will be too
intelligent to any longer tolerate the use between teacher and pupil, or
between any employee and the pupils, in a school for the deaf, any
system of manual communication.

_Every deaf child, no matter if born totally deaf and of a low order of
intelligence, can be given as much education by the exclusive use of the
speech method as it can by any manual, or silent, method or by a
combination of the speech and the silent method._ This is not the mere
expression of an opinion, but the statement of a fact; a fact firmly
established by actual results in state institutions where,
unfortunately, the law requires the admission of pupils too poorly
equipped intellectually to belong in a school with normally bright
children. In addition to acquiring all the education of which his mental
endowment makes him capable, he can be taught to speak and to understand
when spoken to. The degree of perfection attainable depends upon the
ability of the child, the skill of the teaching, and especially upon
_the environment_ in which the child passes its formative educational
years. The probability of the child's acquiring a maximum proficiency in
speaking and in understanding others when they speak, is lessened in
direct proportion to the extent to which he is permitted to use the
silent or manual means of communication. In the so-called "combined"
schools, the _environment_ is largely manual. A visit to the
playgrounds, the baseball fields, the shops, dining rooms, and
dormitories of "combined" schools will disclose the pupils using silent
means of communication, not only between themselves, _but with those in