AIDED BY SCIENCE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22504, 22 August 1936, Page 14 (Supplement)

AIDED BY SCIENCE

INFANTS BOEN DEAF DUMB TAUGHT TO SPEAK WHAT THE TELEFACTOR DOES One of the strangest schools in the world is carried on at the Infants Hospital, Westminster; it in a school for teaching poor mites who arc born deaf, and are consequently dumb, how to speak. They aro taught by Mr Philip Franklin to learn the meaning of spoken sounds through their fingers. They hear through the senso of touch, and then aro encouraged to try to repeat with their undeveloped organs of speech the sounds conveyed to them. Sounds como to those who are not deaf as vibrations of air beating on the car drums. Sound vibrations may be picked up by tho finger-tips or tho bones of the head, and so passed on to

the brain; but these parts of the body are only a hundred-thousandth part as sensitive as tho ear drum.

Consequently an instrument, tho Telefactor, is employed for the deaf and dumb children. It has a thin vibrating plate on which tho child places its finger-tips. At the same time the plate conveys its vibrations to very sensitive earphones and to a microphone for tho child. The instructor utters words and sounds through another microphone. The Child's Sound Memory The child learns, through the vibrations imparted by the plate to head and finger-tip, to distinguish between the sounds uttered by the instructor. Then it begins to make sounds itself and learns to see what effect they have on the vibrating plate, and how they are returned to its own fingers and earphones. In this way, as 60on as it grows used to this strange toy, Mr. Franklin and his fellow teachors get to work to make the child learn by heart words and phrases and to repeat the sounds. / Toys like those of a Noah's Ark, picture books and dolls supplement tho teaching and help to fix such words as cat and dog, and bigger things in real life, in the child's sound memory. There is only one such school in Europe, and it has 90 pupils on its books. Twenty attend regularly every week. Some who were all but deaf and quite dumb a year ago, when they were children of four or five, have learned a I lot of words and phrases, and can I count!