deem worthy of association and imitation only those whom they consider Americans. All this is away from discernment of values, a bound from democracy rather than a step toward it. A teacher can easily help a child to keep a love of his own country while stimulating a new love for his new country. A teacher's real feeling for the different countries his room represents is readily reflected in the feelings of his pupils. Without awareness, instinctively, a child senses and answers to the attitude of mind, to the belief in the heart, of the teacher. The sense of an ideal caught, the acceptance of an idea, becomes an unconscious reserve power, a fund of acknowledged or more often unacknowledged decision and action in the inner nature of the child from which later movement will take place.

As we grow into a democracy, realizing that liberty is the power of the freedom of thought and of individual expression, as we become able to discern values and to distinguish between immediate and ultimate ideals, we will hand the gift of life to all children according to the measure in which we have the spirit and the wisdom to accept the gifts of life from our millions of immigrant children.

The United States Bureau of Education5 urges that more "attention be devoted to instruction bearing directly on problems of community and national life." History is a present reality. There is pressing need, in the upbuilding of our community and national life, that our immigrants know each other and that we know them all. The beginning of the sympathy which produces unity can best be made in the lower grades of our public schools. We need generously to appreciate that our many-nationed collaborators are assets in the construction of a democratic America. As the lives of teachers are enriched and amplified by insight into the histories of the various countries which are contributing to the development of our national life, so the burden of their teaching is lessened and the inspiration of their teaching heightened.

'Announcement of a series of Lessons in Community and National Life in a circular issued by the Bureau of Education, 1917. (In a letter from President Wilson, Aug. 23, 1917: To School Officers.)

The Deaf and Psychic Development.*

RICHARD O. JOHNSON, SUPERINTENDENT INDIANA SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF, INDIANAPOLIS, IND.

DEAFNESS IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS, AND ADENOID GROWTH.

Sunnichini♣T may be stated generally that most ear diseases (72 per cent) are caused by affections of the nasopharynx and that perfect hearing depends largely upon free ventilation of the tympanic, or middle ear, cavity, which is provided for by nature through the eustachian tube. This middle ear affection may be of suppurative or non-suppurative process. Deafness may be due to impacted cerumen, foreign bodies and miscellaneous causes in the external ear (3 per cent), or to affections of the labyrinth, auditory nerve, brain center or miscellaneous causes in the internal ear (25 per cent). It is believed by some that there is direct relationship between the ear and certain forms of epilepsy, gastroenteritis, and other diseases that are supposed to have their origin elsewhere, but which are caused by pentup secretions of the middle ear. Chronic aural suppuration is often symptomless so far as the ear is concerned, and the experience of Ponfick,1 of Breslau, has been cited as corroborative of this condition. In the examination of the middle ears of 100 consecutive cases of infants dead under three years of age, and of whom only nine had exhibited rupture of the membranes or other external symptom of ear disease, he found 169 diseased tympana, 77 ambilateral and 15 unilateral. Another authority2 reports that in 133 autopsies on nursing infants there were found only five cases in which the middle ear was free from exudation. Many of these 233 cases, no doubt, would have become deaf, and deafmutes, had they not died, as have thousands of others similarly affected who have lived.

The prevalence of defective hearing among pupils attending the public schools is far greater than is known and investigations in

Concluded from February EDUCATION.

Note: In the 14th line on page 425 of February EDUCATION for "recognized" deficiency read "recognized or unrecognized."

'Professor of Pathology.

"Simmons-Archives of Otology.

various parts of the country have disclosed from ten to thirty per cent of the number examined as having defective hearing. One report, which 3 which may be taken as fairly representative of the condition, states that investigations in many places tend to establish the following points: (1) that at least one child in every five has some defect in one or both ears: (2) that in the majority of cases neither teacher, parent nor child is aware of the defect; (3) that these children, usually accounted careless, inattentive, or positively stupid by parents and teachers who are ignorant of the real cause, become "repeaters" of grades and, as they grow in age and stature, are assigned to rear seats in the schoolroom where their chances of hearing are reduced to a minimum; (4) that a child who is hard of hearing can hear better at certain times than at others, which causes misjudgment, and the common remark, "Don't tell me that Jimmie is deaf, he can hear as well as anybody when he wants to." Can any one doubt that such children, unless placed under the care of a skilled specialist (the few) or under special training in a school for the deaf (the many) are left behind in the race and, discouraged, become indifferent and acquire a tendency down the scale to delinquency and perhaps, depravity?

