# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1899_S135
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Ninth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1899. 135

"b. That a committee of three members be entrusted with conducting
this investigation, and that the Synod appoint two members to this
committee and leave the choice of a third member to Pastor Burmester.

"c. That a brotherly letter be addressed, in the Synod's name, to the
congregation at Berlin, Ontario, whose purpose shall be to lay before
the said congregation the reasons why it, too, for its part, should be
willing to consent to this conclusive investigation of this case in
its midst.

"d. That the Synod delegate Prof. Gräbner and President Succop to
this investigation, and that Professor Pieper draft the letter to the
congregation in Berlin and send it out in the Synod's name.

"e. That, once the investigation has taken place, the Michigan
District be officially informed of its result." (Report of the
committee in the matter of Pastor W. Burmester.)

Resolved, that the foregoing committee report be adopted and the
recommendations contained in it be carried out just as they read.

The Language Question Regarding Instruction at the
Deaf-Mute Institute at North Detroit, Mich.

"For some years now, alongside the German spoken language originally
practiced there exclusively, sign language — and with it the English
language — has also been introduced at the Ev. Lutheran deaf-mute
institute at North Detroit, Mich. Based on the experience gained so
far, the board of directors, after thorough deliberation together
with the institute's teachers, has had to express its conviction that
instruction in two languages, within a six-year course, is not to the
children's best advantage.

"The board of directors further, after lengthy deliberation over the
teaching method to be preferred, arrived at the following judgment:
in view of the fact that the actual purpose of our institute is the
instruction of the children in God's Word, and that children are
offered to us who can be taught with greater advantage in sign
language, we take the view that both methods should be combined at
our institute, so long as we hold fast to the fact that the children's
speaking brings them closer to the hearing part of mankind than signs
do.

"A decision would accordingly now have to be made as to whether only
one language should henceforth be taught at the institute, or whether
at least one should be made the principal language and only the more
advanced [pupils]