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All the institutions for the blind were in their very first inception schools. The pioneer schools imported literary teachers from Paris and handicraft teachers from Edinburgh. At first only the brighter class of pupils came under instruction. Teaching them was easy. They progressed with amazing strides; all was enthusiasm; exhibitions were called for and widely given (Dr. Howe's pupils gave exhibitions in 17 States); large editions of the various annual reports were exhausted. Soon, however, less bright pupils came to be admitted; then the curriculum of studies began to sober down to the practical and comprehensive one prevailing to-day. Whatever occupation the boy or eirl expects to follow after leaving school, it is assumed he will follow it better and thus live more happily and worthily if he has a general education. When, as was formerly the case, the period or term of schooling allowed pupils was shorter than it is now, they were not admitted before the age of eight or nine. Now that kindergarten departments have been universally added to the schools, the pupils are urged to enter at an early age; because experience has shown that at home these little blind folks are coddled rather than trained, so much so in fact that by the time many of them come to school their natural growth of body and mind has been so interfered with by inaction, that all the efforts of the schools cannot make up for lost time and opportunity. The principle of periodicity of growth has now come to be understood and the importance of applying the proper stimulus at the period most sensitive to it comprehended. Children with good sight and hearing have got along without kindergarten training, and so have blind children, but of all the useful means of reaching and developing the average blind child none is so effective as the properly-conducted kindergarten. The practical knowledge of things comes to the blind through the hand, their fingers being veritable projections of their brains. Thus must their hands not only be trained to sensitiveness of touch but to be strong and supple, so that they may, indeed, be dexterous; for as their hands are so are their brains. The kindergarten cultivates ear and heart and hand and brain as nothing else does. Even color is not wholly omitted in kindergartens for the blind. Many of the children see colors, and those who do not love to talk about them and certainly derive some indirect value from considering them. Wise, resourceful kindergartners who have either bought or made some Montesorri didactic material have not failed to utilize it with their newcomers or with their backward children. Of late years where institutions have either enlarged on the original site or rebuilt on a new, the kindergarten department has been housed by itself as an independent unit, all living as a family and with classes under the same roof. This is a great advance.

Blind children with kindergarten training are more susceptible to instruction than those without it. Above this department the course of academic studies in American schools requires from seven to eight years, which means a primary, a grammar and a high school education; or instruction in object lessons, reading, writing, spelling, grammar, composition, arithmetic, history, physiology, botany, zoology, geology, physics, algebra, geometry, civics, English literature, typewriting, bookkeeping and simple business, and sometimes Latin and modern languages. Not a few pupils have fitted for college where they took the regular course with the seeing students, and from where they were graduated usually with distinction. Formerly much of the teaching was oral, which, in many cases, was apt to be more pleasant than profitable to the pupil. Since the general introduction of the embossed textbook and tangible writing, the pupil has been forced to depend more and more upon himself, obviously with better results. In fact, the work has been growing more and more practical, emphasis being put upon the vocational. The methods of teaching the blind correspond in general to those of teaching other hearing children. The common appliances have but to be raised and enlarged as in maps and diagrams, or simply made tangible, which may be done, for example, by notching an ordinary ruler so that the graduations can be felt.

Industrial Training. -- Industrial training has been an integral part of the school course from the beginning. Recently educational manual training has been generally introduced as preliminary to the trades. Sloyd has been found especially adapted to the blind. The handicrafts - chair-caning, hammock-making, broom-making, carpet-weaving, and a few others, alone remain of all the many trades taught at one time or another in our schools. Manual occupations of some kind will always be taught, even were it evident that none of them would be followed by the blind as trades; for it is by doing and making that the blind especially learn best. Then, it is essential that they be kept occupied. A few institutions built on the cottage family plan require pupil participation in the daily housework, a policy which if wisely conducted is of not less developmental value than the school occupations, since it tends to build up social efficiency. A youth who is efficient in a community of youth is the more likely to be so in the community of adults. In the past, before the introduction of such varieties of labor-saving machinery as the last half century has seen, many of the discharged pupils followed some manual trade and succeeded in subsisting by it. To-day this is less and less possible. The mind itself of the blind is least trammeled by the lack of sight; hence some pursuit where intelligence is the chief factor would seem to be best adapted to his condition. Music, of course, opens up his most delightful field. It is said that all the force of the superintendents of the early schools was required to prevent the institutions from becoming mere conservatories of music. To-day only those pupils pursue music in regular course who have talent for it; but even those are not allowed to neglect other studies for it. It is the experience of the American schools, as of the British, that the profession of music offers to the educated and trained musician who is blind a field in which he can work his way with least hindrance from his lack of sight, and many are they who have found in it a means of livelihood for themselves and their families. A few in nearly every school are certificated annually as tuners of pianos. Indeed, piano tuning, often joined as it is with piano selling, has become one of the very best occupations yet developed for the men. The public school pianos of several of our cities are regularly kept in order by tuners who are blind.