Another great fact brought out by investigations is the very rapid increase of defective sight and hearing in the early school years of the child, which culminates around the ninth or tenth year, a remarkable time in the life of the child for at this period the brain has about reached its full weight and in its development is changing from increase in size to increase in function, while at the same time there comes sudden growth, increased strain upon the heart, and consequent fatigue.

How important, then, that parents and teachers should make and have made by the family physician, careful examination of the pharynx and naso-pharynx, of the membrana tympani, and for middle ear inflammation-that there should be correct diagnosis and prompt and efficient treatment by means of excision of enlarged faucial and pharyngeal tonsils, and incision of the membrane for proper exudation if inflammation be found, in all diseases of infancy and childhood. Proper attention and treatment will probably save the child's life and preserve wholly, or in some degree, its

Southworth-Somerville Schools.

hearing and speech, for it is a fact that a child losing its hearing under seven years of age will almost surely lose its acquired speech unless strenuous efforts be made to retain it upon the part of the child, the parent, and the teacher.

THE COMMON ADENOID

In appealing to parents and teachers for constant and effective watchfulness generally in certain exanthematous and inflammatory diseases that always tend to affect the hearing (catarrhal affections, scarletina, meningitis, measles, mumps, colds, etc.), and without consideration of hereditary and adventitious causes of deafness, their classification and rate of frequency, etc., the various phases of which cannot well be considered within the scope of this article, there is one very common cause of deafness to which I wish to refer specifically, i. e., the occlusion, or closure, by means of adenoid growth, a glandular blood-filled mass, of the eustachian tube leading from the naso-pharynx to the tympanic cavity and through which is afforded the only means for absolutely necessary ventilation of the middle ear. The occlusion by adenoids of this tube, which is about one and one-half inches long and barely large enough in diameter at its middle part to pass a darning needle, is the primary cause of a very large percentage of cases of defective hearing: and with inflammation of the tube through disease, the two probably constitute a decided majority of all cases of adventitious deafness where not due to hereditary disposition which is certainly transmissible and susceptible of development through the action of causes not affecting one free of such disposition. Constant watchfulness and care will frequently overcome such a condition; nature needs assistance.

This adenoid growth, so baneful, so common in children and so prevalent everywhere, is easy of detection and easy of remedy if one has but eye to see and thought to act before it is too late; but delay usually occurs, or nothing is done at all with mistaken belief that it will finally disappear as it does in later years, but not until almost irremediable damage has been done. While the growth is in the postnasal space above the uvula and cannot be seen, it is indicated by one or more unmistakable symptoms: hypertrophied faucial tonsils, cough, croup, tonsilitis, asthma, epileptic seizures, repeated colds in

the head, intermittent spells of deafness and of ear ache, difficult breathing and deglutition, mouth-breathing, irregular and protruding teeth, high-arched palate, swollen neck-glands, discharges from nose and ear, frequent periods of malaise, and various other troubles frequently attributed to digestive disorders, etc.

The accompanying cut illustrates plainly the pernicious effects of adenoid growth. The face to the left is the normal face showing the natural back, or pharyngeal, tonsil from which the adenoid mass grows in pendant form around, and sometimes into, the eustachian,

or ventilating, tube to the middle ear as shown in the face to the right, the so-called adenoid face. In the one, the natural air-way through the nostrils is wide, the 100f of the mouth is properly arched, the teeth are straight, and the mouth is closed; in the other, the air-way through the nostrils is blocked so that breathing must be done through the mouth, or food-way, which remains open for air, the faucial tonsil is swollen exerting pressure upon the uvula, and gradual transformation has taken place in the structure of the face, mouth and teeth interfering with correct articulation among other things. Deafness of total or less degree may also be