LESSONS AS INSTRUMENTS OF EDUCATION
I.--THE MATTER AND METHOD OF LESSONS
It seems to me that we live in an age of pedagogy; that we of the
teaching profession are inclined to take too much upon ourselves, and
that parents are ready to yield the responsibility of direction, as
well as of actual instruction, more than is wholesome for the children.
=Parents must reflect on the Subject-matter of Instruction.=--I
am about to invite your attention to a subject that parents are
accustomed to leave very much in the hands of schoolmaster or
governess when they do not instruct their children themselves--I mean
the choice of subjects of instruction, and the ways of handling those
subjects. Teachers are the people who have, more than others, given
themselves to the consideration of what a child should learn and how
he should learn it; but the parent, also, should have thought out this
subject, and even when he does not profess to teach his children,
should have his own carefully formed opinions as to the subject-matter
and the method of their intellectual education: and this for the sake
of the teacher as well as for that of the children. Nothing does
more to give vitality and purpose to the work of the teacher than the
certainty that the parents of his pupils go with him.
Even when children go to schools taught by qualified persons, some
insight on the part of fathers and mothers is useful as hindering the
teacher from dropping into professional grooves, valuing proficiency
in this or that subject for its own sake, and not as it affects
the children. But in the early days of the home schoolroom, it is
iniquitous to leave the young governess, with little qualification
beyond her native French or German, or scanty English, to chalk out a
course for herself and her charges. That the children waste their time
is the least of the evils that accrue: they are forming habits dead
against intellectual effort; and by-and-by, when they go to school,
the lessons go over their heads, the work slips through their fingers,
and their powers of passive resistance baffle the most strenuous
teachers.
=Home the best Growing-ground for Young Children.=--All the same,
whatever be the advantages of _Kindergarten_ or other schools
for little children, the home schoolroom ought to be the best
growing-ground for them. And doubtless it would be so, were the mother
at liberty to devote herself to the instruction of her children;
but this she is seldom free to do. If she live in a town, she can
send them to school when they are six; if in the country, she must
have a governess; and the difficulty is to get a woman who is not
only acquainted with the subjects she undertakes to teach, but who
understands in some measure the nature of the child and the art
and objects of education; a woman capable of making the very most
of the children without waste of power or of time. Such a _rara
avis_ does not present herself in answer to every advertisement;
and in default of a trained teacher, the mother must undertake to
_train_ her governess--that is, she may supplement with her own
insight the scanty knowledge and experience of the young teacher.
‘I wish the children to be taught to _read_, thus and thus,
because----’: or, ‘to learn _history_ in such a way that the
lessons may have such and such effects.’ Half an hour’s talk of this
kind with a sensible governess will secure a whole month’s work for
the children, so well directed that much is done in little time, and
the widest possible margin secured for play and open-air exercise.
=Three Questions for the Mother.=--But if the mother is to inoculate
the governess with her views as to the teaching of writing, French,
geography, she must, herself, have definite views. She must ask
herself seriously, _Why_ must the children learn at all?
_What_ should they learn? And, _How_ should they learn it?
If she take the trouble to find a definite and thoughtful answer to
each of these three queries, she will be in a position to direct her
children’s studies; and will, at the same time, be surprised to find
that three-fourths of the time and labour ordinarily spent by the
child at his lessons is lost time and wasted energy.
=Children learn, to Grow.=--Why must the child learn? Why do we
eat? Is it not in order that the body may live and grow and be able
to fulfil its functions? Precisely so must the mind be sustained
and developed by means of the food convenient for it, the mental
_pabulum_ of assimilated knowledge. Again, the body is developed
not only by means of proper sustenance, but by the appropriate
exercise of each of its members. A young mother remarked to me the
other day, that before her marriage she had such slender arms she
never liked to exhibit them; but a strong five-months-old baby had
cured her of that; she could toss and lift him with ease, and could
now show well-rounded arms with anybody: and just as the limbs grow
strong with exercise, so does intellectual effort with a given power
of the mind make that power effective. People are apt to overlook the
fact that _mind_ must have its aliment--we learn that we may
_know_, not that we may _grow_; hence the parrot-like saying
of lessons, the cramming of ill-digested facts for examinations, all
the ways of taking in knowledge which the mind does not assimilate.
=Doctoring of the Material of Knowledge.=--Specialists, on the other
hand, are apt to attach too much importance to the several exercises
of the mental ‘faculties.’ We come across books on teaching, with
lessons elaborately drawn up, in which certain work is assigned to
the perceptive faculties, certain work to the imagination, to the
judgment, and so on. Now this doctrine of the faculties, which rests
on a false analogy between the mind and the body, is on its way to the
limbo where the phrenologist’s ‘bumps’ now rest in peace. The mind
would appear to be one and indivisible, and endowed with manifold
powers; and this sort of doctoring of the material of knowledge
is unnecessary for the healthy child, whose mind is capable of
self-direction, and of applying itself to its proper work upon the
parcel of knowledge delivered to it. Almost any subject which common
sense points out as suitable for the instruction of children will
afford exercise for all their powers, if properly presented.
=Children learn, to get Ideas.=--The child must learn, in the second
place, in order that _ideas_ may be freely sown in the fruitful
soil of his mind. ‘_Idea_, the image or picture formed by the
mind of anything external, whether sensible or spiritual,’--so, the
dictionary; therefore, if the business of teaching be to furnish the
child with ideas, any teaching which does not leave him possessed of a
new mental image has, by so far, missed its mark. Now, just think of
the listless way in which the children too often drag through reading
and tables, geography and sums, and you will see that it is a rare
thing for any part of any lesson to flash upon them with the vividness
which leaves a mental picture behind. It is not too much to say that
a morning in which a child receives no new idea is a morning wasted,
however closely the little student has been kept at his books.
=Ideas Grow and Produce after their Kind.=--For the dictionary appears
to me to fall short of the truth in its definition of the term
‘_idea_.’ An idea is more than an image or a picture; it is, so
to speak, a spiritual germ endowed with vital force--with power, that
is, to grow, and to produce after its kind. It is the very nature of
an idea to grow: as the vegetable germ secretes that it lives by, so,
fairly implant an _idea_ in the child’s mind, and it will secrete
its own food, grow, and bear fruit in the form of a succession of
kindred ideas. We know from our own experience that, let our attention
be forcibly drawn to some public character, some startling theory,
and for days after we are continually hearing or reading matter which
bears on this one subject, just as if all the world were thinking
about what occupies our thoughts: the fact being, that the new idea
we have received is in the act of growth, and is reaching out after
its appropriate food. This process of _feeding_ goes on with
peculiar avidity in childhood, and the growth of an idea in the child
is proportionately rapid.
=Scott and Stephenson worked with Ideas.=--Scott got an idea, a whole
group of ideas, out of the Border tales and ballads, the folklore of
the countryside, on which his boyhood was nourished: his ideas grew
and brought forth, and the Waverley Novels are the fruit they bore.
George Stephenson made little clay engines with his playmate, Thomas
Tholoway; by-and-by, when he was an engineman, he was always watching
his engine, cleaning it, studying it; an engine was his dominant idea,
and it developed into no less a thing than the locomotive.
=Value of Dominant Ideas.=--But how does this theory of the vital and
fruitful character of ideas bear upon the education of the child? In
this way: give your child a single valuable _idea_, and you have
done more for his education than if you had laid upon his mind the
burden of bushels of information; for the child who grows up with a
few dominant ideas has his self-education provided for, his career
marked out.
=Lessons must furnish Ideas.=--In order for the reception of an idea,
the mind must be in an attitude of eager attention, and how to secure
that state we have considered elsewhere. One thing more: a single
idea may be a possession so precious in itself, so fruitful, that
the parent cannot fitly allow the child’s selection of ideas to be
a matter of chance: his _lessons_ should furnish him with such
ideas as shall make for his further education.
=Children learn to get Knowledge.=--But it is not only to secure due
intellectual growth and the furnishing of his mind with ideas, that
the child must learn: the common notion, that he learns for the sake
of getting knowledge, is also a true one so much so, that no knowledge
should be so precious as that gained in childhood, no later knowledge
should be so clearly chronicled on the brain, nor so useful as the
foundation of that to follow. At the same time, the child’s capacity
for knowledge is very limited; his mind is, in this respect at least,
but a little phial with a narrow neck; and, therefore, it behoves
parent or teacher to pour in only of the best.
=Diluted Knowledge.=--But, poor children, they are too often badly
used by their best friends in the matter of the sort of knowledge
offered them. Grown-up people who are not mothers talk and think far
more childishly than the child does in their efforts to approach his
mind. If a child talk twaddle, it is because his elders are in the
habit of talking twaddle to him; leave him to himself, and his remarks
are wise and sensible so far as his small experience guides him.
Mothers seldom talk down to their children; they are too intimate with
the little people, and have, therefore, too much respect for them: but
professional teachers, whether the writers of books or the givers of
lessons, are too apt to present a single grain of pure knowledge in a
whole gallon of talk, imposing upon the child the labour of discerning
the grain and of extracting it from the worthless flood.
=Dr Arnold’s Knowledge as a Child.=--On the whole, the children who
grow up amongst their elders and are not provided with what are called
children’s books at all, fare the better on what they are able to
glean for themselves from the literature of grown-up people. Thus it
is told of Dr Arnold that when he was three years old he received
a present from his father of Smollett’s _History of England_
as a reward for the accuracy with which he went through the stories
connected with the portraits and pictures of the successive reigns--an
amusement which probably laid the foundation of the great love for
history which distinguished him in after life. When occupying the
professorial chair at Oxford, he made quotations, we are told, from Dr
Priestley’s _Lectures on History_,--verbally accurate quotations,
we may believe, for such was the habit of his mind; besides, a child
has little skill in recasting his matter--and that, though he had not
had the book in his hands since he was a child of eight. No doubt
he was an exceptional child; and all I maintain is, that had his
reading been the sort of diluted twaddle which is commonly thrust
upon children, it would have been _impossible_ for him to cite
passages a week, much less some two score years, after the reading.
=Literature Proper for Children.=--This sort of weak literature
for the children, both in story and lesson books, is the result of
a reactionary process. Not so long ago the current impression was
that the children had little understanding, but prodigious memory
for facts; dates, numbers, rules, catechisms of knowledge, much
information in small parcels, was supposed to be the fitting material
for a child’s education. We have changed all that, and put into the
children’s hands lesson-books with pretty pictures and easy talk,
almost as good as story-books; but we do not see that, after all, we
are but giving the same little pills of knowledge in the form of a
weak and copious diluent. Teachers, and even parents, who are careful
enough about their children’s diet, are so reckless as to the sort
of mental aliment offered to them, that I am exceedingly anxious to
secure consideration for this question, of the lessons and literature
proper for the little people.
=Four Tests which should be applied to Children’s Lessons.=--We
see, then, that the children’s lessons should provide material for
their mental growth, should exercise the several powers of their
minds, should furnish them with fruitful ideas, and should afford
them knowledge, really valuable for its own sake, accurate, and
interesting, of the kind that the child may recall as a man with
profit and pleasure. Before applying these tests to the various
subjects in which children are commonly instructed, may I remind you
of two or three points which I have endeavoured to establish in the
preceding pages:--
=Résumé of Six Points already considered.=--
(_a_) That the knowledge most valuable to the child is that which
he gets with his own eyes and ears and fingers (under direction) in
the open air.
(_b_) That the claims of the schoolroom should not be allowed to
encroach on the child’s right to long hours daily for exercise and
investigation.
(_c_) That the child should be taken daily, if possible, to
scenes--moor or meadow, park, common, or shore--where he may find new
things to examine, and so add to his store of _real_ knowledge.
That the child’s observation should be directed to flower or boulder,
bird or tree; that, in fact, he should be employed in gathering the
common information which is the basis of scientific knowledge.
(_d_) That play, vigorous healthful play, is, in its turn,
fully as important as lessons, as regards both bodily health and
brain-power.
(_e_) That the child, though under supervision, should be left
much to himself--both that he may go to work in his own way on the
ideas he receives, and also that he may be the more open to natural
influences.
(_f_) That the happiness of the child is the condition of his
progress; that his lessons should be joyous, and that occasions of
friction in the schoolroom are greatly to be deprecated.
Premising so much, let us now consider--What the children should
learn, and how they should be taught.
II.--THE KINDERGARTEN AS A PLACE OF EDUCATION
=The Mother the best Kindergärtnerin.=--It is hardly necessary, here,
to discuss the merits of the Kindergarten School. The success of
such a school demands rare qualities in the teacher--high culture,
some knowledge of psychology and of the art of education; intense
sympathy with the children, much tact, much common sense, much common
information, much ‘joyousness of nature’ and much governing power;--in
a word, the Kindergarten method is nicely contrived to bring the child
_en rapport_ with a superior intelligence. Given, such a superior
being to conduct it, and the Kindergarten is beautiful--‘’tis like a
little heaven below’; but put a commonplace woman in charge of such
a school, and the charmingly devised gifts and games and occupations
become so many instruments of _wooden_ teaching. If the very
essence of the Kindergarten method is personal influence, a sort of
spiritual mesmerism, it follows that the mother is naturally the best
_Kindergärtnerin_; for who so likely as she to have the needful
tact, sympathy, common sense, culture?
