NEW METHODS OF TEACHING.
A lady of high culture and position, who felt peculiarly the
responsibilities of the fortunate toward the unfortunate, conceived the
idea of doing something to elevate the condition of the destitute
classes in the quarter of the city between the East River and Avenue B.
She accordingly made the proposition to us of an Industrial School in
that neighborhood.
We gladly accepted, and soon secured a room, and gathered a goodly
company of poor children, mostly Germans. Fortunately for our
enterprise, we chanced on a teacher of singular ability and earnestness
of purpose, a graduate of the best Normal School in the country, the
Oswego Training School, and thoroughly versed in the "Object
System"--Miss Jane Andrews.
The founder of our school proved as earnest in carrying out, as she had
been generous in forming, her benevolent plan.
She took part herself, several times each week, in teaching the
children, and was indefatigable in promoting their pleasures, as well as
aiding their instruction. For many years now, this kind friend of the
poor has supported this school and labored among its children. They all
know and love her, and her memory will not die among them.
The great peculiarity of this school has now been adapted in the other
Industrial Schools, under the name of the "Object System of Teaching"--a
method which has proved so singularly successful with the children of
the poor, that I shall describe it somewhat at length.
THE OBJECT SYSTEM.
"I began with children," says Pestalozzi, "as nature does with savages,
first bringing an image before their eyes, and then seeking a word to
express the perception to which it gives rise." This statement of the
great reformer of education expresses the essential principle of the
Object System. The child's mind grasps first things rather than names;
it deals with objects before words; it takes a thing as a whole rather
than in parts. Its perceptive and observing faculties are those first
awakened, and should be the first used in education; reflection,
analysis, and comparison must come afterward. The vice of the former
systems of education has been, that words have so much taken in the
child's intellect the place of things, and its knowledge has become so
often a mere routine, or a mechanical memorizing of names. The scholar
was not taught to look beneath words, and to learn the precise thing
which the word symbolized. He was trained to repeat like a machine. He
did not observe closely, he had not been educated to apply his own
faculties, and therefore he could not think afterward. The old system
reversed the natural order. It began with what is the ripest fruit of
the mature intellect-definitions, or the learning of rules and
statements of principles, and went on later to observing facts and
applying principles. It analyzed in the beginning, and only later in the
course regarded things each as a whole.
The consequence was, that children were months and years in taking the
first steps in education--such as learning to read--because they had
begun wrong. They had no accurate habits of observation, and, as a
natural result, soon fell into loose habits of thinking. What they knew
they knew vaguely. When their acquirements were tested they were found
valueless. The simplest principles of mathematics were almost unknown to
them, because they had learned the science by rote, and had never
exercised their minds on it. They could apply none of them. Algebra,
instead of being an implement, was of no more practical use to them than
Sanscrit would be. Geometry was as abstract as metaphysics. They had
never learned it by solid figures, or studied it intelligently. Grammar
was a memorized collection of dry abstract rules and examples. Natural
history was only a catalogue, and geography a dictionary learned by
heart.
Our manufacturers, who had occasion in former years, to employ these
youths from our Public Schools, found them utterly incompetent for using
their faculties on practical subjects. Nor did they go forth with minds
expanded, and ready to receive the germs of knowledge which might be, as
it were, floating in the atmosphere. Their faculties had not been
aroused.
The "Object System" attempts to lay down the principles which have been
tested in primary education, in the form of a Science; so that the
teacher not gifted with the genius of invention and the talent for
conveying knowledge shall be able to awaken and train the child's
intellect as if he were.
Its first principle is to exercise the senses, but never during any long
period at once. The play of the children is so contrived as to employ
their sense of touch, of weight, and of harmony. Colors are placed,
before them, and they are trained in distinguishing the different
delicate shades--in the recognition of which children are singularly
deficient. Numbers are taught by objects, such as small beans or
marbles, and then when numerals are learned, regular tables of addition
and subtraction are written on the board by the teacher at the dictation
of the scholar.
The great step in all education is the learning the use of that
wonderful vehicle and symbol of human thought, the printed word.
Here the object system has made the greatest advance. The English
language has the unfortunate peculiarity of a great many sounds to each
vowel, and of an utter want of connection between the name and the sound
of the letter. No mature mind can easily appreciate the dark and
mysterious gulf which, to the infant's view, separates the learning the
letters and reading. The two seem to be utterly different acquirements.
