PROGRESS WITHOUT FADS We ought not, however, be too anxious to adopt methods that are prevalent in State or public schools for the deaf. We should certainly be willing to learn wherever and whenever we can, but the present time is a period of fads and fancies in educational lines. While we welcome progress, we should have our feet planted firmly on the ground, and make haste slowly but surely, making good our ground as we go, and building up a coherent, strong, permanent system, that will not have to be undone when the next fad appears; and we should not recede from our position until newer methods, loudly hailed and prevailing for a time elsewhere, have been put to the test, and have been found satisfactory. Hence we need be in no hurry to follow too closely and too quickly other schools. Nevertheless, and this is quite as important, we cannot be content with a mere conservative, passive policy. We cannot stand still. We cannot ascend if we remain on the level ground. To be cautious does not mean that we should stifle individuality and originality. There is no reason why we could not originate methods of our own, and improve our courses, independently of whether they are in use elsewhere or not. Catholic schools are not mere imitators of non-Catholic methods and systems of education. They should be pioneers, and blaze the way, in instructing the deaf, quite as well as in the instruction of hearing children. ST. AUGUSTINE AND THE DEAF REV. STEPHEN KLOPFER, ST. JOHN'S INSTITUTE FOR DEAF-MUTES, ST. FRANCIS, WIS. The Catholic Educational Association has set for its gre.. object the education and training of the normal Catholic child based upon the truths of revealed faith. Papers read last year show that the endeavor goes still farther and essays to reach the retarded and defective child, and advance him also to the highest possible standard. In this noble endeavor we may join hands, for our efforts are among mentally normal, but physically defective children, the children of silence, the deaf-mutes. These much hindered and much retarded children, we, the teachers of the deaf and mute, must train and educate up to the standards you set for the normal child. We, therefore, labor on common ground and for a common good, but with uncommon children. The interest of the Parish School Department in our work should be mutual, since no less than seven sisterhoods are engaged in this field, and inasmuch as many of your pupils have brothers and sisters who attend, or should attend our Catholic schools for the deaf. Indeed, since you come in contact with the Catholic children generally, it is often in your power to direct deaf children to the proper schools. Aye, even more, to know of our work cannot but have an encouraging and inspiring influence upon all who are engaged in teaching normal children. You must needs marvel at the patience, the endurance, the heroism, of all so enthusiastically engaged in a task of which the late Supt. Dudley says: "Five hours work teaching the deaf is as wearing as eight hours of ordinary teaching, or as ten hours manual labor." The scope of the present paper does not extend to the absorbing pedagogical, psychological or physiological problems of deaf-mute education. It is rather limited to a phase of general interest and touches upon an historic and Church historic question of deaf-mute education. The present purpose is to show that the information furnished by most encyclopedias upon the question of deaf-mute education is misleading and, at times, false; it is to continue the iconoclasm of fabricated historic idols begun by the America and introduced into the world of the deaf by Father McCarthy, S. J., of New York. From standard sources of information such as encyclopedias and text-books you will learn that the condition of the deaf among the ancients, in comparison with their present status, was harsh in the extreme; that children born deaf among the Greeks were cast into the Taygetus, and among the Romans, were dashed over the Tarpeian Rock; that the ancients exposed them as infants, or considered them as madmen and incapable of receiving instruction. In corroboration they quote the Spartan laws of Lycurgus (850-775 B. C.); Aristotle's (384-322 B. C.) De sensu et Sensibili, ch 3, no. 9, and Politica or De Republica, ch. 7, no. 16; a law of the Twelve Tables (about 449 B. C.) and a verse of the poet Lucretius (90-55 B. C.) Close study of the original quotations, however, in no wise confirms these views, but demonstrates that the Greeks recognized the innate mental powers and capabilities of the deaf, and that the Romans understood Lucretius in a quite different sense than we are wont to accept the words. The oft-repeated Latin words read: Nec ratione ulla docere suadereque surdis -De Rerum Natura Lib. V, v. 1053, 54. These words have been rendered thus: To instruct the deaf no art can reach, The context shows that the term deaf is here taken figuratively and means no more than we express in the proverb, "None so deaf as those that will not hear." These words, therefore, in no wise reflect the condition of the deaf-mute at the time of Lucretius. On the other hand, numerous passages of the Digest recognize the intelligence, and legal and moral responsibility of the deaf-mutes. Greater still is the misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the historic truth in regard to the position of the Church and the deaf-mute, to be found in even the latest editions of various encyclopedias. And all attacks center upon one whom we rank among the greatest lights of Christianity, the great teacher of the Western Church, St. Augustine. Behold his glory dimmed, his learning questioned, his character aspersed and defamed in the world of the deaf, for this is what it knows of him: "St. Augustine erred amazingly when he declared that the deaf could not have faith, since 'faith comes by hearing only.'" Ency. Britannica, 11 ed. "The Church took no interest in the deaf, for St. Augustine declared that the congenitally deaf can never receive faith, can never have faith, for faith comes by preaching, by what is heard; they can neither learn to read nor to write. Thus they considered the deaf-mutes with a silent dread, as such marked by God." Brockhaus Konversations Lexicon, 1903 ed. Meyer's Konversations Lexicon, 6 ed., 1908, informs us "that they even had religious misgivings about imposing higher culture upon such creatures from whom God had withheld the required aptitude." Non-Catholic writers have added their private interpretations to these quotations and repeatedly declare that St. Augustine and the Church "denied that they could go to heaven," (Long) ;that "even those interested in the religious welfare of the world consigned their souls to the wrong place," (Bell). For similar quotations of other teachers of the deaf see America, Nov. 18, 1911, and Our Young People, Jan. 1912. Though we must declare these views of our non-Catholic friends erroneous and disparaging, we frankly admit that many have erred in good faith. In his third letter Contra Julianum Pelagianum chapter 4, we find this incidental remark: "Quod vitium etiam impedit fidem, Apostolo testante, qui dicit 'Igitur fides ex auditu' Rom. 10, 17." Migne edition 1865 has "quod vitium etiam ipsam impedit fidem." "Which defect also hinders faith, according to the testimony of the Apostle who says, 'Faith then cometh by hearing.'" "Take it for its worst," says Dr. C. P., Bruehl, "and the passage can mean nothing more than that faith is rendered difficult to those who are deprived of the sense of hearing. There is nothing startling in this proposition. First, because where faith is absolutely impossible by hearing, it may reach man's soul in another way of which we need not know anything, for those who are deprived of the sense God will provide in His own way, and His ways of salvation are inscrutable." Indeed, St. Augustine clearly expresses this his belief: "Paucissimis esse donatum, ut nullo sibi homine praedicante per ipsum Dominum vel per angelos coelorum, doctrinam salutis accipiant." De Dono Persev. c. 19. "To very few it is granted, that having no one to preach to them, they receive the doctrine of salvation from God Himself or through the angels of heaven." If then "impedire" could be correctly translated as meaning to make impossible, we have the great Doctor himself tell us his conviction that God by way of exception can and does furnish nobler means to reach the imprisoned souls, such who through no fault of their own cannot avail themselves of the ordinary means, preaching. "But impedire' does not convey the notion of absolute impossibility, but merely suggests great obstacles to be overcome (impedimenta-baggage) and any sensible man is prepared to admit that the sense of hearing by which channel the flood of speech with all its educational influences pours into our minds is the most potent factor in the process of instruction. Faith is of things unseen, and to convey to the deaf-mutes the concept of such things meets with particular difficulties." The passage itself, therefore, in no, wise incriminates St. Augustine. Nor can we find aught against him, if we consider its value in the context. St. Augustine is trying to prove the existence of original sin against Julian who denies this important dogma. One of his arguments are the ills to which humanity is heir. Julian, however, attributed these woes and afflictions to personal sins and makes them penalties for individual transgressions. Whereupon St. Augustine argues: "Tell me whose fault it is that such great innocence (as the newly born babe possesses, if we deny original sin) is sometimes born blind, sometimes deaf, which latter defect hinders even faith itself, according to the testimony of the Apostle who says 'Faith then cometh by hearing.'" After this casual reference to the deaf, St. Augustine proceeds in his argument along the lines suggested above. Further proof for the complete exoneration of the Saint can be found in his other writings. About thirty years before he penned the lines against Julian he wrote: "Some by the movement of their hands express very much, and actors by the movement of all their members (pantomime) can give certain signs to those who understand, and as it were hold converse with their eyes." De Doct. Christ. lib. I, c. 4. He well knew that deaf-mutes were capable of doing the same. He shows this in De Quantitate Animae c. 18. "I believe it is evident to you that every one speaks that language which is spoken by those among whom he is born and brought up * |