=The Nursery need not therefore be a Kindergarten.=--Though every
mother should be a _Kindergärtnerin_, in the sense in which
Froebel would employ the term, it does not follow that every nursery
should be a regularly organised Kindergarten. Indeed, the machinery
of the Kindergarten is no more than a device to ensure the carrying
out of certain educational _principles_, and some of these it is
the mother’s business to get at, and work out according to Froebel’s
method--or her own. For instance, in the Kindergarten the child’s
_senses_ are carefully and progressively trained: he looks,
listens, learns by touch; gets ideas of size, colour, form, number; is
taught to copy faithfully, express exactly. And in this training of
the senses, the child is made to pursue the method the infant shapes
for himself in his early studies of ring or ball.
=Field of Knowledge too circumscribed.=--But it is possible that the
child’s marvellous power of obtaining knowledge by means of his senses
may be undervalued; that the field may be too circumscribed; and that,
during the first six or seven years in which he might have become
intimately acquainted with the properties and history of every natural
object within his reach, he has obtained, _exact_ ideas, it is
true--can distinguish a rhomboid from a pentagon, a primary from a
secondary colour, has learned to _see_ so truly that he can copy
what he sees in folded paper or woven straw,--but this at the expense
of much of that _real knowledge_ of the external world which at
no time of his life will he be so fitted to acquire. Therefore, while
the _exact_ nicely graduated training of the Kindergarten may be
of value, the mother will endeavour to give it by the way, and will
by no means let it stand for that wider training of the senses, to
secure which for her children is a primary duty.
Again, the child in the Kindergarten is set to such tasks only as
he is competent to perform, and then, whatever he has to do, he is
expected to do _perfectly_. I have seen a four-years-old child
blush and look as self-condemned, because he had folded a slip of
paper irregularly, as if found out in a falsehood. But mother or nurse
is quite able to secure that the child’s small offices are perfectly
executed; and, here is an important point, without that slight strain
of distressful anxiety which may be observed in children labouring to
please that smiling goddess, their ‘_Kindergärtnerin_.’
=Training of a Just Eye and Faithful Hand.=--The Kindergarten
‘Occupations’ afford opportunities for training in this kind of
faithfulness; but in the home a thousand such opportunities occur;
if only in such trifles as the straightening of a tablecloth or of
a picture, the hanging of a towel, the packing of a parcel--every
thoughtful mother invents a thousand ways of training in her child a
just eye and a faithful hand. Nevertheless, as a means of methodical
training, as well as of happy employment, the introduction of some of
the games and occupations of the Kindergarten into the nursery may
be allowed; provided that the mother does not depend upon these, but
makes _all_ the child’s occupations subserve the purposes of his
education.
=‘Sweetness and Light’ in the Kindergarten.=--The child breathes an
atmosphere of ‘sweetness and light’ in the Kindergarten. You see the
sturdy urchin of five stiffen his back and decline to be a jumping
frog, and the _Kindergärtnerin_ comes with unruffled gentleness,
takes him by the hand, and leads him out of the circle,--he is not
treated as an offender, only he does not choose to do as others do,
therefore he is not wanted there: the next time, he is quite content
to be a frog. Here we have the principle for the discipline of the
nursery. Do not treat the child’s small contumacy too seriously; do
not assume that he is being naughty: just leave him out when he is not
prepared to act in harmony with the rest. Avoid friction; and above
all, do not let him disturb the moral atmosphere; in all gentleness
and serenity, remove him from the company of the others, when he is
being what nurses call ‘tiresome.’
Once more, the Kindergarten professes to take account of the
joyousness of the child’s nature: to allow him full and free
expression for the glee that is in him, without the ‘rampaging’
which follows if he is left to himself to find an outlet for his
exuberant life. This union of joy and gentleness is the very temper
to be cultivated in the nursery. The boisterous behaviour sometimes
allowed in children is unnecessary--within doors, at any rate; but
even a momentary absence of sunshine on the faces of her children
will be a graver cause of uneasiness to the mother. On the whole,
we may say that some of the _principles_ which should govern
Kindergarten training are precisely those in which every thoughtful
mother endeavours to bring up her family; while the _practices_
of the Kindergarten, being only ways, amongst others, of carrying out
these principles, and being apt to become stereotyped and wooden, are
unnecessary, but may be adopted so far as they fit in conveniently
with the mother’s general scheme for the education of her family.
III.--FURTHER CONSIDERATION OF THE KINDERGARTEN
=The Childhood of Tolstoi.=--There is possibly no known field of
research in which so little available work has been done as in that
covered by the word ‘children.’ The ‘fair lande’ lies under our very
eyes, but whoso would map it out must write ‘Unexplored’ across vast
tracts. Thoughtful persons begin to suspect that the mistakes we make
through this ignorance are grievous and injurious. For example, are
not all our schemes of education founded on the presumption that a
child’s mind--his ‘thinking, feeling man’--begins ‘very small’ and
grows great with the growth of his body? We cannot tell if this is
indeed the case. The children keep themselves to themselves in a
general way, their winning ways and frank confidences notwithstanding;
but if one of us do, by chance, get a child revealed to him, he is
startled to find that the child has by far the keener intelligence,
the wiser thoughts, the larger soul of the two. When genius is able
to lift the veil and show us a child, it does a service which, in
our present state of thought, we are hardly able to appraise; and
when genius or simplicity, or both, shall have given us enough such
studies to generalise upon, we shall doubtless reconsider the whole
subject, and shall be dismayed at the slights we have been putting
upon children in the name of education. Count Tolstoi gives us, in
_Childhood, Boyhood, Youth_,[9] unmistakable child-portraiture, a
miniature in which a mother may see her child and recognise what and
how much there is in him:--
“Like our own dear mother,”
the little fellow writes, in the verses he makes for his grandmothers
birthday; and then, when the verses come to be read, ah! the
humiliation of soul he goes through, and how surely he expects
father and grandmother to find him out for a hypocrite. “Why did I
write it? She’s not here, and it was not necessary to mention her;
I love grandma, it’s true; I reverence her, but still she is not
the same. Why did I write it? Why have I lied?” This is the sort of
thing there is in children. We recognise it as we read, and remember
the dim, childish days when we, too, had an ‘organ of truth’ just
so exquisitely delicate; and the recollection should quicken our
reverence for the tender consciences of children.
“=The Story of a Child.=”--I should like while speaking of this
subject to mention another book which contains the self-revelation of
a child,--a child that once was summoned, to give evidence, out of
the dark abysm of time. This is the sort of study of a child that is
really precious, because it is to be had on no other terms than by
harking back to our own childhood, vivifying it, reproducing it, by
mere force of imaginative power. This is absolutely the only way to
get into sympathy with a child, for children, with all their frank
confidences and ready chatter, are quite inscrutable little persons,
who never tell anyone the sort of things that we read in this ‘Story.’
There is no need to tell each other, for other children know, and,
as for telling the grown-ups, children are fully persuaded that no
grown-up, not even mother, could understand; Ponto might, perhaps,
and confidences will be poured into the ear of a dog which the loving
mother lays herself out for in vain.
“Each in his hidden sphere of joy or woe
Our hermit spirits dwell, and range apart,
Our eyes see all around in gloom or glow--
Hues of their own, fresh borrow’d from the heart.”
And this is even more notably the case with children than with
ourselves. It is a law of our nature with which it is absolutely
useless to contend, and our only means of true intimacy with a child
is the power of recovering our own childhood--a power which we are
apt to let slip as of no vital importance. This, Miss Margaret Deland
helps us to do: we recognise our old selves, with a difference, in
Ellen. Just so irrational, inconsequent, loving and heroic, and
generally tiresome to the grown-up world were our own impulses in
that long ago, on which we look back with tenderness, but seldom
with complacency. If we rise, after reading _The Story of a
Child_,[10] a little more humble, a little more diffident, ready to
believe more than we see, why, it will do us no harm, and should bless
and help the children. From one word of the author’s we should like to
differ. Miss Deland thinks that it may be wholesome for the elders to
understand children better, but for the children, why, she thinks that
most of us grow up wonderfully well in spite of this and all other
difficulties. In a sense this is true, but, in another sense, one of
the saddest things in life is the issue of splendid child-material
into commonplace, uninteresting maturity, of a kind that the world
seems to be neither the better nor the worse for.
Tolstoi’s childhood and that of Miss Deland’s little heroine would
appear to be a far cry from ‘the Kindergarten’; but as a matter of
fact these two revelations of what children are bring our contention
to a point.
We are told that, “but yesterday, in the University of Edinburgh, the
greatest figure in the Faculty was Sir James Simpson, the discoverer
of chloroform. The other day his successor and nephew, Professor
Simpson, was asked by the librarian of the University to go to the
library and pick out the books on his subject that were no longer
needed. And his reply to the librarian was this: ‘Take every text-book
that is more than ten years old, and put it down in the cellar.’” So
far as education is a science, the truth of even ten--much more, a
hundred--years ago is not the whole truth of to-day.
“Thoughts beyond their thought to those high seers were given”;
and, in proportion as the urgency of educational effort presses upon
us, will be the ardour of our appreciation, the diligence of our
employment, of those truths which the great pioneers, Froebel and
the rest, have won for us by no less than prophetic insight. But,
alas, and alas, for the cravings of lazy human nature--we may not
have an educational pope; we must think out for ourselves, as well as
work out, those things that belong to the perfect bringing-up of our
children.
=What we Owe to Froebel.=--We reverence Froebel. Many of his great
thoughts we share; we cannot say borrow, because some, like the
child’s relations to the universe, are at least as old as Plato;
others belong to universal practice and experience, and this shows
their psychological rightness. Froebel gathered diffused thought
and practice into a system, but he did a greater thing than this.
He raised an altar to the enthusiasm of childhood upon which the
flame has never since gone out. The true _Kindergärtnerin_ is
the artist amongst teachers; she is filled with the inspiration of
her work, and probably most sincere teachers have caught something
from her fervour, some sense of the beauty of childhood, and of the
enthralling delight of truly educational work.
=Requirements of a Person.=--And yet I enter a _caveat_. Our
first care should be to preserve the individuality, give play to the
personality, of children. Now _persons_ do not grow in a garden,
much less in a greenhouse. It is a doubtful boon to a person to
have conditions too carefully adapted to his needs. The exactly due
sunshine and shade, pruning and training, are good for a plant whose
uses are subordinate, so to say, to the needs and pleasures of its
owner. But a _person_ has other uses in the world, and mother or
teacher who regards him as a plant and herself as the gardener, will
only be saved from grave mistakes by the force of human nature in
herself and in her child.
=Nature as an Educator.=--The notion of supplementing Nature from the
cradle is a dangerous one. A little guiding, a little restraining,
much reverent watching, Nature asks of us; but beyond that, it is the
wisdom of parents to leave children as much as may be to Nature, and
“to a higher Power than Nature itself.”
=Danger of undervaluing Children’s Intelligence.=--Those of us who
have watched an urchin of seven making Catherine-wheels down the
length of a street, or a group of little girls dancing to a barrel
organ, or small boys and girls on a door-step giving what Dickens
calls ‘dry nourishment’ to their babies, or a small girl sent by her
mother to make four careful purchases out of sixpence and bring home
the change--are not ready to believe that physical, mental, and moral
development waits, so to speak, upon Kindergarten teaching. Indeed,
I am inclined to question whether, in the interest of carrying out
a system, the charming Kindergärtnerin is not in danger sometimes
of greatly undervaluing the intelligence of her children. I know a
person of three who happened to be found by a caller alone in the
drawing-room. It was spring, and the caller thought to make himself
entertaining with talk about the pretty ‘baa-lambs.’ But a pair of big
blue eyes were fixed upon him and a solemn person made this solemn
remark, “Isn’t it a dwefful howid thing to see a pig killed!” We
hope she had never seen or even heard of the killing of a pig, but
she made as effective a protest against twaddle as would any woman
of Society. Boers and kopjes, Russians and Japs, Treasure Island,
Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, the fight of Thermopylæ, Ulysses
and the Suitors--these are the sorts of things that children play
at by the month together; even the toddlers of three and four will
hold their own manfully with their brothers and sisters. And, if the
little people were in the habit of telling how they feel, we should
learn perhaps that they are a good deal bored by the nice little games
in which they frisk like lambs, flap their fins, and twiddle their
fingers like butterflies.
=We all like to be Humoured.=--‘But,’ says the reader, ‘children do
all these things so pleasantly and happily in the Kindergarten!’ It
is a curious thing about human nature that we all like to be managed
by persons who take the pains to play on our amiabilities. Even a dog
can be made foolishly sentimental; and, if we who are older have
our foibles in this kind, it is little wonder that children can be
wooed to do anything by persons whose approaches to them are always
charming. It is true that ‘W. V.,’ the child whom the world has been
taught to love, sang her Kindergarten songs with little hands waving
in the ‘air so blue!’ but that was for the delectation and delusion of
the elders when bedtime came. ‘W. V.’ had greater thoughts at other
times.