The new methods escape the difficulty in part by not teaching the names,
but the sounds, of the letters first, and then leading the child to put
his sounds together in the form of a word, and next to print the word on
the black-board, the teacher calling on the scholar to find a similar
one in a card or book. By this ingenious device, the modern infant,
instead of being whipped into reading, is beguiled into it pleasantly
and imperceptibly, and makes his progress by a philosophical law. He
reads before he knows it. But here the obstacle arises that each vowel,
printed in the same type, has so many sounds. One ingenious teacher. Dr.
Leigh, obviates this by printing on his charts each vowel-sound in a
slightly different form, and giving the silent letters in hair-lines.
The objection here might be that the scholar learns a type different
from that in common use. Still, the deviation from the ordinary alphabet
is so slight as probably not to confuse any young mind, and the learner
can go on by a philosophical classification of sounds. Other teachers
indicate the different vowel-sounds by accents.
One well-known writer on the "Object System," Mr. Caulkins, seems to
approve of what we are inclined to consider even more philosophical
still--the learning the word first, and the letters and spelling
afterward.
Most children in cultivated families learn to read in this way. The word
is a symbol of thought--a thing in itself--first, perhaps, connected
with a picture of the object placed at its side, but afterward becoming
phonetic, representing arbitrarily any object by its sound. Then other
words are learned--not separately, but in association, as one learns a
foreign language. Farther on, the pupil analyzes, spells, considers each
letter, and notes each part of speech.
An objection may occur here, that the habit of correct and careful
spelling will not be so well gained by this method as by the old.
Mr. Caulkins's remarks on this topic in his Manual on "Object Lessons"
are so sensible that we quote them _in extenso:--_
THE A B C METHOD.
This old, long, and tedious way consists in teaching, first, the name of
each of the twenty-six letters, then in combining these into unmeaning
syllables of 'two letters,' 'three letters,' and, finally, into words of
'two syllables' and 'three syllables.' Very little regard is had to the
meaning of the words. Indeed, it seems as if those who attempt to teach
reading by this method supposed that the chief object should be to make
their pupils fluent in oral spelling; and it ends in spelling, usually,
since children thus taught go on spelling out their words through all
the reading lessons, and seldom become intelligent readers. They give
their attention to the words, instead of the ideas intended to be
represented by them. When the child has succeeded in learning the names
of the twenty-six letters, he has gained no knowledge of their real use
as representatives of sounds, and, consequently, little ability in
determining how to pronounce a new word from naming its letters.
Besides, the names of the letters constantly mislead him when formed
into words.
"He may have made the acquaintance of each of the twenty-six individual
letters, so as to recognize their faces and be able to call them by name
singly; but when these same letters change places with their fellows, as
they are grouped into different words, he is frequently unable to
address many of them in a proper manner, or to determine what duties
they perform in their different places.
"Again, the words that are learned by naming over the letters which
compose them seldom represent any ideas to the young learner; indeed,
too many of the words learned by this method are only meaningless
monosyllables. The children begin to read without understanding what
they read, and thus is laid the foundation for the mechanical,
unintelligible reading which characterizes most of that heard in schools
where the A B C method is used. This plan is in violation of fundamental
laws of teaching; it attempts to compel the child to do two things at
the same time, and to do both in an unnatural manner, viz., to learn
reading and spelling simultaneously, and reading through spelling.
Reading has to deal with sounds and signs of thought.
"Spelling rests on the habit of the eye, which is best acquired as the
result of reading. In attempting to teach reading through spelling, the
effort of the pupil in trying to find out the word by naming the letters
that compose it distracts the attention from the thought intended to be
represented by it; the mind becomes chiefly absorbed with spelling
instead of reading. When properly taught, reading furnishes natural
faculties for teaching spelling; but spelling does not furnish a
suitable means for teaching reading. Thus it will be seen that the usual
plans for teaching reading by the A B C method compel children to do
that for which their minds are not fitted, and thus cause a loss of
power by restraining them from attending to the thoughts represented by
the words, and to other things which would greatly promote their
development. The results are that a love for reading is not enkindled,
good readers are not produced. The few cases in which the results are
different owe both the love for reading and the ability in this art to
other causes.
"The pupils learned to love reading, and became able to read well, in
spite of poor teaching during their first lessons. There is consolation
in believing that this method, which produced so many halting, stumbling
readers, is now abandoned by all good teachers of reading. May the
number of such teachers be greatly increased.
* * * * * *
"The 'word method' begins at once with teaching the words in a manner
similar to that by which children learn to distinguish one object from
another, and learn the names. It proposes to teach words as the signs of
things, acts, and qualities, etc. It does not propose to teach children
the alphabet, but to leave them to learn this after they have become
familiar with enough words to commence reading."
