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Impressions of the Milan Convention 81 James Denison (1837–1910) JamesDenisonwas born in Vermont in 1837 and was educated at the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut. Denison taught at the Michigan School for the Deaf from 1856 to 1857 and then taught at the Kendall School in Washington, DC, from 1857 to 1910. He was also the first deaf principal of Kendall School, from 1870 to 1909. Edward M. Gallaudet said his friend and colleague James Denison was “greatly interested in literature and was a great reader. If he had been willing to accept it he could have taken a position in the corps of instructors of the college, but . . . Mr. Denison felt that his best field was in teaching children.” In 1880, both Gallaudet and Denison attended the Milan Convention. Denison’s “impressions” of that convention are included in this collection (1881).13 c Impressions of the Milan Convention ON ENTERING FOR the first time the hall where the International Convention of Instructors of Deaf-Mutes was holding its sessions, I found it difficult to overcome the impression that I had stumbled into the wrong place. Might I not be intruding—such was my thought for a moment—upon a solemn ecclesiastical convocation, discussing points of doctrine or church polity, concerning which laymen have neither voice nor vote? Everywhere the eye fell upon shaven crowns and black cassocks. The seats in the body of the hall were packed with a black mass of priests, sitting in grave silence, their smoothly-shaved faces expressive of decorous attention. On the raised platform in front presided the Abbe Tarra, in the garb of his religious order, flanked on either side by individuals in the same priestly dress, while to the left appeared a row of dark-robed, 13. Edward M. Gallaudet, “James Denison,” American Annals of the Deaf 55 no. 3 (May 1910): 280–81. “Impressions of the Milan Convention” is from American Annals of the Deaf 26, no. 1 (January 1881). 82 James Denison white-hooded nuns. So unexpected and decided was the impression made by this aspect of the Convention that it was only afterward that I was able to observe that there were others besides priests participating in its proceedings; that probably as many as one-fourth of its members were not clad in sacerdotal uniforms. Evidently the Roman Catholic Church, through its ministers and religious orders, maintains as close and as constant a supervision over the education of the deaf as over that of the hearing and speaking. It is plain, also, that most, if not all, of these ecclesiastics bring to their labors a zeal and a self-devotion that many who do not agree with them in religious matters would honor themselves by imitating. Unhampered by family ties or cares, unhindered by the necessity of amassing a competency, undisturbed by the calls of worldly ambition, they are able, if they choose, to devote themselves to their charges as none others can. That the majority of them do so choose seems to be the fact; yet what is surprising, when one considers the advantages and opportunities that surround them, is not that they have accomplished so much, but that they have not accomplished more. Especially does this seem true of those among them who have used the French method, or the sign-language, as their medium of instruction. Their signs, so far as I could judge, seemed crude and inadequate in comparison with those we use in our American schools. Theirs lacked grace, finish, expression. They had an abundance of gestures which would bring material images before the pupil’s mental eye, but few that would carry him into the higher realms of thought. Those speakers at the Convention who argued in favor of the oral method of instructing deaf-mutes dwelt persistently, and, as far as concerned this class of individuals among their hearers, with evident effect , upon the unsuitableness, not to say injuriousness, of signs as a means for conveying moral and intellectual ideas of an elevated kind. Amid the concurring applause of a majority of his hearers, the Abbe Tarra stated as an undisputed fact the impossibility of conveying by signs any idea of the Divine Being but ideas gross, material, and untrue. But the gesture which he made in illustration was the unmeaning, if not misleading one, of pointing with the index finger to the ceiling. Had he asked Dr. Peet or either of the Gallaudets present to make the...

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