=Teachers mediate too much.=--There are still, probably, Kindergartens
where a great deal of twaddle is talked in song and story, where the
teacher conceives that to make poems for the children herself and
to compose tunes for their singing and to draw pictures for their
admiration, is to fulfil her function to the uttermost. The children
might echo Wordsworth’s complaint of ‘the world’ and say, the teacher
is too much with us, late and soon. Everything is directed, expected,
suggested. No other personality out of book, picture, or song, no,
not even that of Nature herself, can get at the children without the
mediation of the teacher. No room is left for spontaneity or personal
initiation on their part.
=Danger of Personal Magnetism.=--Most of us are misled by our virtues,
and the entire zeal and enthusiasm of the Kindergärtnerin is perhaps
her stone of stumbling. ‘But the children are so happy and good!’
Precisely; the home-nursery is by no means such a scene of peace, but
I venture to think it a better growing-place. I am delighted to see
that an eminent Fröbelian protests against the element of personal
magnetism in the teacher; but there is, or has been, a good deal of
this element in the successful Kindergärtner, and we all know how we
lose vigour and individuality under this sort of influence. Even apart
from this element of charm, I doubt if the self-adjusting property of
life in the Kindergarten is good for children.
=‘Kindergarten’ a False Analogy.=--The world suffered that morning
when the happy name of ‘Kindergarten’ suggested itself to the greatest
among educational ‘Fathers.’ No doubt it was simple and fit in
its first intention as meaning an out-of-door garden life for the
children; but, a false analogy has hampered, or killed, more than one
philosophic system--the child became a plant in a well-ordered garden.
The analogy appealed to the orderly, scientific German mind, which
does not much approve of irregular, spontaneous movement in any sort.
Culture, due stimulus, sweetness and light, became the chief features
of a great educational code. From the potting-shed to the frame and
thence to the flower-bed, the little plant gets in due proportion what
is good for him. He grows in a seemly way, in ordered ranks; and in
fit season puts forth his flower.
Now, to figure a _person_ by any analogy whatsoever is dangerous
and misleading; there is nothing in nature commensurable with a
person. Because the analogy of the garden plant is very attractive,
it is the more misleading; manifestations of purpose in a plant are
wonderful and delightful, but in a person such manifestations are
simply normal. The outcome of any thought is necessarily moulded by
that thought, and to have a cultivated garden as the ground-plan of
our educational thought, either means nothing at all, which it would
be wronging the Master to suppose, or it means undue interference with
the spontaneous development of a human being.
=Mother-games too strenuous for a Child.=--To begin with the
‘Mother-games,’ a sweet conception, most lovingly worked out. But
let us consider; the infant is exquisitely aware of every mood of
his mother, the little face clouds with grief or beams with joy in
response to the expression of hers. The two left to themselves have
rare games. He jumps and pulls, crows and chuckles, crawls and kicks
and gurgles with joy; and, amid all the play, is taught what he may
_not_ do. Hands and feet, legs and arms, fingers and toes, are
continually going while he is awake; mouth, eyes and ears are agog.
All is play without intention, and mother plays with baby as glad as
he. Nature sits quietly by and sees to it that all the play is really
work; and development of every sort is going on at a greater rate
during the first two years of life than at any like period of after
life--enough development and not too much, for baby is an inordinate
sleeper. Then comes in the educator and offers a little more. The
new games are so pretty and taking that baby might as well be doing
these as his own meaningless and clumsy jumpings and pattings. But a
real labour is being put upon the child in addition to the heaviest
two years’ work that his life will know. His sympathy with his
mother is so acute that he perceives something strenuous in the new
play, notwithstanding all the smiles and pretty talk; he answers by
endeavour, great in proportion as he is small. His nerve centres and
brain power have been unduly taxed, some of the joy of living has been
taken from him, and though his baby response to direct education is
very charming, he has less latent power left for the future calls of
life.
=The Society of his Equals too stimulating for a Child.=--Let us
follow the little person to the Kindergarten, where he has the
stimulus of classmates of his own age. It certainly is stimulating.
For ourselves, no society is so much so as that of a number of persons
of our own age and standing; this is the great joy of college life;
a wholesome joy for all young people for a limited time. But persons
of twenty have, or should have, some command over their inhibitory
centres. They should not permit the dissipation of nerve power caused
by too much social stimulus; yet even persons of twenty are not always
equal to the task of self-management in exciting circumstances. What
then, is to be expected of persons of two, three, four, five? That
the little person looks rather stolid than otherwise is no guarantee
against excitement within. The clash and sparkle of our equals now
and then stirs us up to health; but for everyday life, the mixed
society of elders, juniors and equals, which we get in a family, gives
at the same time the most repose and the most room for individual
development. We have all wondered at the good sense, reasonableness,
fun and resourcefulness shown by a child in his own home as compared
with the same child in school life.
=Danger of supplanting Nature.=--Danger lurks in the Kindergarten,
just in proportion to the completeness and beauty of its organisation.
It is possible to supplement Nature so skilfully that we run some
risk of supplanting her, depriving her of space and time to do her
own work in her own way. ‘Go and see what Tommy is doing and tell
him he mustn’t,’ is not sound doctrine. Tommy should be free to do
what he likes with his limbs and his mind through all the hours of
the day when he is not sitting up nicely at meals. He should run and
jump, leap and tumble, lie on his face watching a worm, or on his back
watching the bees in a lime tree. Nature will look after him and give
him promptings of desire _to know_ many things, and somebody must
tell as he wants to know; and _to do_ many things, and somebody
should be handy just to put him in the way; and _to be_ many
things, naughty and good, and somebody should give direction.
=Importance of Personal Initiative.=--Here we come to the real crux of
the Kindergarten question. The busy mother says she has no leisure to
be that somebody, and the child will run wild and get into bad habits;
but we must not make a fetish of habit; education is a _life_ as
well as a discipline. Health, strength, and agility, bright eyes and
alert movements, come of a free life, out-of-doors, if it may be; and
as for habits, there is no habit or power so useful to man or woman as
that of personal initiative. The resourcefulness which will enable a
family of children to invent their own games and occupations through
the length of a summer’s day is worth more in after life than a good
deal of knowledge about cubes and hexagons, and this comes, not of
continual intervention on the mother’s part, but of much masterly
inactivity.
=Parents and Teachers must sow Opportunities.=--The educational error
of our day is that we believe too much in mediators. Now, Nature is
her own mediator, undertakes, herself, to find work for eyes and
ears, taste and touch; she will prick the brain with problems and the
heart with feelings; and the part of mother or teacher in the early
years (indeed, all through life) is to sow opportunities, and then to
keep in the background, ready with a guiding or restraining hand only
when these are badly wanted. Mothers shirk their work and put it, as
they would say, into better hands than their own, because they do not
recognise that wise letting alone is the chief thing asked of them,
seeing that every mother has in Nature an all-sufficient handmaid, who
arranges for due work and due rest of mind, muscles, and senses.
In one way the children of the poor have better chances than those of
the rich. Poor children get education out of household ways; but there
is a great deal of good teaching to be got out of a wisely ordered
nursery, and their own small persons and possessions should, as I have
said, afford much ‘Kindergarten’ training to the little family at
home. At six or seven, definite lessons should begin, and these need
not be watered down or served with jam for the acute intelligences
that will in this way be brought to bear on them.
=‘Only’ Children.=--But what of only children, or the child too old to
play with her baby brother? Surely the Kindergarten is a great boon
for these! Perhaps so; but a cottage-child as a companion, or a lively
young nursemaid, might be better. A child will have taught himself
to paint, paste, cut paper, knit, weave, hammer and saw, make lovely
things in clay and sand, build castles with his bricks; possibly,
too, will have taught himself to read, write, and do sums, besides
acquiring no end of knowledge and notions about the world he lives in,
by the time he is six or seven. What I contend for is that he shall
do these things because he chooses (provided that the standard of
perfection in his small works be kept before him).
=The Child should be allowed some Ordering of his Life.=--The details
of family living will give him the repose of an ordered life; but, for
the rest, he should have more free-growing time than is possible in
the most charming school. The fact that lessons look like play is no
recommendation: they just want the freedom of play and the sense of
his own ordering that belongs to play. Most of us have little enough
opportunity for the ordering of our own lives, so it is well to make
much of the years that can be given to children to gain this joyous
experience.
=Helen Keller.=--I think what I have said of natural development as
opposed to any too carefully organised system is supported by a recent
contribution, of unique value, to the science of education--I mean the
autobiography of Helen Keller.[11]
When she was nineteen months old, Helen had a severe illness, in
which she lost sight and hearing, and consequently speech. She never
recovered the lost senses; and here, we should say, was a soul almost
inviolably sealed, to which there was no approach but through the
single sense of touch; yet, this lady’s book, written with her own
unaided hands (she used a typewriter), with hardly any revision,
should rank as a classic for the purity and pregnancy of the style,
independently of the vital interest of the matter. How was the miracle
accomplished? Of her childhood Helen says herself that, save for a
few impressions, “the shadows of the prison-house” enveloped it. But
there were always roses, and she had the sense of smell; and there
was love--but she was not loving then. When she was seven Miss
Sullivan came to her. This lady had herself been blind for some years,
and had been at the Perkins Institute, founded by that Dr Howe who
liberated the intelligence of Laura Bridgman. But Miss Sullivan is
no mere output of any institution. She is a person of fine sanity
and wholesomeness, trusting to her personal initiative, and aware
from the first that her work was to liberate the personality of her
little pupil and by no means to superimpose her own. “Thus I came up
out of Egypt,” says Miss Keller of the arrival of her teacher, and
the voice which she heard from Sinai said, “Knowledge is love and
light and vision”; and then follows that amazing and enthralling epic
which tells how it was all done, how the one word _water_ was
the key which opened the doors of the child’s mind, while the word
_love_ opened those of the closed heart. Thenceforth, many new
words came every day with crowds of ideas; and it is not too much to
say that this imprisoned and desolate child entered upon such a large
inheritance of thought and knowledge, of gladness and vision, as
few of us of the seeing and hearing world attain to. The instrument
in this great liberation was nothing more than the familiar manual
alphabet, followed in course of time by raised books and ‘Braille.’
=Miss Sullivan on Systems of Education.=--Like all great discoveries,
this, of a soul, was, in all its steps, marked by simplicity. Miss
Sullivan had little love for psychologists and all their ways;
would have no experiments; would not have her pupil treated as a
phenomenon, but as a person. “No,” she says, “I don’t want any more
Kindergarten materials.... I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and
special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the
supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to
think, whereas if the child is left to himself he will think more and
better, if less showily. Let him go and come freely, let him touch
real things, and combine his impressions for himself, instead of
sitting indoors at a little round table, while a sweet-voiced teacher
suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a
rainbow out of strips of coloured paper, or plant straw trees in bead
flower-pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations
that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas
out of actual experiences.” It is a great thing to have a study of
education as it were _de novo_, in which we see the triumph of
mind, not only over apparently insuperable natural obstacles, but over
the dead wall of systematised education--a more complete hindrance to
many a poor child than her grievous defects proved to Helen Keller.
=The Kindergarten in the United States.=--This question of the
Kindergarten, as the proper place for the education of young children,
is so important that I should like to recommend to parents and
teachers the examination of the subject contained in the _Special
Reports_ published by the Board of Education.[12]
We must go to the United States to witness the apotheosis of
educational theory; I say theory rather than practice, because the
American mind, like the French, seems to me severely logical as well
as generously impulsive. A theory arrives, is liberally entertained,
and is set to work with due appliances on a magnificent scale to
do that which in it lies for the education of a great people. That
is to say, educational science in America appears to be deductive
rather than inductive; theories are translated into experiments
with truly imposing zeal and generosity. An inductive theory of
education is, on the other hand, arrived at by means of long, slow,
various, and laborious experiments which disclose, here a little,
and there a little, of universal truth. The Americans have chosen,
perhaps, the easier way, and in the end, they too experiment _upon
their theory_. The Kindergarten system illustrates what I mean;
notwithstanding its German name, the Kindergarten is not a common
product in the Fatherland; it is in America that the ideas of Froebel
have received their greatest development, that the Kindergarten has
become a cult, and the great teacher a prophet. But the impulse has
worn itself out; any way, it is waxing weak.