The Object System teaches geography very ingeniously. The pupil begins
by getting into his mind the idea of a map. This is by no means so
simple an idea as might be supposed, as witness the impossibility almost
of making a savage understand it. The child is first told to point to
the different points of the compass; then he marks them down on a
blackboard; next he draws a plan of the room, and each scholar attempts
to locate an object on the plan, and is corrected by the school, if
wrong. Next comes a plan of the district or town; then a globe is shown,
and the idea of position on the globe given, and of the outlines of
different countries. Soon the pupil learns to draw maps on the board,
and to place rivers, bays, lakes, and oceans. The book-questions now to
be presented will not be on purely political geography or merely
arbitrary lists of names. The child is taken on imaginary journeys up
rivers, over mountains, by railroads, and must describe from the lesson
he has learned the different productions, the animals, the character of
the scenery, the vegetation, and the occupations of the people. Thus
geography becomes a kind of natural science, deeply interesting to the
pupil, and touching his imagination. Certain dry geographical names are
forever after associated in his mind with certain animals and plants and
a peculiar scenery.
Natural history is also taught in this system, but not by the usual dry
method. The teacher brings in a potato, for instance, and carries the
pupil along by questions through all its growth and development. Or she
takes flowers, or leaves, or seeds, and stamps the most important
phenomena about them on the scholar's mind by an objective lesson.
Prints of animals are presented, and the teacher begins at the lowest
orders, and rises up in regular gradation, questioning the children as
to the uses and purposes of every feature and limb. They work out their
own natural philosophy. They observe, and then reason; and what they
learn is learned in philosophical order, and imprinted by their own
efforts on their memories. It is astonishing how much, in these simple
methods, may be learned in natural science by very young children; and
what nutritive but simple food may be supplied to their minds for all
future years.
From lessons in science thus given, the teacher rises easily to lessons
of morality and religion. Nothing even in moral teaching impresses a
child's mind like pictures, stories, or parables, or some form of
"object-teaching." The modern charts and books are extremely ingenious
in giving religious lessons through the senses.
The beginning of the higher mathematics may be taught children perfectly
well under this method. Straight lines and angles are drawn, or
constructed with little sticks, and named, and various figures thus
formed. With blocks, the different geometrical figures are constructed
and named--all being finished by the pupils themselves. On the
blackboard certain lines are given, and with them "inventive drawing"
goes on under the pupil's own suggestion.
Weights and measures are learned by practical illustrations with real
objects, and are thus not easily forgotten.
Definition is very agreeably taught by the teacher's producing some
object, say, an apple, and then making each scholar describe some
quality of it, in taste, color, form, or material, and then write this
word on the board. Very difficult adjectives, such as "opaque," or
"pungent," or "translucent," or "aromatic," may thus be learned, besides
all the simpler, and learned permanently.
The old bugbear to children, spelling, is by no means so terrible under
these methods. The teacher writes two initial consonants, say, "th," and
each scholar makes a new word with them, and it is written on the board;
or a terminal consonant is given, or certain combinations of letters are
written down--say, _ough,_ in "though" and words of corresponding sound
must be written underneath, or the different sounds of each vowel must
be illustrated by the scholar, and the varying sounds of consonants, and
so on endlessly--spelling becoming a perfect amusement, and, at the same
time, training the pupil in many delicate shades of sound, and in
analyzing and remembering words.
Grammar is conveyed, not by that farce in teaching, and that cross to
all children, grammatical rules, which are, in fact, the expressions of
the final fruit of knowledge, but the teacher writes incorrectly on the
blackboard, both in spelling, punctuation, and grammar, and the children
must correct this; thus learning from the senses and usage, instead of
from abstract rules. Reading is given as nearly as possible in
conversational tones, and the old loud, mechanical sing-song is
forbidden.
The principle most insisted on in all this system is, that the child
should teach himself as far as possible; that his faculties should do
the work, and not the teacher's; and the dull and slow pupil is
especially to be led on and encouraged. But, as might be supposed, the
teacher's task, under the object method, is no sinecure. She can no
longer slip along the groove of mechanical teaching. She must be
wide-awake, inventive, constantly on the _qui vive_ to stir up her
pupils' minds. The droning over lessons, and letting children repeat,
parrot-like, long lists of words, is not for her. She must be always
seeking out some new thing and making her pupils observe and think for
themselves. Her duty is a hard one. But this is the only true teaching;
and we trust that no Primary School in New York will be without a
well-trained "Object-teacher."