The alphabet. I have not thought it necessary to discuss the different methods of teaching the alphabet advocated by writers on education. The majority of these are, in my opinion, sufficiently successful. If children are not taught many letters at a time, or kept too long at each lesson, they do not, I believe, feel that dislike to learning the alphabet which it is stated they do.

Besides, children very often teach the alphabet to each other, and it is sometimes acquired by merely being in the room where it is continually a-repeating. The real drudgery of learning begins when the letters are fully known.

Steps in teaching each new lesson in First Book. The monosyllabic lessons ought to be taught in the following way: (1) The children should spell and pronounce each word-the book being open before them; (2) they should name, at sight, each word, as pointed to by the master, indiscriminately through the lesson; and (3) they should read each sentence correctly, joining the words in proper groups as already explained.

These steps should be followed in the teaching of each lesson, and the children should not be allowed to read any of the sentences until perfect in the naming of single words. This will prevent rote reading to a great extent.

I think if these suggestions on the teaching of the various reading books are carried out intelligently they will lead to success, and I do not think that, like some others usually given upon this subject, they trench unduly upon the extra hours of the teacher. They certainly require zeal and faithfulness, carefulness and attention, but no more than any honest man daily gives to the discharge of his duties.

CHAPTER III.

SPELLING.

Bad spelling common, proved by Civil Service examinations. The Times, referring to examinations made by the Civil Service Commissioners, says, 'that of the 1,972 disappointed candidates, all except 106 were rejected for the same species of defect. They had either no knowledge of arithmetic, or they could not spell. Of course,' it adds, 'these imperfections were coupled with others, but, as a matter of fact, orthography and arithmetic were the real stumbling-blocks in the way of success.'

There can be no more reliable test of the merits of the present systems of teaching spelling, and no more sweeping condemnation. Use of dictionaries, spelling-books, &c. By the old plan of teaching this subject, the pupils were compelled to commit to memory the uninteresting and disconnected columns of the dictionaries, expositors, or spelling-books in common use. They were obliged to go over them, again and again, without the smallest aid from association of ideas, until it was supposed that all the words were mastered. This was a drudgery more useless, more stupid, and more hopeless than to commit to memory all the pages of an almanac.1

Defects of old system. It possessed three great defects: (1) It was laborious, and made learning distasteful; (2) it could not be applied to the junior classes; and (3) it was unsuccessful.

1. Labour enormous. (1) The labour of such a system must have been very great. Every little fellow was, in fact, a small Hercules, daily engaged in a task from which the son of Jupiter would have retired in dismay.

2. Junior classes could not prepare, (2) By this system spelling could not possibly be taught to the junior classes, as children unable to read were incapable of preparing the tasks of which the spelling lesson consisted. And hence it happened, that many were obliged to leave school before commencing to practise spelling at all. The extent of such an evil will be correctly estimated by those who know how very many children must

1 Thayer.

necessarily be always in the junior classes, and for how very short a period children remain in our primary schools.

3.

Ineffectual. (3) But the most serious objection against it is that it was unsuccessful. No memory could possibly retain all these endless columns of disconnected words. They have nothing attractive in themselves, they have no bond of union by which the mind can be brought to consider them as a whole, and, as a necessary consequence, the picture so laboriously impressed to-day, must give place to a new one created by the studies of to-morrow. 6 Months and years are devoted to the undertaking, but after going through the whole spelling-book, perhaps a whole dictionary, till we can triumphantly spell zeugma, we have forgotten how to spell abbot, and we must begin again with abasement.' 1

Made worse by the introduction of certain obsolete and useless words. Irrational and ineffectual as this laborious system was, it was made worse by the way in which it was carried into practice. The columns over which the children were forced to pore for so many weary years, contained many words too far beyond the comprehension naturally expected from young children, together with words rarely, if ever, used, and some even entirely obsolete; such, for instance, as hight, wive, wot, zeugma, &c. The same time and the same labour were spent in getting off such words, and the same accuracy was required, as in the case of words whose constant recurrence in ordinary discourse gave them importance.

Change in the old system. This system is nearly extinct, but that which has taken its place still partakes too much of its character.

Dictionaries are indeed dispensed with, and the spelling-books in use are of a better description than before, but the pupils are still forced to commit tasks to memory without proper explanation, and are allowed to answer solely by rote. In many cases, also, the small columns of the lesson-books are committed to memory, just as the larger columns of the old expositor were formerly, or the pupils are called upon to spell isolated words taken at random from the reading-defects which vary very little from the system just treated of.

