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Report of the County Medical Officer—Education.. 141
Eighteen children, after receiving instruction at these centres, have been transferred to ordinary
elementary schools, where they have held their own with their hearing classmates. As a matter of fact, five
children can be excluded in calculating these results (of these five, two were excluded, two left the district
and one died), making the percentage 48.0, a result highly satisfactory to the Council and reflecting
great credit upon the teachers. Of the If) who left at the age of fourteen, all went into occupations
of some kind (domestic service, bookbinding, coppersmith, sanitary engineering) and were so proficient
in lip-reading as to be quite capable of self-support. Eight cases were found to be suffering from such
a degree of deafness as to necessitate their transference to a deaf centre (6 went to Anerley and 2 to
Oak Lodge).
The standard of lip-reading attained by the children in these centres is very high. Lip-reading
appears to be readily acquired by children, and those with most hearing seem to learn it quicker than
those with less hearing who require longer teaching and practice to enable them to become thoroughly
proficient. This is due to the fact that the former possess a better knowledge of language and, other
things being equal, the greater the amount of hearing the greater the command of language.
Mr. Yearsley thinks that the amount of hearing required to enable a child to respond well to
education in the front desks of a hearing class is much greater than at first sight appears. It is characteristic
of middle ear deafness that the power of accommodating the ears to particular sounds is impaired,
and that, in consequence, extraneous noises confuse the slightly deaf and hard of hearing child much
more than they do the hearing scholar. In every class, especially in large ones, there is an environment
of more or less continuous noises; dropping of books, shuffling, coughing, whispering, etc., as well as
the more distant hum of life outside the school, accentuated by open windows. Children examined
by the voice and whisper tests in a quiet room may deceive one as to the usefulness of the hearing they
possess, especially if the child be examined on one of his " good days." The amount of daily variation
of hearing, as shown by records kept by the teachers in partially deaf centres, is sometimes astonishing.
Lip-reading.
In the deaf centres the health of the children has, generally speaking, been highly satisfactory
throughout the year.
Health of
deaf schools.
During the past year much attention has been directed to the condition of the blind. The Council
now maintains 8 blind schools (6 day and 2 residential) for 350 children. The Council also maintains
83 children at blind schools other than those under its own control. Fifty-three new children have
been certified for the blind schools; of these 14 owe their state to ophthalmia neonatorum, 16 to
congenital syphilis, 13 were blind or partially blind from congenital and lamellar cataract, the remaining
10 were suffering from a variety of congenital defects, and inflainmatorv conditions.
Blind.
There are now (January, 1915) six myope classes working in specially arranged premises.
Mr. Bishop Harman points out the usefulness of the original curriculum. This falls into three
parts: oral teaching, taken for the most part in the normal schools; literary work taken in
the special classrooms; handicraft work, also carried out in the special rooms. For the oral
teaching the children are taken over to the associate normal school and drafted into the classes
corresponding to their attainments, where they sit in the front rows and engage in the ordinary
work other than that involving reading or writing. Experience proves that these arrangements can be
carried through regularly without interference with the proper working and discipline of the ordinary
school and to the advantage of the children, who learn to regard themselves as definitely associated with
their normal comrades.
Myopes.
Work involving reading or writing is given in the myope class by the use of blackboards, or of
large printed sheets. Large sheets of white paper are hung up on the walls or blackboards of the room
and printed, by the use of rubber-faced type of 2 in. and 1 in. square, with selected extracts from wellknown
authors, and lessons in geography, history and the like. The printing of these sheets is liked
and has become a prize task for the best of the elder children. Arithmetic is practised on blackboards,
teachers and children working together on the wall blackboards and on individual boards. A great point
is made of the development of mental arithmetic so as to facilitate the association of ideas of numbers
in the mind without the adjuvant written figures, this is an added safeguard against the excessive use
of the eyes in near work.
The provision of suitable handicraft work is not a simple matter. The limitations necessarily
introduced by the facts that the eyes must not be used for any length of time in the stooping posture
and that the work must, not be such as to require close application or strained effort prevent the use
of some of the most usual varieties of handwork.
A scheme is under trial in which the children are classified in three groups, according to age and
attainment.
Group I., Standards 1 to 2. Ages 7 to 10.—(A) Bead work.—The stringing of large beads is one
of the earliest pieces of work to be done, later simple designs are worked, and finally fancy blinds are
made for windows. Besides the actual practice of the work there are the associated lessons in arithmetic.
Children readily learn to thread the beads with very little examination by the eyes provided the beads
are of sufficient size.
(B) Paper folding, cutting and modelling.—In this work stiff paper is used ; the children are taught
to fold it into certain lines, then to cut out various squares and finally to set up the remaining portion
into the form of some common object. The folding and measuring is an aid to the teaching of arithmetic,
so is the cutting, and finally the form attained forms the basis of an object lesson. A great number
of simple articles are made in this fashion. Paper weaving, for the purpose of making small mats and
book-marks, was formerly practised, but it has been stopped, since too much close attention was required
of the eves and there was no expressional value in the work,
Classification
of myopes
according to
age and
attainments.