SELF-SUPPORT.

(A Paper read before the Department of Special Education, National Educational Association, Los Angeles,

1907, by Frank M. Driggs.)

FELLOW TEACHERS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: It is with pleasure I address you this morning upon a subject of vital importance, especially to those of us who are directly concerned with the education of the deaf, the blind and the feeble-minded. With these children the problem of "Self. Support" appears more serious than with normal youths. The State at great expense undertakes to educate the defective child; how can this process be carried on without pauperizing him? No one doubts that institutions for the education of these classes should be maintained, and yet the question arises, can or should they be made self-supporting? If for some the training afforded by the State does not result in independent citizenship, how may the dependent ones be made to support themselves? The problem is a grave one when we consider how handicapped our deaf, blind and feeble-minded are, our responsibilities are made. doubly difficult by their deficiencies. How shall we fit them for life's struggle after school? What employment is open to them outside public institutions?

My remarks on these questions, in so far as they are based on actual experience, will have direct reference to the deaf and the blind only.

As to the first question, "How can we educate deaf, blind and mentally deficient children to such a degree as to make them self-supporting and valuable citizens?" We are dealing with boys and girls who, more than other children, need the kind influence and gentle leadership of the teacher. Their training in school should be not only a preparation for life, but life itself with all its problems. Education is growth and development-physical well-being, mental improvement and moral culture. Life in school is life in all its aspects, or ought to be, and the life lived in school should indicate and greatly determine what the future usefulness of the citizen is to be. The institution which fails to train its pupils to understand that it is as important

for them to do as it is for them to know fails to make of the boys and girls entrusted to its care independent men and women.

If we are to educate and not pauperize the child, we must train him not only to do things, but to do them without help. We are growing only when we are free. We are great only when we are free, and when we assume the responsibility of doing something. There is a consciousness of weakness and a consciousness of power. Children may go to school and not live, or grow, or develop as we would wish. A teacher may teach and teach hard and yet not grow or produce growth. Too many of us, I am sorry to say, help to imprison our pupils by doing for them the work we are paid to make them do for themselves. The teacher who carries home written lessons and corrects errors the pupils should correct for themselves; the pedagogue who diagrams sentences and solves problems in detail while his pupils sit in idleness is a robber, stealing from his boys and girls rights which should be aids to their future usefulness. All agree that self-effort educates, and that the person who is to be educated must put forth the necessary energy to learn, or forever remain in darkness.

The first step in the training of a child for independent citizenship is to let it feel the influences and see the beneficient results of self-support. The whole atmosphere of a school must be filled with the spirit and the love of that useful work which enables man to support himself and others and at the same time crowns him with self-respect, independence and honor. We can educate children without making paupers of them only by creating within them a love for work; we must make them understand that it takes work to secure an education, then more work to keep it and yet more work to use it, and that the reward for those who are willing to work is happiness. Our boys and girls must know that they may succeed in almost any line provided they wi!! labor, intelligently, persistently and honorably. Our children must be made to feel that all they receive from the public fund is given with the assurance that some day it will be returned a hundred fold in manliness and womanliness of the highest type. That individual defectives can be made self-supporting is proved by conditions as they exist today, for the world teems with excellent men and women,

graduates and ex-pupils of our schools for the deaf and the blind who are valuable citizens, producers, giving more than they have received.

When you ask whether these institutions can be made self-supporting, I answer "Yes," if you mean by support giving to the nation young men and women who will make the world richer and better for having had the opportunity of attending such schools. If, however, you intend that these institutions shall become workshops where the first thought is financial gain, and that thereby they are to lose their character as schools, I most emphatically answer "“No.”

The United States stands in the very front rank of the civilized nations of the world today because it provides a free and liberal education for all its children no matter how poor their circumstances or how defective their capacities, and at the same time demands that they shall give back citizenship of the most efficient and trustworthy order. Institutions for defectives may be made financially self-supporting, but why should they any more than our public day schools, our high schools, our colleges and State universities? All children should be educated, the bright boy and the dull boy, the normal child and the defective child. The State has no right to be partial in its distribution of knowledge, and it cannot afford to be. The State should not educate your boy because he can hear and see, unless it provides similarly for my boy who cannot hear, or see, or speak. It would be an unjust discrimination.

But you may say, "Why must the State furnish these defective children with a home and food and shelter? It does not provide such things for the ordinary child." The reason is plain. The State provides a free education for all its children. For the normal child it places the public school at the very home door; it often consolidates school districts in order to give greater advantages, and when chil dren live at inconvenient distances, frequently transports them to and from school at public expense, because transporting the child to the school costs less than bringing the school to the child. On the same principle, the State finds it more convenient and more economical as well as productive of superior results, to establish and maintain a central school for defective children, paying for their board during the term. The State furnishes a home as a necessity inci