=Mr Thistleton Mark on the Kindergarten.=--According to Mr Thistleton
Mark--whose able paper on ‘Moral Education in American Schools’
offers matter for much profitable reflection--“Even a stationary
Froebelian is driven to have some better holdfast than the _ipse
dixit_ of the great reformer. The word Kindergarten is no longer
a proper noun signifying always and everywhere the one, sole,
original, and identical thing. It is a common noun, and as such is
assured of a more permanent place in American speech.” That is to
say, educational thought in America is tending towards the broad and
natural conception expressed in the phrase ‘education is a life.’ But
I wish that educationalists would give up the name Kindergarten. I
cannot help thinking that it is somewhat of a strain to conscientious
minds to draw the cover of Froebelian doctrine and practice over the
broader and more living conceptions that are abroad to-day. Even
revolutionised Kindergarten practice must suffer from the memory and
habit of weaknesses such as are pointed out by Dr Stanley Hall in the
following words:--
=Dr Stanley Hall on the Kindergarten.=--“The most decadent
intellectual new departure of the American Froebelists is the emphasis
now laid upon the mother-plays as the acme of Kindergarten wisdom.
These are represented by very crude poems, indifferent music and
pictures, illustrating certain incidents of child life believed to be
of fundamental and typical significance. I have read these in German
and in English, have strummed the music, and have given a brief course
of lectures from the sympathetic standpoint, trying to put all the new
wine of meaning I could think of into them. But I am driven to the
conclusion that, if they are not positively unwholesome and harmful
for the child, and productive of anti-scientific and unphilosophical
intellectual habits in the teacher, they should nevertheless be
superseded by the far better things now available.”[13]
“Another cardinal error of the Kindergarten is the intensity of its
devotion to gifts and occupations. In devising these Froebel showed
great sagacity; but the scheme as it left his own hands was a very
inadequate expression of his educational ideas, even for his time. He
thought it a perfect grammar of play and an alphabet of industries;
and in this opinion he was utterly mistaken. Play and industry were
then relatively undeveloped; and while his devices were beneficent for
the peasant children in the country, they lead in the interests of the
modern city child a very pallid and unreal life.” With these important
utterances I must conclude a superficial examination of the very
important question,--Is the Kindergarten the best training-ground for
a child?
IV.--READING
=Time of Teaching to Read, an Open Question.=--_Reading_ presents
itself first amongst the _lessons_ to be used as instruments of
education, although it is open to discussion whether the child should
acquire the art unconsciously, from his infancy upwards, or whether
the effort should be deferred until he is, say, six or seven, and then
made with vigour. In a valuable letter, addressed to her son John, we
have the way of teaching to read adopted by that pattern mother, the
mother of the Wesleys:--
=Mrs Wesley’s Plan.=--“None of them was taught to read till five years
old, except Kezzy, in whose case I was overruled; and she was more
years in learning than any of the rest had been months. The way of
teaching was this: the day before a child began to learn, the house
was set in order, every one’s work appointed them, and a charge given
that no one should come into the room from nine to twelve, or from two
to five, which were our school hours. One day was allowed the child
wherein to learn its letters, and each of them did in that time know
all its letters, great and small, except Molly and Nancy, who were a
day and a half before they knew them perfectly, for which I thought
them then very dull; but the reason why I thought them so was because
the rest learned them so readily; and your brother Samuel, who was the
first child I ever taught, learned the alphabet in a few hours. He
was five years old the tenth of February; the next day he began to
learn, and as soon as he knew the letters, began at the first chapter
of Genesis. He was taught to spell the first verse, then to read it
over and over until he could read it off-hand without hesitation; so
on, to the second verse, etc., till he took ten verses for a lesson,
which he quickly did. Easter fell low that year, and by Whitsuntide
he could read a chapter very well; for he read continually, and had
such a prodigious memory, that I cannot remember to have told him the
same word twice. What was yet stranger, any word he had learnt in his
lesson he knew wherever he saw it, either in his Bible or any other
book, by which means he learned very soon to read an English author
well.”[14]
It is much to be wished that thoughtful mothers would more often keep
account of the methods they employ with their children, with some
definite note of the success of this or that plan.
Many persons consider that to learn to read a language so full of
anomalies and difficulties as our own is a task which should not be
imposed too soon on the childish mind. But, as a matter of fact, few
of us can recollect how or when we learned to read: for all we know,
it came by nature, like the art of running; and not only so, but often
mothers of the educated classes do not know how their children learned
to read. ‘Oh, he taught himself,’ is all the account his mother can
give of little Dick’s proficiency. Whereby it is plain, that this
notion of the extreme difficulty of learning to read is begotten by
the elders rather than by the children. There would be no little books
entitled _Reading without Tears_, if tears were not sometimes
shed over the reading lesson; but, really, when that is the case, the
fault rests with the teacher.
=The Alphabet.=--As for his letters, the child usually teaches
himself. He has his box of ivory letters, and picks out _p_ for
pudding, _b_ for blackbird, _h_ for horse, big and little, and knows
them both. But the learning of the alphabet should be made a means of
cultivating the child’s observation: he should be made to _see_ what
he looks at. Make big _B_ in the air, and let him name it; then let
him make round _O_, and crooked _S_, and _T_ for Tommy, and you name
the letters as the little finger forms them with unsteady strokes in
the air. To make the small letters thus from memory is a work of more
art, and requires more careful observation on the child’s part. A tray
of sand is useful at this stage. The child draws his finger boldly
through the sand, and then puts a back to his _D_; and behold, his
first essay in making a straight line and a curve. But the devices for
making the learning of the ‘_A B C_’ interesting are endless. There is
no occasion to hurry the child: let him learn one form at a time, and
know it so well that he can pick out the _d_’s, say, big and little,
in a page of large print. Let him say _d_ for duck, dog, doll, thus:
_d_--uck, _d_--og, prolonging the sound of the initial consonant, and
at last sounding _d_ alone, not _dee_, but _d’_, the mere sound of the
consonant separated as far as possible from the following vowel.
Let the child alone, and he will learn the alphabet for himself: but
few mothers can resist the pleasure of teaching it; and there is no
reason why they should, for this kind of learning is no more than
play to the child, and if the alphabet be _taught_ to the little
student, his appreciation of both form and sound will be cultivated.
When should he begin? Whenever his box of letters begins to interest
him. The baby of two will often be able to name half a dozen letters;
and there is nothing against it so long as the finding and naming of
letters is a game to him. But he must not be urged, required to show
off, teased to find letters when his heart is set on other play.
=Word-making.=--The first exercises in the making of words will be
just as pleasant to the child. Exercises treated as a game, which yet
teach the powers of the letters, will be better to begin with than
actual sentences. Take up two of his letters and make the syllable
‘at’: tell him it is the word we use when we say ‘at home,’ ‘at
school.’ Then put _b_ to ‘at’--_bat_; _c_ to ‘at’--_cat_; _fat_,
_hat_, _mat_, _sat_, _rat_, and so on. First, let the child say what
the word becomes with each initial consonant; then let him add the
right consonant to ‘at,’ in order to make _hat_, _pat_, _cat_. Let the
syllables all be actual words which he knows. Set the words in a row,
and let him read them off. Do this with the short vowel sounds in
combination with each of the consonants, and the child will learn to
read off dozens of words of three letters, and will master the
short-vowel sounds with initial and final consonants without effort.
Before long he will do the lesson for himself. ‘How many words can you
make with “en” and another letter, with “od” and another letter?’ etc.
Do not hurry him.
=Word-making with Long Vowels, etc.=--When this sort of exercise
becomes so easy that it is no longer interesting, let the long sounds
of the vowels be learnt in the same way: use the same syllables as
before with a final _e_; thus, ‘at’ becomes ‘ate,’ and we get _late_,
_pate_, _rate_, etc. The child may be told that _a_ in ‘rate’ is _long
a_; _a_ in ‘rat’ is _short a_. He will make the new sets of words with
much facility, helped by the experience he gained in the former
lessons.
Then the same sort of thing with final ‘ng’--‘ing,’ ‘ang,’ ‘ong,’
‘ung’; as _ring_, _fang_, _long_, _sung_: initial ‘th,’ as _then_,
_that_: final ‘th,’ as _with_, _pith_, _hath_, _lath_, and so on,
through endless combinations which will suggest themselves. This is
not reading, but it is preparing the ground for reading; words will be
no longer unfamiliar, perplexing objects, when the child meets with
them in a line of print. Require him to pronounce the words he makes
with such finish and distinctness that he can himself hear and count
the sounds in a given word.
=Early Spelling.=--Accustom him from the first to shut his eyes
and spell the word he has made. This is important. Reading is not
spelling, nor is it necessary to spell in order to read well; but
the good speller is the child whose eye is quick enough to take in
the letters which compose it, in the act of reading off a word; and
this is a habit to be acquired from the first: _accustom_ him to
_see_ the letters in the word, and he will do so without effort.
If words were always made on a given pattern in English, if the same
letters always represented the same sounds, learning to read would
be an easy matter; for the child would soon acquire the few elements
of which all words would, in that case, be composed. But many of our
English words are, each, a law unto itself: there is nothing for it,
but the child must learn to know them at sight; he must recognise
‘which,’ precisely as he recognises ‘_B_,’ because he has seen
it before, been made to look at it with interest, so that the pattern
of the word is stamped on his retentive brain. This process should
go on side by side with the other--the learning of the powers of the
letters; for the more variety you can throw into his reading lessons,
the more will the child enjoy them. Lessons in word-making help him to
take intelligent interest in _words_; but his progress in the art
of reading depends chiefly on the ‘reading at sight’ lessons.
=Reading at Sight.=--The teacher must be content to proceed very
slowly, securing the ground under her feet as she goes. Say--
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are,”
is the first lesson; just those two lines. Read the passage for
the child, very slowly, sweetly, with just expression, so that it
is pleasant to him to listen. Point to each word as you read. Then
point to ‘twinkle,’ ‘wonder,’ ‘star,’ ‘what,’--and expect the child
to pronounce each word in the verse taken promiscuously; then, when
he shows that he knows each word by itself, and not before, let him
_read_ the two lines with clear enunciation and expression:
insist from the first on clear, beautiful reading, and do not let the
child fall into a dreary monotone, no more pleasant to himself than to
his listener. Of course, by this time he is able to say the two lines;
and let him say them clearly and beautifully. In his after lessons he
will learn the rest of the little poem.
=The Reading of Prose.=--At this stage, his reading lessons must
advance so slowly that he may just as well learn his reading
exercises, both prose and poetry, as recitation lessons. Little
poems suitable to be learned in this way will suggest themselves at
once; but perhaps prose is better, on the whole, as offering more
of the words in everyday use, of Saxon origin, and of anomalous
spelling. Short fables, and such graceful, simple prose as we have in
Mrs Gatty’s _Parables from Nature_, and, still better, in Mrs
Barbauld’s prose poems, are very suitable. Even for their earliest
reading lessons, it is unnecessary to put twaddle into the hands of
children.
But we have not yet finished the reading lesson on ‘Twinkle, twinkle,
little star.’ The child should hunt through two or three pages of good
clear type for ‘little,’ ‘star,’ ‘you,’ ‘are,’ each of the words he
has learned, until the word he knows looks out upon him like the face
of a friend in a crowd of strangers, and he is able to pounce upon
it anywhere. Lest he grow weary of the search, the teacher should
guide him, unawares, to the line or paragraph where the word he wants
occurs. Already the child has accumulated a little capital; he knows
eight or ten words so well that he will recognise them anywhere, and
the lesson has occupied probably ten minutes.
The next ‘reading at sight’ lesson will begin with a hunt for the
familiar words, and then--
“Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky,”
should be gone through in the same way. As spelling is simply the art
of _seeing_, seeing the letters in a word as we see the features
of a face--say to the child, ‘Can you spell sky?’--or any of the
shorter words. He is put on his mettle, and if he fail this time, be
sure he will be able to spell the word when you ask him next; but do
not let him _learn_ to spell or even say the letters aloud with
the word before him.
As for understanding what they read, the children will be full of
bright, intelligent remarks and questions, and will take this part of
the lesson into their own hands; indeed, the teacher will have to be
on her guard not to let them carry her away from the subject.
=Careful Pronunciation.=--The little people will probably have to be
pulled up on the score of pronunciation. They must render ‘high,’
‘sky,’ ‘like,’ ‘world,’ with delicate precision; ‘diamond,’ they
will no doubt wish to hurry over, and say as ‘di’mond,’ just as they
will reduce ‘history’ to ‘hist’ry.’ But here is another advantage of
slow and steady progress--the _saying_ of each word receives
due attention, and the child is trained in the habit of careful
enunciation. Every day increases the number of words he is able to
read at sight, and the more words he knows already, the longer his
reading lesson becomes in order to afford the ten or a dozen new words
which he should master every day.
=A Year’s Work.=--‘But what a snail’s progress!’ you are inclined
to say. Not so slow, after all: a child will thus learn, without
appreciable labour, from two to three thousand words in the course of
a year; in other words, he will learn _to read_, for the mastery
of this number of words will carry him with comfort through most of
the books that fall in his way.
=Ordinary Method.=--Now, compare the steady progress and constant
interest and liveliness of such lessons with the deadly weariness of
the ordinary reading lesson. The child blunders through a page or two
in a dreary monotone without expression, with imperfect enunciation.
