The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1903-02-20
LOST ART OF SPELLING.

In Boston, happy home of the
New Thought, cold to the New Educa
tion? We had supposed that the city
OF the three bills was full of the mod
ern educational improvements and
WITNESSES, and that her schools were
hung with all the frills and embroid
cries of the accomplished moderns
Yet the Boston transcript prints
such regrettably old-fashioned and
hunkerish stuff as this:
cit is fact of observation, ex plain
it how you will, that pupils who have
taken prizes for scholarship in gram.
mar schools Of good standing cannot
write letter free of blunders in spell.
ing; another fact, that pupils in nigh
schools, remarkably we'll read for their
years, are guilty of gross errors in
spelling still another, that pupils
who have the wit and brains and style
to write a charming letter, misspell
abominab!y /; and yet another, that
boys seeking entrances to colleges OF
the rank, able to pass examinations in
mathematics and science, spell afler
the fashion of witch As to the com
mon rules of photography, the igno-
rance that there are any worth trying
to understand and apply is amazing.''
Tho schools have more important
matters than spelling to attend to
and they have no time to waste on
foolish rudiments. Why, there are
the Chicago schoolchildren who study
street cleaning, municipal bookkeep-
ing, municipal reform and various 9th
er branches Of the world-shadowing
tree of sociology. They do conde-
scend to "visualized" reading the
spelling, and if you understand the
system according to which they learn,
you cant help being astounded by
their learning. We have seen fathers
weep tears of pride ard joy while ex-
amining the attainments Of their prog
eny. Show Jack the word "dog," for
example. He may deny all knowledge
of it. Begin 10 bark at once he re,
cognizes his old friend dog" Ask
Jill to spell "drum." If she is wise,
she refuses. Beat a tattoo and she
cries ''drum" or "rnb-a-dub-bub."
Some imperfectly educated parents
complain that their children can't
spell or even read tolerably, after
years at school. If the complaint be
true, what of it? We are to assume
that things much more precious than
the base mechanical art of spelling are
learned by those children. They learn
''to think they learn ''concentration;"
many of them can model in clay lit
tie and all can eat sandwiches and
try to sing. 1t is our own modest OBJ
servation that boys and girls like to
go to school better than they did in
our time. Why? Because they are
better and the schools are better; and
because so much time is not wasted
on the pitiful drudgery of spelling and
the three Rs. Whatever our children
learn or fail to learn, it is a great sat-
isfaction to feel that they are taught
in the right manner. If their unfor-
tunate begetters could only have had
the advantages of the improved meth
ods
''Let us start out with the idea,"
says our predamite Boston friend,
"that children can be trained to spell,
if they cannot he taught-spelling can
be made matter of memory, and be
acquired as habit" On the contra
ry, let us run away from 50 atrocious
a:'i antiqnatcI il belief Do we want
to make poll.parrots of our children :?
There are higher faculties than memo
ry. 1t is true that some of us did, by
means of hard work, drill and damna-
ble iteration learn to spell. We ought
to be ashamed instead of being proud
of that force of habit and memory.
Better not learn at all than learn by
the use of an unscienti6c method
Besides what is the use of learning
to spell? Qrthography is fluid, not
fixed. Here are the spelling reform
associations, busy in forcing us to use
new spellings. Every century has its
idiosyncrasies of spelling and pronun-
citation. We have to unlearn in age
much of what We had to learn in youth.
Even under the old rule OF primer and
spelling book, some great and good
men never could get high mark in
spelling. Everybody knows that the
Father of His Country was an arbitra-
ry speller, so bad a speller that good
old Jared Sparks thought it would be
sacrilegious to let posterity see tie
honest facts. In spite of his early