The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1895-05-17

The last meeting before the regular
annual session of the Honolulu Teach
ers' Association was held in the main
room Of Punahou Preparatory School
yesterday afternoon, some fifty teach
ers and visitors being present.
On account of certain performers
being ill the class exercises did not
take place.
After short talk by Professor Hos
! mer with reference to the complete
development of pupils, Mrs. Dumas
read the following paper on primary
| Language in Hawaiian Schools"
One of the fundamental aims of
education is to teach pupils to think.
Along with the development of
thought and inseparabIe from it is the
development of language.
To attempt to teach language with
out grasping the accompanying
thought is reasonably sure to result ia
mechanical word-grinding. Thinking
is soul activity caused by presenting
to the mind appropriate subjects.
Language is subject OF thought, but
as such 1s not appropriate for the Rri-
mary grades.
The child comes to school at the age
of six, with vague and incomplete
ideas of things. He has eyes but has
seen but little. Organs of touch, taste
and smell, but with these he has not
been taught to discriminate very
much. Ears he has, but has heard of
things not in the language of the
school, but in the mother tongue. In
deed with this language which he has
learned, he can make his vital wants
known, communicate with his par
ents and playmateS and so become ac-
auainted with the environment which
his stage of growth demands. The
learning of English is to him an &C
complishment and not a necessity.
How then is the teacher, who has the
child but one seventh of his waking
hours, to so relate the, to him, uninter-
ested, harsh sounding English Ian
guage to his living thought that he
may be able to think, speak and write
in the new tongue.
We can answer this only in part.
First, let us take few lessons from
the child himself. Language comes
to them first by hearing it spoken.
When is he disposed to listene Mani
festly when something awakens his
interest. That interest is aroused by
a desire to understand what other peO-
pie are saying. He has no interest in
words simply as words.
We see then that first he listens. In
like manner be speaks when he has an
interesting thought behind his words
which he wishes to make known. If
his vocabulary is insufficient he
struggles until someone who under
stands what he means supplies the
word. He seizes it, and it his forever,
because presented under right cOndi-
tiOns.
The conditions for the requirement
of language are the immediate neces-
stiles of thought or expression.
Parents understand this law better
than teachers. a child at home is
never given words except as they are
needed for immediate use.
Language conforms to the thought.
Thought and speech become unit IN
hearing and speaking"
Let us be done with the teaching of
empty words. We cannot make a
greater mistake than to treat language
as a subject of study in the primary
school. Rather let it become an out
growth of the subjects taught.
Thoughtful men, from Lord Bacon
in England down to DR.. Lyons in Ha-
waii, have urged upon teachers the
necessity of the study OF real things.
Bacon says: "ThIngs should come be-
10Ic WOIuSy anu LIEU uS hCfCA
turn the eyes of the mind away from
the things themselves, but take their
images into us, just as they are"
He wished men to demand the i'm
mediate contem platiOn of creation.
DR.. Lyons, in his article in the last
Progressive Educator, says:
"Language is not to be displaced to
make room for nature study, but the
latter is rather to be made the efficient
means of promoting the former"
We have been accustomed to read
in Biographies and other books about
the earth, plants, animals and rocks,
but it seldom occurs to US that these
things can speak for themselves. We
are, as Whittier Gays,
Blind to the beauty everywhere re
vealed,
Treading the Mayfowers with regard
less feet.
For US the song-sparrow and the bobo-
link
Sing not. nor winds make music in the
leaves.
If more schools would take an "out-
ing day. and let "Nature be the teach
er." as has been so recently demon
strated by one of our schools, the
children might not prove to be as
stupid as we often think them. If
such exercises are valuable for ad-
vanced pupils, doubly so are they for