He comes to a word he does not know, and he spells it; that throws
no light on the subject, and he is told the word: he repeats it, but
as he has made no mental effort to secure the word, the next time he
meets with it the same process is gone through. The reading lesson
for that day comes to an end. The pupil has been miserably bored,
and has not acquired one new word. Eventually, he learns to read,
somehow, by mere dint of repetition; but consider what an abuse of his
intelligence is a system of teaching which makes him undergo daily
labour with little or no result, and gives him a distaste for books
before he has learned to use them.
V.--THE FIRST READING LESSON[15]
(_Two Mothers Confer_)
“You don’t mean to say you would go plump into words of three or four
syllables before a child knows his letters?”
“It is possible to read words without knowing the alphabet, as you may
know a face without singling out its features; but we learn not only
the names but the _sounds_ of the letters before we begin to read
words.”
“Our children learn their letters without any teaching. We always
keep by us a shallow table drawer, the bottom covered half an inch
deep with sand. Before they are two, the babies make round _O_
and crooked _S_, and _T_ for Tommy, and so on, with dumpy,
uncertain little fingers. The elder children teach the little ones by
way of a game.”
“The sand is capital! We have various devices, but none so good as
that. Children love to be doing. The funny, shaky lines the little
finger makes in the sand will be ten times as interesting as the
shapes the eye sees.”
“But the reading! I can’t get over three syllables for the first
lesson. Why, it’s like teaching a twelve-months old child to waltz!”
“You say that because we forget that a group of letters is no more
than the _sign_ of a word, while a word is only the vocal sign of
a thing or an act. This is how the child learns. First, he gets the
notion of table; he sees several tables; he finds they have legs, by
which you can scramble up; very often covers which you may pull off;
and on them many things lie, good and pleasant for a baby to enjoy;
sometimes, too, you can pull these things off the table, and they
go down with a bang, which is nice. The grown-up people call this
pleasant thing, full of many interests, ‘table,’ and, by-and-by, baby
says ‘table’ too; and the word ‘table’ comes to mean, in a vague way,
all this to him. ‘A round table,’ ‘on the table,’ and so on, form part
of the idea of ‘table’ to him. In the same way baby chimes in when
his mother sings. She says, ‘Baby, sing,’ and, by-and-by, notions of
‘sing,’ ‘kiss,’ ‘love,’ dawn on his brain.”
“Yes, the darlings! and it’s surprising how many words a child knows
even before he can speak them; ‘pussy,’ ‘dolly,’ ‘carriage,’ soon
convey interesting ideas to him.”
“That’s just it. Interest the child in the thing, and he soon learns
the _sound-sign_ for it--that is, its name. Now, I maintain that, when
he is a little older, he should learn the _form-sign_--that is, the
printed word--on the same principle. It is far easier for a child to
read plum-pudding than to read ‘to, to,’ because ‘plum-pudding’
conveys a far more interesting idea.”
“That may be, when he gets into words of three or four syllables; but
what would you do while he’s in words of one syllable--indeed, of two
or three letters?”
“I should never put him into words of one syllable at all. The bigger
the word, the more striking the look of it, and, therefore, the easier
it is to read, provided always that the idea it conveys is interesting
to a child. It is sad to see an intelligent child toiling over a
reading-lesson infinitely below his capacity--_ath_, _eth_, _ith_,
_oth_, _uth_--or, at the very best, ‘The cat sat on the mat.’ How
should we like to begin to read German, for example, by toiling over
all conceivable combinations of letters, arranged on no principle but
similarity of sound; or, worse still, that our readings should be
graduated according to the number of letters each word contains? We
should be lost in a hopeless fog before a page of words of three
letters, all drearily like one another, with no distinctive features
for the eye to seize upon; but the child? ‘Oh, well--children are
different; no doubt it is good for the child to grind in this mill!’
But this is only one of many ways in which children are needlessly and
cruelly oppressed!”
“You are taking high moral ground! All the same, I don’t think I am
convinced. It is far easier for a child to spell cat, cat, than
to spell plum-pudding, plum-pudding.”
“But spelling and reading are _two_ things. You must learn to spell in
order to _write_ words, not to _read_ them. A child is droning over a
reading-lesson, spells cough; you say ‘cough,’ and she repeats. By
dint of repetition, she learns at last to associate the look of the
word with the sound, and says ‘cough’ without spelling it; and you
think she has arrived at ‘cough’ through cough. Not a bit of it; cof
spells cough!”
“Yes; but ‘cough’ has a silent _u_, and a _gh_ with the sound of _f_.
There, I grant, is a great difficulty. If only there were no silent
letters, and if all letters had always the same sound, we should,
indeed, have reading made easy. The phonetic people have something to
say for themselves.”
“You would agree with the writer of an article in a number of a
leading review: ‘Plough ought to be written and printed _plow_;
through, _thru_; enough, _enuf_; ought, _aut_ or _ort_’; and so on.
All this goes on the mistaken idea that in reading we look at the
letters which compose a word, think of their sounds, combine these,
and form the word. We do nothing of the kind; we accept a word,
written or printed, simply as the _symbol_ of a word we are accustomed
to say. If the word is new to us we may try to make something of the
letters, but we know so well that this is a shot in the dark, that we
are careful not to _say_ the new word until we have heard some one
else say it.”
“Yes, but children are different.”
“Children are the same, ‘only more so.’ _We_ could, if we liked,
break up a word into its sounds, or put certain sounds together
to make a word. But these are efforts of mind beyond the range of
children. First, as last, they learn to know a word by the look of it,
and the more striking it looks the easier it is to recognise; provided
always that the printed word is one which they already know very well
by sound and by sense.”
“It is not clear yet; suppose you tell me, step by step, how you would
give your first reading lesson. An illustration helps one so much.”
“Very well: Bobbie had his first lesson yesterday--on his sixth
birthday. The lesson was part of the celebration. By the way, I think
it’s rather a good plan to begin a new study with a child on his
birthday, or some great day; he _begins_ by thinking the new
study a privilege.”
“That is a hint. But go on; did Bobbie know his letters?”
“Yes, he had picked them up, as you say; but I had been careful not to
allow any small readings. You know how Susanna Wesley used to retire
to her room with the child who was to have his first reading-lesson,
and not to appear again for some hours, when the boy came out able
to read a good part of the first chapter of Genesis? Well, Bobbie’s
first reading-lesson was a solemn occasion too, for which we had been
preparing for a week or two. First, I bought a dozen penny copies of
the ‘History of Cock Robin’--good bold type, bad pictures, that we cut
out.
“Then we had a nursery pasting day--pasting the sheets on common
drawing-paper--six one side down, and six the other; so that now we
had six complete copies, and not twelve.
“Then we cut up the _first page only_, of all six copies, line
by line, and word by word. We gathered up the words and put them in a
box, and our preparations were complete.
“Now for the lesson. Bobbie and I are shut in by ourselves in the
morning-room. I always use a blackboard in teaching the children. I
write up, in good clear ‘print’ hand,
_Cock Robin._
Bobbie watches with the more interest because he knows his letters. I
say, pointing to the word, ‘cock robin,’ which he repeats.
“Then the words in the box are scattered on the table, and he finds
half a dozen ‘cock robins’ with great ease.
“We do the same thing with ‘sparrow,’ ‘arrow,’ ‘said,’ ‘killed,’
‘who,’ and so on, till all the words in the verse have been learned.
The words on the blackboard grow into a column, which Bob reads
backwards and forwards, and every way, except as the words run in the
verse.
“Then Bobbie arranges the loose words into columns like that on the
board.
“Then into columns of his own devising, which he reads off.
“Lastly, culminating joy (the whole lesson has been a delight!), he
finds among the loose words, at my dictation,
‘Who killed Cock Robin
I said the sparrow
With my bow and arrow
I killed Cock Robin,’
arranging the words in verse form.
“Then I had still one unmutilated copy, out of which Bob had
the pleasure of reading the verse, and he read it forwards and
_backwards_. So long as he lives he will know those twelve words.”
“No doubt it was a pleasant lesson; but, think of all the pasting and
cutting!”
“Yes, that is troublesome. I wish some publisher would provide us
with what we want--nursery rhymes, in good bold type, with boxes of
loose words to match--a separate box, or division, for each page, so
that the child may not be confused by having too many words to hunt
amongst. The point is that he should _see_, and _look at_,
the new word many times, so that its shape becomes impressed on his
brain.”
“I see; but he is only able to read ‘Cock Robin’; he has no general
power of reading.”
“On the contrary, he will read those twelve words wherever he meets
with them. Suppose he learns ten words a day, in half a year he will
have at least six hundred words; he will know how to read a little.”
“Excellent, supposing your children _remember_ all they learn. At
the end of a week, mine would remember ‘Cock Robin,’ perhaps, but the
rest would be gone!”
“Oh, but we keep what we get! When we have mastered the words of the
second verse, Bob runs through the first in the book, naming words
here and there as I point to them. It takes less than a minute, and
the ground is secured.”
“The first lesson must have been long?”
“I’m sorry to say it lasted half an hour. The child’s interest tempted
me to do more than I should.”
“It all sounds very attractive--a sort of game--but I cannot be
satisfied that a child should learn to read without knowing the powers
of the letters. You constantly see a child spell a word over to
himself, and then pronounce it; the more so, if he has been carefully
taught the sounds of the letters--not merely their names.”
“Naturally; for though many of our English words are each a law unto
itself, others offer a key to a whole group, as arrow gives us sp
arrow, m arrow, h arrow; but we have alternate days--one for reading,
the other for word-building--and that is one way to secure variety,
and, so, the joyous interest which is the real secret of success.”
VI.--READING BY SIGHT AND BY SOUND
=Learning to read is Hard Work.=--Probably that vague whole which we
call ‘Education’ offers no more difficult and repellent task than
that to which every little child is (or ought to be) set down--the
task of learning to read. We realise the labour of it when some grown
man makes a heroic effort to remedy shameful ignorance, but we forget
how contrary to Nature it is for a little child to occupy himself
with dreary hieroglyphics--all so dreadfully alike!--when the world
is teeming with interesting objects which he is agog to know. But
we cannot excuse our volatile Tommy, nor is it good for him that we
should. It is quite necessary he should know how to read; and not only
so--the discipline of the task is altogether wholesome for the little
man. At the same time, let us recognise that learning to read is to
many children hard work, and let us do what we can to make the task
easy and inviting.
=Knowledge of Arbitrary Symbols.=--In the first place, let us bear
in mind that reading is not a science nor an art. Even if it were,
the children must still be the first consideration with the educator;
but it is not. Learning to read is no more than picking up, how we
can, a knowledge of certain arbitrary symbols for objects and ideas.
There are absolutely no right and necessary ‘steps’ to reading, each
of which leads to the next; there is no true beginning, middle, or
end. For the arbitrary symbols we must know in order to read are not
_letters_, but _words_. By way of illustration, consider the
delicate differences of sound represented by the letter ‘o’ in the
last sentence; to analyse and classify the sounds of ‘o’ in ‘for,’
‘symbols,’ ‘know,’ ‘order,’ ‘to,’ ‘not,’ and ‘words,’ is a curious,
not especially useful, study for a philologist, but a laborious and
inappropriate one for a child. It is time we faced the fact that
the letters which compose an English word are full of philological
interest, and that their study will be a valuable part of education
by-and-by; but meantime, sound and letter-sign are so loosely wedded
in English, that to base the teaching of reading on the sounds of the
letters only, is to lay up for the child much analytic labour, much
mental confusion, due to the irregularities of the language; and some
little moral strain in making the sound of a letter in a given word
fall under any of the ‘sounds’ he has been taught.
Definitely, what is it we propose in teaching a child to read?
(_a_) that he shall know at sight, say, some thousand words;
(_b_) that he shall be able to build up new words with the
elements of these. Let him learn ten new words a day, and in twenty
weeks he will be to some extent able to read, without any question
as to the number of letters in a word. For the second, and less
important, part of our task, the child must know the sounds of the
letters, and acquire power to throw given sounds into new combinations.
What we want is a bridge between the child’s natural interests and
those arbitrary symbols with which he must become acquainted, and
which, as we have seen, are words, and not letters.
=These Symbols should be Interesting.=--The child cares for things,
not words; his analytic power is very small, his observing faculty
is exceedingly quick and keen; nothing is too small for him; he will
spy out the eye of a fly; nothing is too intricate, he delights
in puzzles. But the thing he learns to know by looking at it, is
a thing which interests him. Here we have the key to reading. No
meaningless combinations of letters, no _cla_, _cle_, _cli_, _clo_,
_clu_, no _ath_, _eth_, _ith_, _oth_, _uth_, should be presented to
him. The child should be taught from the first to regard the printed
word as he already regards the spoken word, as the symbol of fact or
idea full of interest. How easy to read ‘robin redbreast,’ ‘buttercups
and daisies’; the number of letters in the words is no matter; the
words themselves convey such interesting ideas that the general form
and look of them fixes itself on the child’s brain by the same law of
association of ideas which makes it easy to couple the objects with
their spoken names. Having got a word fixed on the sure peg of the
idea it conveys, the child will use his knowledge of the sounds of the
letters to make up other words containing the same elements with great
interest. When he knows ‘butter’ he is quite ready to make ‘mutter’ by
changing the _b_ for an _m_.