Founded upon the error of supposing that we spell by ear. Those who invented the old system thought that it was the sound or pronunciation of the word that chiefly guides us in spelling. Pronunciation has certainly something to do with correctness, or rather errors of pronunciation produce errors in spelling, as, for instance, perventiv, nomatif (case), nutur (verb),

1 Edgeworth.

SPELLING BY RULES.

59

singlar (number), feruitful, tunder (thunder), &c.; but we learn to spell not from the sound of the word, though inattention to sound is a prevalent cause of confusion, but from its appearance.

Others think we learn spelling by rules. Others think that we can learn to spell by rules, and for this purpose they have drawn up a series of these intended as guides to the spelling of certain classes of words. But, to be practically available, they must either be so worded as to admit of no exceptions, or they must give all the exceptions in the language. Our language, however, is so irregular, that the exceptions are often too numerous to be enumerated or remembered. Frequently the exceptions are also arranged into subsidiary rules, which have in their turn exceptions, that must be committed to memory like the others. And thus we have rules within rules, and no end of confusion.

The best spellers I know of never learned a rule, and some of the worst can repeat flippantly the very rules of which their written exercises contain frequent violations. Rules of spelling are something like rules of grammar, learned, repeated, and understood, but not effectual.

They may be learned, but the pupils should be taught to frame them themselves. As a matter of interest, and, in some cases, of benefit also, these rules may be studied; but I think that, instead of committing them to memory in the first instance, the children ought to be enabled to frame them for themselves. This they can do by laying before them a number of words which follow some one common plan. For instance, in conceive, receive, deceive, perceive, we have the sound of eeve represented by the letters eive, whereas in the words relieve, believe, grieve, thieve, reprieve, &c., the same sound is represented by the letters ieve. The child may be brought to see that it is the preceding consonant which determines the order of the letters. In the first words the consonant is c, and in the others it varies. He may hence draw the following rule: As the diphthongs ei and ie have the same sounds in the terminations ieve and eive, the learner is often at a loss to tell whether the e or the i should come first: as a general rule it may be laid down that e follows c, and i all other consonants.1

Good spelling depends on the eye. Good spelling depends very much, if not altogether, upon the power of the mind in retaining and reproducing the impressions conveyed to it by the eye.

Proofs.-1. Writing two forms of a word will determine the correct one. If one is in doubt as to which of two ways he

1 See Dr. Sullivan's Spelling Book Superseded.

will spell a word, he can usually convince himself by writing it down under both forms, and observing which of them meets his eye more naturally. The eye in this case is clearly the guide.

2. The eye will detect a wrong word out of all in a page. Again, if a person accustomed to reading, open any page in which there may be a misspelled word, it is upon that word, as is well known, that the eye will rest. The fact may be thus explained. The eye forms its picture point by point. It rests but upon a single spot at a time, even in the largest landscape, but so rapidly does it pass over all, that it may be said, as in reality it appears to do, to take in the picture as a whole. In passing over the page of a book, all the letters come in succession under its notice, and its attention is naturally fixed by any irregularity it discovers.

3. Spelling is but the analysis of a picture impressed by the eye. Every one can easily convince himself how it is that he spells, by noting the process which the mind goes through in any individual case selected. He will soon see that he does not remember the letters and their proper order, in the same way as he recollects any fact or date communicated to him, but that he recollects them something in the manner that he recalls the details of a picture.

If one, for instance, who has learned geography from a constant and careful study of maps, is asked a question about the Mediterranean Sea, the map of the world, from the vivid impression formerly made by careful and constant study of it, instantly rises, as it were, before him; and as he looks upon it, he discovers the bays and gulfs of the sea, its straits and outlets, the rivers which flow into it, and the general configuration of its shores, and he can as easily enumerate them as if the map, upon which he seems to gaze, were real and not mental. In the same way, when asked to spell any word, its picture, as it last appeared, rises before him, and from that picture he can repeat the letters and their order.

Opinions in support of this view. The following opinions support this view. Dr. Sullivan says, 'We must know how the word looks, and this the eye will enable us to do, for, as has been well said by an American writer, the eye in such cases may be said to remember.' Mr. Keenan says, 'Orthography is, in most instances, a memory of the eye. Were we to spell phonetically, it would, of course, be simply a matter of accuracy of ear; but since the sound of the word in our language is so seldom an indication of the exact letters or syllables which compose it, correctness must be traced to the

1 Thayer.