The Newtown bee. (Newtown, Conn.) 1877-current, 1897-12-17
Hinman as a Pedagogue.
MR. Humans RKJoINDER.

If Rev o. o. Wright had consulted q
brother of his, who is a clerk in the Of
fee of the state board of education. L
suspect he would not have thought it
necessary to defend my friend, the Sec
retary. Mr. Hine and differ as to the
best method of teaching a child to read,
but it is no new thing. / offered some
years ago to gratuitously superintend
the teaching of class of little ones in
the good old way, against class taught
by the word method, and l was so rssh
as to offer to pay for lost time, if my
class was not ahead at the close of the
experiment. am free to scknow ledge
that had no idea of paying anything as
| considered that had q sure thing, and
| am inclined to think Mr. Hine thought
so also.
L made no statement as to what Mr.
Hine advocated at South Britain, other
than by referring to the report in THE
BEE. II that report was incorrect the
reverend gentleman sbould Jump on the
reporter and not on poor innocent that
takes what he sees in TIE BEE for gos-
pei truth. If the secretary of the state
board of education has so far reformed
that he acknowledges there are other
proper methods, sc Mr. Wright says, |
congratulate him aud the state snd trust
the good work will 60 on until he not
only allows but demands better teaching
L have little bone to pick with Mr.
Wright. He calls me down for referring
to the word method of teaching as "a
new fad" using quotation marks as
have. The intelligent reader would nat
urally suppose he was quoting my lan-
guage. We must assume that 8 minister
of the Gospel would not intentionally
misrepresent and there are but two 9TH
er excuses. If Rev o. o. Wright is ig-
norant Of the proper use of quotation
marks he can take half day off and
come down some afternoon when l an
at home in the brush and l will tempor-
arily resume my old vocation of teach
ing, for his benefit. 1t is possible, how
ever, that he was simply careless. In
that case it is lucky that he is minister
and not a druggist. l doubt Il the pearly
gates will ever be slammed in anyone's
face because of his careless reading or
quoting from the Bible, but as a drug
gist he might send some customer scoot-
ing through the gates prematurely snd
thus cause uDplesssntness. I made
suggestion as TO the ''next new fad but
only in reference TO fads in general as
applied to school teaching. The little
child that [ mentioned as having COM
mitted an entire reading lesson to mem
orv, without having to tell the words in
different connection, came to school to
me nearly 40 years ago, The word
method was fad them; it is fad now,
come to the front periodically in time to
come. 1t is said that one should speak
we'll of a bridge that carries him safe ov-
er, and I ought to speak well Of our COM
mon echool system, for 1 got my first
start in life by teaching boys some things
they would need to know as business
men, while they were. boys.
l had boys that came to me from the
public schools of Maine, Texas and sew
eral Of the Western states, as well as
from different portions of our OVID and
adjoining states, and thus had sn oppoT-
tunity to judge by results as to methods
of teaching.
AS q teacher, chased teachers con-
ventions to get something valuable, be-
fore Mr. Hine came to Connecticut and,
l am free to say, improved things, but,
as q teacher 1 could not conscientiously
waste my pupils time On fsds and my
experience since L have left teaching
with pupils from public schools, some Of
them graduates of high school, has not
changed my mind.
G. Stanley Hall, Phi. D., msy think it
is complicated problem to teach child
to read, but it isn't so very bad if we
stick to the good old way, teach them TO
spell and pronounce the words, pro-
rounce at sight, and then put them into
sentences. Everything comes along in
proper order and complications are not
apt to arise. Our daddies didn't know
everything, but they knew something
and there is no occasion for discsrding
thing simply because our dsddies knew
it. L know nothing about the gentle
man quoted but assume that he had no
idea of being projected into discussion
as saying that the teaching of reading
is complicated problem.-lR. S. Hin
man.