=Tommy’s First Lesson.=--But example is better than precept, and more
convincing than the soundest reasoning. This is the sort of reading
lesson we have in view. Tommy knows his letters by name and sound, but
he knows no more. To-day he is to be launched into the very middle of
reading, without any ‘steps’ at all, because reading is neither an art
nor a science, and has, probably, no beginning. Tommy is to learn to
read to-day--
“I like little pussy,
Her coat is so warm”--
and he is to know those nine words so well that he will be able to
read them wherever they may occur henceforth and for evermore.
“Oh, yes,” says a reader, “as in the ‘Cock Robin’ lesson; grant that
the principle is sound--and there is much to be said on both sides
of that question--but grant it, who in the world could get through
all the pasting and cutting and general messing preparatory to the
great lesson? No; the method of the books may be only second-best,
but ready-made books must do for me. I have no time to make my own
apparatus.”
I must own that the cutting and pasting was very clumsy, but the
lesson served its purpose because it induced a good friend to
education[16] to have a delightful ‘Little Pussy’ box prepared for
us, loose words, nice big type, two lines in a bag. Whoso learns
‘Little Pussy’ as it should be learned will know at least one hundred
words--not a bad stock-in-trade for a beginner--all of them good
useful words that we want every day. There is one objection; such
contractions as ‘I’ll’ are ugly at the best, and I hope that in the
word-lessons based upon ‘Little Pussy,’ pieces will be chosen in which
this fault is avoided.
=Steps.=--And now, we begin. _Matériel_: Tommy’s box of loose
letters, the new ‘Little Pussy’ box, pencil and paper, or much better,
blackboard and chalk. We write up in good big print hand ‘Pussy.’
Tommy watches with interest: he knows the letters, and probably says
them as we write. Besides, he is prepared for the great event of his
life; he knows he is going to begin to learn to read to-day. But we
do not ask anything yet of his previous knowledge. We simply tell
him that the word is ‘pussy.’ Interest at once; he knows the thing,
pussy, and the written symbol is pleasant in his eyes because it is
associated with an existing idea in his mind. He is told to look
at the word ‘pussy’ until he is sure he would know it again. Then
he makes ‘pussy’ from memory with his own loose letters. Then the
little bag containing our two lines in loose words is turned out, and
he finds the word ‘pussy’; and, lastly, the little sheet with the
poem printed on it is shown to him, and he finds ‘pussy,’ but is not
allowed yet to find out the run of the rhyme. ‘Coat, little, like,
is, her, warm, I, so,’ are taught in the same way, in less time than
it takes to describe the lesson. When each new word is learned, Tommy
makes a column of the old ones, and reads up and down and cris-cras,
the column on the blackboard.
=Reading Sentences.=--He knows words now, but he cannot yet read
sentences. Now for the delight of _reading_. He finds at our
dictation, amongst his loose words, ‘pussy--is--warm,’ places them in
‘reading’ order, one after the other, and then reads off the sentence.
Joy, as of one who has found a new planet! And Tommy has indeed found
a new power. Then, ‘her--little--coat--is--warm,’ ‘Pussy--is--so--
little,’ ‘I--like--pussy,’ ‘Pussy--is--little--like--her--coat,’ and
so on through a dozen more little arrangements. If the rhyme can be
kept a secret till the whole is worked out, so much the better. To
make the verses up with his own loose words will give Tommy such a
delicious sense that knowledge is power, as few occasions in after
life will afford. Anyway, reading is to him a delight henceforth, and
it will require very bad management indeed to make him hate it.
=Tommy’s Second Lesson.=--Tommy promises himself another reading
lesson next day, but he has instead a spelling lesson, conducted
somewhat in this way:--
He makes the word ‘coat’ with his letters, from memory if he can; if
not, with the pattern word. Say ‘coat’ slowly; give the sound of the
_c_. ‘Take away _c_, and what have we left?’ A little help will get
‘oat’ from him. How would you make ‘boat’ (say the word very slowly,
bringing out the sound of _b_). He knows the sounds of the letters,
and says b-oat readily; fl-oat, two added sounds, which you lead him
to find out; g-oat, he will give you the _g_, and find goat a charming
new word to know; m-oat, he easily decides on the sound of _m_; a
little talk about _moat_; the other words are too familiar to need
explanation. Tommy will, no doubt, offer ‘note,’ and we must make a
clean breast of it and say, ‘No, _note_ is spelt with other letters’;
but what other letters we do not tell him now. Thus he comes to learn
incidentally and very gradually that different groups of letters may
stand for the same sounds. But we do not ask him to generalise; we
only let him have the fact that n-oat does not spell the symbol we
express by ‘note.’ ‘Stoat’--he will be able to give the sounds of the
initial letters, and stoat again calls for a little talk--another
interesting word. He has made a group of words with his letters, and
there they are on the blackboard in a column, thus--
c-oat
m-oat
g-oat
fl-oat
st-oat
b-oat
He reads the column up and down and cris-cras; every word has a
meaning and carries an idea. Then the loose words he knows are
turned out, and we dictate new sentences, which he arranges:
‘I--like--her--goat’; ‘her--little--stoat--is--warm,’ and so on,
making the new words with loose letters.
=Unknown Words.=--Now for a new experience. We dictate ‘pussy is in
the boat.’ Consternation! Tommy does not know ‘in’ nor ‘the.’ ‘Put
counters for the words you don’t know; they may soon come in our
lessons,’ and Tommy has a desire and a need--that is, an appetite for
learning.
=Like Combinations have Different Sounds.=--We deal with the remaining
words in the same way: ‘little’ gives brittle, tittle, skittle: pussy,
is, I, and her, give no new words. ‘Like’ gives mike and pike. ‘So’
gives no, do (the musical ‘do’), and lo! From ‘warm’ we get arm, harm,
charm, barm, alarm; we pronounce warm as arm. Tommy perceives that
such a pronunciation is wrong and vulgar, and sees that all these
words are sounded like ‘arm,’ but not one of them like ‘warm’--that
is, he sees that the same group of letters need not always have
the same sound. But we do not ask him to ‘make a note of’ this new
piece of knowledge; we let it grow into him gradually, after many
experiences.
By this time he has eighteen new words on the blackboard of which to
make sentences with the nine loose words of ‘pussy.’ Her skittle is
little, her charm is brittle, her arm is warm, and so on. But we take
care that the sentences make sense. Her goat is brittle, is ‘silly,’
and not to be thought of at all. Tommy’s new words are written in
his ‘note-book’ in print hand, so that he can take stock of his
possessions in the way of words.
=Moral Training in Reading Lessons.=--The next day we do the last
two lines of the stanza, as at first. These lines afford hardly any
material for a spelling lesson, so in our next lesson we go on with
the second verse. But our stock of words is growing; we are able, as
we go on, to make an almost unlimited number of little sentences.
If we have to use counters now and then, why, that only whets our
appetite for knowledge. By the time Tommy has worked ‘Little Pussy’
through he has quite a large stock of words; has considerable power
to attack new words with familiar combinations; what is more, he has
achieved; he has courage to attack all ‘learning,’ and has a sense
that delightful results are quite within reach. Moreover, he learns
to read in a way that affords him some moral training. There is no
stumbling, no hesitation from the first, but bright attention and
perfect achievement. His reading lesson is a delight, of which he
is deprived when he comes to his lesson in a lazy, drawling mood.
Perfect enunciation and precision are insisted on, and when he comes
to arrange the whole of the little rhyme in his loose words and
read it off (most delightful of all the lessons) his reading must
be a perfect and finished recitation.[17] I believe that this is a
practical common-sense way to teach reading in English. It may be
profitable for the little German child to work through all possible
dreary combinations of letters before he is permitted to have any joy
in ‘reading,’ because wherever these combinations occur they will have
the sounds the child has learned laboriously. The fact that English is
anomalous as regards the connection between sign and sound, happily
exonerates us from enforcing this dreary grind.[18]
VII.--RECITATION
‘_The Children’s Art_’
On this subject I cannot do better than refer the reader to Mr Arthur
Burrell’s _Recitation_.[19] This book purports to be a handbook
for teachers in elementary schools. I wish that it may be very largely
used by such teachers, and may also become a family handbook; though
many of the lessons will not be called for in educated homes. There is
hardly any ‘subject’ so educative and so elevating as that which Mr
Burrell has happily described as ‘The Children’s Art.’ All children
have it in them to recite; it is an imprisoned gift waiting to be
delivered, like Ariel from the pine. In this most thoughtful and
methodical volume we are possessed of the fit incantations. Use them
duly, and out of the woodenness of even the most commonplace child
steps forth the child-artist, a delicate sprite, who shall make you
laugh and make you weep. Did not the great Sir Walter “sway to and
fro, sobbing his fill,” to his little ‘Pet’s’ speaking of--
“For I am sick, and capable of fears,
Oppressed with wrong, and therefore full of fears;
A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;
A woman, naturally born to fears”?
Marjorie Fleming was, to be sure, a child-genius; but in this book we
learn by what carefully graduated steps a child who is not a genius,
is not even born of cultivated parents, may be taught the fine art
of beautiful and perfect speaking; but that is only the first step
in the acquisition of ‘The Children’s Art.’ The child should speak
beautiful thoughts so beautifully, with such delicate rendering of
each _nuance_ of meaning, that he becomes to the listener the
interpreter of the author’s thought. Now, consider what appreciation,
sympathy, power of expression this implies, and you will grant that
‘The Children’s Art’ is, as Steele said of the society of his wife,
“a liberal education in itself.” It is objected--‘Children are such
parrots! They say a thing as they hear it said; as for troubling
themselves to “appreciate” and “interpret,” not a bit of it!’ Most
true of the ‘My name is Norval’ style of recitation; but throughout
this volume the child is led to find the just expression of the
thought for himself; never is the poor teacher allowed to set a
pattern--‘say this as I say it.’ The ideas are kept well within the
child’s range, and the expression is his own. He is caught with guile,
his very naughtiness is pressed into service, he finds a dozen ways
of saying ‘I shan’t,’ is led cunningly up to the point of expressing
himself, and--he does it, to his own surprise and delight. The pieces
given here for recitation are a treasure-trove of new joys. ‘Winken,
Blinken, and Nod,’ ‘Miss Lilywhite’s Party,’ and ‘The Two Kittens,’
would compel any child to recite. Try a single piece over with the
author’s markings and suggestions, and you will find there is as much
difference between the result and ordinary reading aloud as there
is in a musical composition played with and without the composer’s
expression marks. I hope that my readers will train their children
in the art of recitation; in the coming days, more even than in our
own, will it behove every educated man and woman to be able to speak
effectively in public; and, in learning to recite you learn to speak.
=Memorising.=--Recitation and committing to memory are not necessarily
the same thing, and it is well to store a child’s memory with a good
deal of poetry, learnt without labour. Some years ago I chanced to
visit a house, the mistress of which had educational notions of her
own, upon which she was bringing up a niece. She presented me with a
large foolscap sheet written all over with the titles of poems, some
of them long and difficult: _Tintern Abbey_, for example. She
told me that her niece could repeat to me any of those poems that I
liked to ask for, and that she had never learnt a single verse by
heart in her life. The girl did repeat several of the poems on the
list, quite beautifully and without hesitation; and then the lady
unfolded her secret. She thought she had made a discovery, and I
thought so too. She read a poem through to E.; then the next day,
while the little girl was making a doll’s frock, perhaps, she read it
again; once again the next day, while E.’s hair was being brushed.
She got in about six or more readings, according to the length of the
poem, at odd and unexpected times, and in the end E. could say the
poem which she had _not_ learned.
I have tried the plan often since, and found it effectual. The child
must not try to recollect or to say the verse over to himself, but,
as far as may be, present an open mind to receive an impression of
interest. Half a dozen repetitions should give children possession
of such poems as--‘Dolly and Dick,’ ‘Do you ask what the birds say?’
‘Little lamb, who made thee?’ and the like. The gains of such a method
of learning are, that the edge of the child’s enjoyment is not taken
off by weariful verse by verse repetitions, and, also, that the habit
of making mental images is unconsciously formed.
I remember once discussing this subject with the late Miss Anna
Swanwick in some connection with Browning which I do not recall,
but in the course of talk an extremely curious incident transpired.
A lady, a niece of Miss Swanwick’s, said that after a long
illness, during which she had not been allowed to do anything, she
read ‘Lycidas’ through, by way of a first treat to herself as a
convalescent. She was surprised to find herself the next day repeating
to herself long passages. Then she tried the whole poem and found she
could say it off, the result of this single reading, for she had
not learned the poem before her illness, nor read it with particular
attention. She was much elated by the treasure-trove she had chanced
upon, and to test her powers, she read the whole of ‘Paradise Lost,’
book by book, and with the same result,--she could repeat it book
by book after a single reading! She enriched herself by acquiring
other treasures during her convalescence; but as health returned, and
her mind became preoccupied with many interests, she found she no
longer had this astonishing power. It is possible that the disengaged
mind of a child is as free to take and as strong to hold beautiful
images clothed in beautiful words as was that of this lady during
her convalescence. But, let me again say, every effort of the kind,
however unconscious, means wear and tear of brain substance. Let
the child lie fallow till he is six, and then, in this matter of
memorising, as in others, attempt only a little, and let the poems
the child learns be simple and within the range of his own thought
and imagination. At the same time, when there is so much noble poetry
within a child’s compass, the pity of it, that he should be allowed to
learn twaddle!
