In many states deaf children have been, either by definite statement, or by tacit understanding, exempted from the enforcement of the compulsory education law.  This is all wrong.  They need the protection of that excellent law even more than the hearing child, and if the law for compulsory education does not, in fact, apply to them, it should at once be amended to do so.

XIX

DAY SCHOOLS

The parents are the ones most interested in this matter, and it is through their efforts alone that improvement can be brought about.  In Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Washington, Oregon, Texas, Missouri, and California, free public oral day schools have been established.  This movement has reached its highest development in Wisconsin and Michigan.  In Wisconsin there are twenty-four such schools scattered throughout the state, and in Michigan fourteen.  New schools are opened by the Board of Education under prescribed conditions upon the request of a certain number of parents of deaf children.  Such a law should be on the statute books of every state, and will be when the parents of deaf children organize and demand it.

XX

THE DEAF CHILD AT FIVE YEARS OF AGE

When the little child that has been deaf from infancy is five years of age, he should be placed in a purely oral school for the deaf, if such a thing is possible.

The child who has become deaf by illness or accident after speech has been acquired, should be placed under experienced instruction by the speech method at once.

To quote once more from my little book of suggestions to physicians: 

“If the proper school for the little hearing child of five did not happen to exist in his immediate neighborhood, no one would think of insisting upon the necessity of sending the little one away to a distant boarding school.  But that is what must be done in the case of the little deaf child, if precious and irrecoverable years are not to be lost.  It is often a difficult matter to persuade a mother to sacrifice her own personal happiness and comfort in having the little child with her, and to look far enough into the future to see that a true and unselfish love for the child requires her to entrust him to the care of others during those early and crucial years.”

XXI

SCHOOLS FOR THE HEARING AND PRIVATE GOVERNESSES