I am teaching my daughter to read. It is very difficult. I cannot
imagine how I learned to read myself. And when I look at the classic
called _Reading Without Tears_, which was, I understand, the foundation
of my learning, I am yet more puzzled. The author of the book seems to
believe strongly in original sin. In the Preface I read: “Tears must be
shed by sinful little creatures subject to waywardness and deserving
so many reproofs and corrections”; but reading need not be such an
occasion; and again, “Observe their minutest actions; shut not your
eyes to their sinful nature; nor believe them _incapable_ of injustice
or unkindness, of deceit of covetousness.” Perhaps this attitude
explains the book.
The author’s great idea is _pictures_. A is like a hut with a window
upstairs. B, on the other hand, is like a house with two windows; and
little b is like a child with a wide frock coming to you. When I look
at the pictures opposite I see what the author means, but when I look
at A and B and little b dispassionately by themselves they suggest
nothing at all to me. I simply cannot imagine the hut or the house or
the child with the wide frock.
[Illustration:
A is like a hut
with a window
upstairs
B is like a
house with two
windows
C is like
an open mouth
“Did we really...?”]
But let us look at some more. D is like an old man leaning on a stick;
E is like a carriage with a little seat for the driver; G is like a
monkey eating a cake. These are no better. Try as I may, I cannot see
the little seat for the driver; or if I do, I see it just as vividly in
F. But F is like a tree with a seat for a child. So I know that I am
wrong.
Now the pictorial memory is a valuable thing; and this pictorial
method of teaching is no doubt valuable. But surely the pictures are
of no real use unless there is some inevitable connection, however
slight, between the form of the thing which it is desired to impress
on the memory and the picture with which it is compared. My daughter’s
imagination is, of course, much more vivid than mine, but, even so, I
cannot imagine her looking coolly at the naked D and saying, “Yes, that
is the old man leaning on a stick.” She is more likely to say, “That is
the ground-floor of the house with two windows,” for she has a logical
mind. And even if she does not remember the futile picture of the old
man in a long shirt with his body bent at right angles to his legs,
I don’t see why, even then, she should connect him with D. There is
nothing peculiarly D-ish about an old man. Yet it seems that I learned
my alphabet in this way. I was a clever child, though sinful, I fear.
Then we get on to words. The book follows the first principle of all
teachers of languages in arranging that among the first words which
the child learns there are as many words as possible which he will
never use as a child, and, indeed, will probably never encounter in
his entire career. Prominent among the first words in this book are
such favourites as _pap_, _bin_, _hob_, _sob_, and _sop_, _emmet_ and
_tome_. Each of these is printed three times, in a column, like this:
Pat Pan Pap
PAT PAN PAP
pat pan pap
Over each column is a little picture. When you are teaching the child
_pap_ you say to her: “P-aP, pap--do you see the pretty picture? That
is a nanny with a baby in her lap. She is giving the baby a bottle.
The bottle has pap in it. At least, it is not pap, really, but it is
called pap for the purposes of the alphabet. You remember the letters,
don’t you? First there is a big P--_you_ know, like a man with a pack
on his back. Then a little a, which is like a goose on the water. Then
a little p; that is like another man coming to you with a pack on his
back. Now we have it all in big letters. Maggie, read them out.”
_Maggie_ (_firmly_). K.
_You._ No, no, not K. Don’t you remember the picture?
_Maggie._ Yes, it was a nanny with a baby.
_You._ No, not that one. It was a man with a pack on his back--P.
_Maggie._ P.
_You._ That’s right. What comes next?
_Maggie._ A goose on the water.
_You._ No, that was a _little_ a. This is a big letter. Don’t you
remember the dear little hut with the window upstairs? What letter was
that?
_Maggie._ B.
_You._ No, no, that was a _house_, not a _hut_, and it had _two_
windows. Don’t be so inaccurate. This is a big A. Now, what’s next?
_Maggie._ A little house with a nanny inside. And there’s a goose in
the garden. And a baby.
_You_ (_patiently_). No, this is another P. He is like a man with a
pack on his back. P-A-P pap--there you are. That’s very good.
_Maggie._ May I go into the garden now?
_You._ Yes.
After that we learn sentences, and we raise in the child’s mind a
few more simple pictures of Nature by repeating several times such
statements as:
A pig had a fig.
The author introduces us to Ben, who can _sup_ sop. Ben, however, has a
fat pup, and this pup cannot _sip_ sop. My daughter, as I said, has a
logical mind, and she immediately asked if Ben’s pup could _sup_ sop.
She had perceived at once that if he could neither sip nor sup the
unfortunate animal was cut off from sop altogether. I said I didn’t
know. I don’t. But I see that Ben fed Poll on bun, so I expect he gave
the pup some too.
It is a pity that the author could not provide pictures for some of the
more striking incidents she records. Some of these would do:
I met a cat in a bog
I sat in a bog
A hog is in a bog
A wig is in a bog
A pen is in a bog
I had a red bed
Ten men had a pen
I had a wet hen
I fed ten men in a den
I should have thought that by appropriate illustrations the child might
have been helped to a greater knowledge, not only of letters, but of
life.
But perhaps the most vivid of all these pages is page 99, which I
produce verbatim:
A bun is in a tun
A gun is in a tun
A dog is in a tun
A hog is in a tun
A pig is in a tun
A wig is in a tun
A hen is in a tun
A pen is in a tun
NOTE.--Let the child begin the book again, if it likes.
What _is_ a tun? Until I started out to educate my daughter I did not
know. But then, I am not a sinful child. For hush! it seems to be a
sort of _barrel_. I have drawn rather a jolly tun myself.
If we could only look back into our childish minds and really recapture
the impressions of life (if any) which inhabitated us at the end of a
day when we had triumphantly mastered page 99 and similar pages, and if
one could set those impressions down in print, what rich romances might
be born into the world!
But is there no Society for the Protection of Children from This Sort
of Book?
[Illustration: “A pen is in a tun.”]