VIII.--READING FOR OLDER CHILDREN
In teaching to read, as in other matters, _c’est le premier pas
qui coûte_. The child who has been taught to read with care and
deliberation until he has mastered the words of a limited vocabulary,
usually does the rest for himself. The attention of his teachers
should be fixed on two points--that he acquires the _habit_ of
reading, and that he does not fall into _slipshod habits_ of
reading.
=The Habit of Reading.=--The most common and the monstrous defect in
the education of the day is that children fail to acquire the habit of
reading. Knowledge is conveyed to them by lessons and talk, but the
studious habit of using books as a means of interest and delight is
not acquired. This habit should be begun early; so soon as the child
can read at all, he should read for himself, and to himself, history,
legends, fairy tales, and other suitable matter. He should be trained
from the first to think that one reading of any lesson is enough to
enable him to narrate what he has read, and will thus get the habit of
slow, careful reading, intelligent even when it is silent, because he
reads with an eye to the full meaning of every clause.
=Reading Aloud.=--He should have practice, too, in reading aloud, for
the most part, in the books he is using for his term’s work. These
should include a good deal of poetry, to accustom him to the delicate
rendering of shades of meaning, and especially to make him aware that
words are beautiful in themselves, that they are a source of pleasure,
and are worthy of our honour; and that a beautiful word deserves to
be beautifully said, with a certain roundness of tone and precision
of utterance. Quite young children are open to this sort of teaching,
conveyed, not in a lesson, but by a word now and then.
=Limitation.=--In this connection the teacher should not trust to
setting, as it were, a copy in reading for the children’s imitation.
They do imitate readily enough, catching tricks of emphasis and action
in an amusing way; but these are mere tricks, an aping of
intelligence. The child must express what _he_ feels to be the
author’s meaning; and this sort of intelligent reading comes only of
the habit of reading with understanding.
=Reading to Children.=--It is a delight to older people to read
aloud to children, but this should be only an occasional treat and
indulgence, allowed before bedtime, for example. We must remember the
natural inertness of a child’s mind; give him the habit of being read
to, and he will steadily shirk the labour of reading for himself;
indeed, we all like to be spoon-fed with our intellectual meat, or
we should read and think more for ourselves and be less eager to run
after lectures.
=Questions on the Subject-matter.=--When a child is reading, he should
not be teased with questions as to the meaning of what he has read,
the signification of this word or that; what is annoying to older
people is equally annoying to children. Besides, it is not of the
least consequence that they should be able to give the meaning of
every word they read. A knowledge of meanings, that is, an ample and
correct vocabulary, is only arrived at in one way--by the habit of
reading. A child unconsciously gets the meaning of a new word from the
context, if not the first time he meets with it, then the second or
the third: but he is on the look-out, and will find out for himself
the sense of any expression he does not understand. Direct questions
on the subject-matter of what a child has read are always a mistake.
Let him _narrate_ what he has read, or some part of it. He enjoys
this sort of consecutive reproduction, but abominates every question
in the nature of a riddle. If there must be riddles, let it be his to
ask and the teacher’s to direct him to the answer. Questions that lead
to a side issue or to a personal view are allowable because these
interest children--‘What would you have done in his place?’
=Lesson-Books.=--A child has not begun his education until he has
acquired the habit of reading to himself, with interest and pleasure,
books fully on a level with his intelligence. I am speaking now of
his lesson-books, which are all too apt to be written in a style of
insufferable twaddle, probably because they are written by persons
who have never chanced to meet a child. All who know children know
that they do not talk twaddle and do not like it, and prefer that
which appeals to their understanding. Their lesson-books should offer
matter for their reading, whether aloud or to themselves; therefore
they should be written with literary power. As for the matter of these
books, let us remember that children can take in ideas and principles,
whether the latter be moral or mechanical, as quickly and clearly as
we do ourselves (perhaps more so); but detailed processes, lists and
summaries, blunt the edge of a child’s delicate mind. Therefore, the
selection of their first lesson-books is a matter of grave importance,
because it rests with these to give children the idea that knowledge
is supremely attractive and that reading is delightful. Once the habit
of reading his lesson-books with delight is set up in a child, his
education is--not completed, but--ensured; he will go on for himself
in spite of the obstructions which school too commonly throws in his
way.
=Slipshod Habits; Inattention.=--I have already spoken of the
importance of a single reading. If a child is not able to narrate
what he has read once, let him not get the notion that he may, or
that he must, read it again. A look of slight regret because there
is a gap in his knowledge will convict him. The power of reading with
perfect attention will not be gained by the child who is allowed to
moon over his lessons. For this reason, reading lessons must be short;
ten minutes or a quarter of an hour of fixed attention is enough for
children of the ages we have in view, and a lesson of this length will
enable a child to cover two or three pages of his book. The same rule
as to the length of a lesson applies to children whose lessons are
read to them because they are not yet able to read for themselves.
=Careless Enunciation.=--It is important that, when reading aloud,
children should make due use of the vocal organs, and, for this
reason, a reading lesson should be introduced by two or three simple
breathing exercises, as, for example, a long inspiration with closed
lips and a slow expiration with open mouth. If a child read through
his nose, it is well to consult a doctor; an operation for adenoids
may be necessary, which is rarely distressing, and should be performed
while children are young. Provincial pronunciation and slipshod
enunciation must be guarded against. Practice in pure vowel sounds,
and the respect for words which will not allow of their being hastily
slurred over, should cure these defects. By the way, quite little
children commonly enunciate beautifully, because a big word is a new
acquirement which they delight in and make the most of; our efforts
should be directed to make older children hold words in like esteem.
The habit of ‘minding your stops’ comes of intelligent reading.
A child’s understanding of the passage will lead him to correct
pointing.
IX.--THE ART OF NARRATING
=Children Narrate by Nature.=--Narrating is an _art_, like
poetry-making or painting, because it is _there_, in every
child’s mind, waiting to be discovered, and is not the result of any
process of disciplinary education. A creative fiat calls it forth.
‘Let him narrate’; and the child narrates, fluently, copiously, in
ordered sequence, with fit and graphic details, with a just choice
of words, without verbosity or tautology, so soon as he can speak
with ease. This amazing gift with which normal children are born
is allowed to lie fallow in their education. Bobbie will come home
with a heroic narrative of a fight he has seen between ‘Duke’ and a
dog in the street. It is wonderful! He has seen everything, and he
tells everything with splendid vigour in the true epic vein; but so
ingrained is our contempt for children that we see nothing in this but
Bobbie’s foolish childish way! Whereas here, if we have eyes to see
and grace to build, is the ground-plan of his education.
Until he is six, let Bobbie narrate only when and what he has a mind
to. He must not be called upon to _tell_ anything. Is this the
secret of the strange long talks we watch with amusement between
creatures of two, and four, and five? Is it possible that they narrate
while they are still inarticulate, and that the other inarticulate
person takes it all in? They try us, poor dear elders, and we reply
‘Yes,’ ‘Really!’ ‘Do you think so?’ to the babble of whose meaning we
have no comprehension. Be this as it may; of what goes on in the dim
region of ‘under two’ we have no assurance. But wait till the little
fellow has words and he will ‘tell’ without end to whomsoever will
listen to the tale, but, for choice, to his own compeers.
=This Power should be used in their Education.=--Let us take the
goods the gods provide. When the child is six, not earlier, let
him narrate the fairy-tale which has been read to him, episode by
episode, upon one hearing of each; the Bible tale read to him in the
words of the Bible; the well-written animal story; or all about other
lands from some such volume as _The World at Home_.[20] The
seven-years-old boy will have begun to read for himself, but must get
most of his intellectual nutriment, by ear, certainly, but read to him
out of books. Geography, sketches from ancient history, _Robinson
Crusoe_,[20a] _The Pilgrim’s Progress_,[20a] _Tanglewood
Tales_,[20a] _Heroes of Asgard_,[20a] and much of the same
calibre, will occupy him until he is eight. The points to be borne in
mind are, that he should have no book which is not a child’s classic;
and that, given the right book, it must not be diluted with talk or
broken up with questions, but given to the boy in fit portions as
wholesome meat for his mind, in the full trust that a child’s mind is
able to deal with its proper food.
The child of eight or nine is able to tackle the more serious material
of knowledge; but our business for the moment is with what children
under nine can narrate.
=Method of Lesson.=--In every case the reading should be consecutive
from a well-chosen book. Before the reading for the day begins, the
teacher should talk a little (and get the children to talk) about the
last lesson, with a few words about what is to be read, in order that
the children may be animated by expectation; but she should beware of
explanation, and, especially, of forestalling the narrative. Then, she
may read two or three pages, enough to include an episode; after that,
let her call upon the children to narrate,--in turns, if there be
several of them. They not only narrate with spirit and accuracy, but
succeed in catching the style of their author. It is not wise to tease
them with corrections; they may begin with an endless chain of ‘ands,’
but they soon leave this off, and their narrations become good enough
in style and composition to be put in a ‘print book’!
This sort of narration lesson should not occupy more than a quarter of
an hour.
The book should always be deeply interesting, and when the narration
is over, there should be a little talk in which moral points are
brought out, pictures shown to illustrate the lesson, or diagrams
drawn on the blackboard. As soon as children are able to read with
ease and fluency, they read their own lesson, either aloud or
silently, with a view to narration; but where it is necessary to
make omissions, as in the Old Testament narratives and Plutarch’s
_Lives_ for example, it is better that the teacher should always
read the lesson which is to be narrated.
X.--WRITING
=Perfect Accomplishment.=--I can only offer a few hints on the
teaching of _writing_, though much might be said. First, let the
child accomplish something _perfectly_ in every lesson--a stroke,
a pothook, a letter. Let the writing lesson be short; it should
not last more than five or ten minutes. Ease in writing comes by
practice; but that must be secured later. In the meantime, the thing
to be avoided is the habit of careless work--humpy _m_’s, angular
_o_’s.
=Printing.=--But the child should have practice in printing before
he begins to write. First, let him print the simplest of the capital
letters with single curves and straight lines. When he can make the
capitals and large letters, with some firmness and decision, he
might go on to the small letters--‘printed’ as in the type we call
‘_italics_,’ only upright,--as simple as possible, and large.
=Steps in Teaching.=--Let the stroke be learned first; then the
pothook; then the letters of which the pothook is an element--_n_,
_m_, _v_, _w_, _r_, _h_, _p_, _y_; then _o_, and letters of which the
curve is an element--_a_, _c_, _g_, _e_, _x_, _s_, _q_; then looped
and irregular letters-_-b_, _l_, _f_, _t_, etc. One letter should be
perfectly formed in a day and the next day the same elemental forms
repeated in another letter, until they become familiar. By-and-by
copies, three or four of the letters they have learned grouped into a
word--‘man,’ ‘aunt’; the lesson to be the production of the written
word _once_ without a single fault in any letter. At this stage the
chalk and blackboard are better than pen and paper, as it is well that
the child should rub out and rub out until his own eye is satisfied
with the word or letter he has written.
Of the further stages, little need be said. Secure that the child
_begins_ by making perfect letters and is never allowed to make
faulty ones, and the rest he will do for himself; as for ‘a good
hand,’ do not hurry him; his ‘handwriting’ will come by-and-by, out
of the character that is in him; but, as a child, he cannot be said,
strictly speaking, to have character. Set good copies before him, and
see that he imitates his model dutifully: the writing lesson being,
not so many lines, or ‘a copy’--that is, a page of writing--but a
single line which is as exactly as possible a copy of the characters
set. The child may have to write several lines before he succeeds in
producing this.
=Text-hand.=--If he write in books with copperplate headlines (which
are, on the whole, to be eschewed), discrimination should be exercised
in the choice of these; in many of them the writing is atrocious, and
the letters are adorned with flourishes which increase the pupil’s
labour but by no means improve his style. One word more; do not hurry
the child into ‘small hand’; it is unnecessary that he should labour
much over what is called ‘large hand,’ but ‘text-hand,’ the medium
size, should be continued until he makes the letters with ease. It
is much easier for the child to get into an irregular scribble by
way of ‘small-hand,’ than to get out of it again. In this, as in
everything else, the care of the educator must be given, not only to
the formation of good, but to the prevention of bad habits.
