Year: 1873

such seductive'tltle as the "R0yal Road to
Reading" or Reading without Tears" and
must moreover hang out many bats in the
way of pictures and gilt covers designed to
lure little scholars unawares into the hard
path that leads to wisdom.


Every one, from Plato to Mrs. Malaprop,
has had his or her say about that much
worried subject, education. Nowadays it
almost seems as if every one had taken into
his head, or rather his fingers, to write
about it too, so constant is the shower of
little volumes under the guise of school
books which the press rains down upon us.
But among them ..all it is amazing how few
can hit rational plan Of teaching reading.
They all seem to be in league together to
make the frat sight of the Tree of Know
ledge unpleasant to the eyes, and the first
taste of its fruit as bitter to tbe taste as may
be. Their writer's clearly cannot grasp the
idea that the threofeld aim Of all primary
education ought to be, first, to show the
learner how to learn secondly, to make him
so relish what he has learnt that he may
long for more; thirdly, to mark every day
by teaching something that is new, but
nothing but what is true. No knowledge
gained in later years ever sticks so fast in
the memory as the seed first sown there.
The writer's of Primers then have it all their
own way. The field lies fallow. There are
no stumps of error as yet to be rooted out.
They may sow in it what they will. But if
they will SOW tares. from whence can it
bear good seed Z? Alas that they should
chiefly find delight in sowing tares. Our
Nep Code Progressive Readers and Royal
Readers are no whit better than their
fellows. They folloy the lead of those who
have gone astray before them, and, if
we had our way, would with them bs.forth-
with born away into obscurity among "our
failures" their sins being on the very
first page In No. 1. of each series we find
the same stumbling block set in the way Of
the young beginner. Both start off with
that array Of signs commonly called the
alphabet, bearing names that have no con-
nexion whatever with their sounds when
Joined together into words. Now to learn
the alphabet may be all very right and
proper for pupils who aspire only to reach
ing the standard of learning which Sir
Anthony Absolute deemed desirable in
woman-to wit, that she should know her
letters well enough to mark his linen, but
on no account so as to- be able to combine
them into words. For any one who looks
to getting beyond this it is merely clogging
the memory with quantity Of useless stuff.


But we are in advance of this, for do we
not contTiys, to make woe attendant on
every singles letter of the alphabet? Can
the G a az 1siess,,- -a--ssfsss14sSiA has
any cnn.non sense. it must feel that such
statement is untrue, though it may not have
the courage to say so. g A T must remain
see-d-tee till the end of time, and it would be
just as rational to affirm that it spells puSs,
or hen, or dog, as to insist that itspelis cat.


The phonetic system of teaching reading
is of course the only rational one Instead
of overstraining and overlooking the memory
with arbitrary DEGREES that such letters spell
such and such words, it brings the reason:
ing powers into play from the very first.
BY it the child learns the true sounds of the
vowcls, and then the force of the consonants
when in combination with the vowels. 1t
finds out that some Of the oonsonants are
dentals, some gutturals, and so on. At
last it begins to put. together these sounds.
which it now knows by sight, and finds that
they make some word already familiar to
its ear. Thus each renewed efforts is reward
ed by the delight Of a discovery. IF the
day ever comes when the world shall awake
to consciousness of the fact that nothing
ought to be taught but what is absolutely
true, the first step towards carrying out the
reform that must follow will be to sweep
from our nurseries all the
boxes Of letters and picture alphabets. A
the archer and B the butcher will have to
"moye on" with their fellows; the children
will soon find out that A and B, as they
pronounce them, have just-as little natural
with either of these worthless as
one and two have "buckle my shoe."


Saturday Review.