=A ‘New Handwriting.’=--Some years ago I heard of a lady who
was elaborating, by means of the study of old Italian and other
manuscripts, a ‘system of beautiful handwriting’ which could be taught
to children. I waited patiently, though not without some urgency, for
the production of this new kind of ‘copy-book.’ The need for such an
effort was very great, for the distinctly commonplace writing taught
from existing copy-books, however painstaking and legible, cannot
but have a rather vulgarising effect both on the writer and the
reader of such manuscript. At last the lady, Mrs Robert Bridges, has
succeeded in her tedious and difficult undertaking, and this book for
teachers will enable them to teach their pupils a style of writing
which is pleasant to acquire because it is beautiful to behold. It is
surprising how quickly young children, even those already confirmed in
‘ugly’ writing, take to this ‘new handwriting.’
But Mrs Bridges’ purpose in _A New Handwriting_ will be better
understood by some passages quoted, with her permission, from her
preface:--“The accompanying ten plates are intended chiefly for those
who teach writing: a few words, both of apology and explanation, are
needed to introduce them. I was always interested in handwriting, and
after making acquaintance with the Italianised Gothic of the sixteenth
century, I consciously altered my hand towards some likeness with its
forms and general character. The script happening to please, I was
often asked to make alphabets and copies, and begged by professional
teachers to have such a book as this printed, that they might use it
in their schools. One can never quite satisfy oneself in the making
of models for others to copy, but these plates are very much what I
intended, though, owing to my inexperience, some of them have suffered
in the reproduction.... A child must first learn to control his hand
and constrain it to obey his eye; at this earliest stage, any simple
forms will serve the purpose; and hence it might be further argued
that the forms are always indifferent, and that full mastery of the
hand can be as well attained by copying bad models as good; but this
can hardly be: the ordinary copybook, the aim of which seems to be to
economise the component parts of the letters, cannot train the hand
as more varied shapes will; nor does this uniformity, exclusive of
beauty, offer as good training to the eye. Moreover, I should say that
variety and beauty of form are attractive, even to little children,
and that the attempt to create something which interests them, cheers
and crowns their stupendous efforts with a pleasure that cannot be
looked for in the task of copying monotonous shapes. But whether such
a hand as that here shown lends itself as easily as the more uniform
model to the development of a quick, useful cursive, I cannot say; and
it is possible that the degradations, inevitable in the habit of quick
writing, might produce a mere untidiness, almost the worst reproach
of penmanship. Some of the best English hands of to-day are as good
a quick cursive as one can desire, and show points of real beauty;
but such hands are rare, and are only those which have, as we say,
character; which probably means that the writer would have done well
for himself under any system: whereas the average hands, which are the
natural outcome of the old copybook writing, degraded by haste, seem
to owe their common ugliness to the mean type from which they sprang;
and the writers, when they have occasion to write well, find they can
do but little better, and only prove that haste was not the real cause
of their bad writing.”
=How to Use.=--The method of using Mrs Bridges’ _Handwriting_,[21]
which we find most effectual, is to practise each form on the
blackboard from the plate, and later to use pencil, and still later
pen and ink. By-and-by the children will be promoted to transcribe
little poems, and so on, in this very pleasing script. Set headlines
are to be avoided, as children fail to use the forms of the headline
in their ordinary writing. It is sometimes objected that this rather
elaborate and beautiful handwriting will interfere with a
characteristic ‘hand,’ but it seems to me that to have a beautiful,
instead of a commonplace, basis for handwriting is a great gain.
XI.--TRANSCRIPTION
=Value of Transcription.=--The earliest practice in writing proper for
children of seven or eight should be, not letter-writing or dictation,
but transcription, slow and beautiful work, for which the _New
Handwriting_ is to be preferred, though perhaps some of the more
ornate characters may be omitted with advantage.
Transcription should be an introduction to spelling. Children should
be encouraged to look at the word, see a picture of it with their eyes
shut, and then write from memory.
=Children should Transcribe favourite Passages.=--A certain sense
of possession and delight may be added to this exercise if children
are allowed to choose for transcription their favourite verse in one
poem and another. This is better than to write a favourite poem, an
exercise which stales on the little people before it is finished. But
a book of their own, made up of their own chosen verses, should give
them pleasure.
=Small Text-hand--Double-ruled Lines.=--Double-ruled lines, small
text-hand, should be used at first, as children are eager to write
very minute ‘small hand,’ and once they have fallen into this habit
it is not easy to get good writing. A sense of beauty in their writing
and in the lines they copy should carry them over this stage of their
work with pleasure. Not more than ten minutes or a quarter of an hour
should be given to the early writing-lessons. If they are longer the
children get tired and slovenly.
=Position in Writing.=--For the writing position children should sit
so that light reaches them from the left, and desk or table should be
at a comfortable height.
It would be a great gain if children were taught from the first to
hold the pen between the first and second fingers, steadying it with
the thumb. This position avoids the uncomfortable strain on the
muscles produced by the usual way of holding a pen--a strain which
causes writer’s cramp in later days when there is much writing to be
done. The pen should be held in a comfortable position, rather near
the point, fingers and thumb somewhat bent, and the hand resting on
the paper. The writer should also be allowed to support himself with
the left hand on the paper, and should write in an easy position,
with bent head but not with stooping figure. It would be unnecessary
to say that the flat of the nib should be used if children had not a
happy gift for making spider marks with the nib held sideways. In all
writing lessons, free use should be made of the blackboard by both
teacher and children by way of model and practice.
=Desks.=--The best desks I know are those recommended by Dr Roth,[22]
single desks which may be raised or lowered, moved backwards or
forwards, with seat, back, and a back pad, and rests for the feet.
There may be others as good, even better, in the market, but these
seem to answer every purpose.
=Children’s Table.=--For little children it is a good plan to have a
table of the right height made by the house carpenter, the top of the
table consisting of two leaves with hinges. These leaves open in the
middle, and disclose a sort of box in the space which is often used
for a drawer, the table-top itself making the lids of the box. Such a
receptacle for the children’s books, writing materials, etc., is more
easily kept neat by themselves than is an ordinary drawer or box.
XII.--SPELLING AND DICTATION
Of all the mischievous exercises in which children spend their
school hours, dictation, as commonly practised, is perhaps the most
mischievous; and this, because people are slow to understand that
there is no part of a child’s work at school which some philosophic
principle does not underlie.
=A Fertile Cause of Bad Spelling.=--The common practice is for the
teacher to dictate a passage, clause by clause, repeating each clause,
perhaps, three or four times under a fire of questions from the
writers. Every line has errors in spelling, one, two, three, perhaps.
The conscientious teacher draws her pencil under these errors, or
solemnly underlines them with red ink. The children correct in various
fashions; sometimes they change books, and each corrects the errors
of another, copying the word from the book or from the blackboard. A
few benighted teachers still cause children to copy their own error
along with the correction, which last is written three or four times,
learned, and spelt to the teacher. The latter is astonished at the
pure perversity which causes the same errors to be repeated again and
again, notwithstanding all these painstaking efforts.
=The Rationale of Spelling.=--But the fact is, the gift of spelling
depends upon the power the eye possesses to ‘take’ (in a photographic
sense) a detailed picture of a word; and this is a power and habit
which must be cultivated in children from the first. When they have
read ‘cat,’ they must be encouraged to see the word with their eyes
shut, and the same habit will enable them to image ‘Thermopylæ.’
This picturing of words upon the retina appears to me to be the only
royal road to spelling; an error once made and corrected leads to
fearful doubt for the rest of one’s life, as to which was the wrong
way and which the right. Most of us are haunted by some such doubt as
to whether ‘balance,’ for instance, should have one ‘l’ or two; and
_the doubt is born of a correction_. Once the eye sees a misspelt
word, that image remains; and if there is also the image of the word
rightly spelt, we are perplexed as to which is which. Now we see why
there could not be a more ingenious way of making bad spellers than
‘dictation’ as it is commonly taught. Every misspelt word is an image
in the child’s brain not to be obliterated by the right spelling. It
becomes, therefore, the teacher’s business to prevent false spelling,
and, if an error has been made, to hide it away, as it were, so that
the impression may not become fixed.
=Steps of a Dictation Lesson.=--Dictation lessons, conducted in some
such way as the following, usually result in good spelling. A child
of eight or nine prepares a paragraph, older children a page, or two
or three pages. The child prepares by himself, by looking at the word
he is not sure of, and then seeing it with his eyes shut. Before he
begins, the teacher asks what words he thinks will need his attention.
He generally knows, but the teacher may point out any word likely to
be a cause of stumbling. He lets his teacher know when he is ready.
The teacher asks if there are any words he is not sure of. These she
puts, one by one, on the blackboard, letting the child look till he
has a picture, and then rubbing the word out. If anyone is still
doubtful he should be called to put the word he is not sure of on the
board, the teacher watching to rub out the word when a wrong letter
begins to appear, and again helping the child to get a mental picture.
Then the teacher gives out the dictation, clause by clause, each
clause repeated _once_. She dictates with a view to the pointing,
which the children are expected to put in as they write; but they must
not be told ‘comma,’ ‘semicolon,’ etc. After the sort of preparation
I have described, which takes ten minutes or less, there is rarely an
error in spelling. If there be, it is well worth while for the teacher
to be on the watch with slips of stamp-paper to put over the wrong
word, that its image may be erased as far as possible. At the end of
the lesson, the child should again study the wrong word in his book
until he says he is sure of it, and should write it correctly on the
stamp-paper.
A lesson of this kind secures the hearty co-operation of children, who
feel they take their due part in it; and it also prepares them for the
second condition of good spelling, which is--much reading combined
with the habit of imaging the words as they are read.
Illiterate spelling is usually a sign of sparse reading; but,
sometimes, of hasty reading without the habit of _seeing_ the
words that are skimmed over.
Spelling must not be lost sight of in the children’s other studies,
though they should not be teased to spell. It is well to write a
difficult proper name, for example, on the blackboard in the course of
history or geography readings, rubbing the word out when the children
say they can see it. The whole secret of spelling lies in the habit
of visualising words from memory, and children must be trained to
visualise in the course of their reading. They enjoy this way of
learning to spell.
XIII.--COMPOSITION
=George Osborne’s Essay.=--“What a prodigiously well-read and
delightful person the Reverend Lawrence Veal was, George’s master!
‘He knows _everything_,’ Amelia said. ‘He says there is no place
in the bar or the senate that Georgy may not aspire to. Look here,’
and she went to the piano-drawer and drew out a theme of George’s
composition. This great effort of genius, which is still in the
possession of Georgy’s mother, is as follows:--
“‘_On Selfishness._--Of all the vices which degrade
the human character, Selfishness is the most odious and
contemptible. An undue love of Self leads to the most
monstrous crimes, and occasions the greatest misfortunes
both in _States and Families_. As a selfish man will
impoverish his family and often bring them to ruin; so a
selfish king brings ruin on his people and often plunges
them into war. Example: The selfishness of Achilles, as
remarked by the poet Homer, occasioned a thousand woes to
the Greeks--μυρί’ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε’ ἔθηκε--(Hom., _Il_.,
A. 2). The selfishness of the late Napoleon Bonaparte
occasioned innumerable wars in Europe, and caused him to
perish, himself, in a miserable island--that of St Helena
in the Atlantic Ocean.
“‘We see by these examples that we are not to consult our
own interest and ambition, but that we are to consider the
interests of others as well as our own. GEORGE S. OSBORNE.
“‘ATHENÈ HOUSE, _24 April 1827_.’
“‘Think of him’ (George was 10) ‘writing such a hand, and
quoting Greek too, at his age,’ the delighted mother said.”
And well might Mrs George Sedley be delighted. Would not many a mother
to-day triumph in such a literary effort? What can Thackeray be
laughing at? Or does he, in truth, give us this little ‘theme’ as a
_tour de force_?
=An Educational Futility.=--I think this great moral teacher here
throws down the gauntlet in challenge of an educational futility which
is practised, and an educational fallacy which is accepted, even in
the twentieth century. That futility is the exaction of original
composition from schoolboys and schoolgirls. The proper function
of the mind of the young scholar is to collect material for the
generalisations of after-life. If a child is asked to generalise, that
is, to write an essay upon some abstract theme, a double wrong is done
him. He is brought up before a stone wall by being asked to do what is
impossible to him, and that is discouraging. But a worse moral injury
happens to him in that, having no thought of his own to offer on the
subject, he puts together such tags of commonplace thought as have
come in his way and offers the whole as his ‘composition,’ an effort
which puts a strain upon his conscience while it piques his vanity.
In these days masters do not consciously put their hand to the work
of their pupils as did that ‘prodigiously well-read and delightful’
master who had the educating of George Osborne. But, perhaps without
knowing it, they give the ideas which the cunning schoolboy seizes
to ‘stick’ into the ‘essay’ he hates. Sometimes they do more. They
deliberately teach children how to ‘build a sentence’ and how to ‘bind
sentences’ together.
=Lessons in Composition.=--Here is a series of preliminary exercises
(or rather a part of the series, which numbers 40) intended to help
a child to write an essay on ‘An Umbrella,’ from a book of the hour
proceeding from one of our best publishing houses:--
“_Step I._
“1. What are you?