CM Series in Modern English

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Charlotte Mason in Modern English

Charlotte Mason's ideas are too important not to be understood and implemented in the 21st century, but her Victorian style of writing sometimes prevents parents from attempting to read her books. This is an imperfect attempt to make Charlotte's words accessible to modern parents. You may read these, print them out, share them freely--but they are copyrighted to me, so please don't post or publish them without asking.
~L. N. Laurio

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PART V - Lessons As Instruments Of Education

I. The Matter and Method of Lessons

We seem to live in an age of teaching. Those of us involved with education tend to take on too much of the responsibility, and parents are too willing to abdicate not only academics, but guidance of their children to teachers. And that's not what's best for the children.

Parents Should Consider the Various Academic Subjects

When parents aren't the ones teaching their own children, they tend to leave the choice of subjects taught as well as how to teach them in the hands of teachers or caregivers. Teachers, more than anyone else, are the ones who have dedicated themselves to this consideration, but parents should be giving thought to it, too. They should have their own carefully formed opinions about what subjects should be taught and the way they should be taught, not just for the sake of the teacher, but also for the sake of

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their children. Nothing gives more life and purpose to a teacher's work than knowing that his students and their parents are on his team.

Even when children go to schools where the teachers are well-qualified, parents still need to have insight into their children's education. They can help teachers stay accountable and not get into habits of professional educators such as placing too much value on proficiency [and tests] or favoring one subject over another for its own sake rather than for the benefit of the students. For the youngest children who are not yet old enough for school, it isn't good to let an unqualified caregiver plan the children's schedules. That will waste the children's time, but that's not the worst result. Even more serious is that children will be allowed to form intellectual habits that will hinder them later. Then when they do start school, the lessons will be over their heads, their work won't be done well and they will frustrate their teachers with passive resistance to her teaching.

Home is the Best Growing Ground for Young Children

Still, whatever advantages kindergarten or other preschools offer to children, learning at the home is what's ideal for them. It would be the best thing if the mother had time to devote herself to teaching them, but she's not usually able to do that. If she lives in town, she can send her children to school when they're six. If she lives in the country, she should have a governess [who can also act as a tutor]. The difficulty is finding a governess who is not only acquainted with the subjects she needs to teach, but also has some understanding of the nature of children and the art and purpose of education, someone capable of bringing out the best in children without any wasted effort or

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wasted time. Such a rare treasure doesn't just show up on the doorstep in answer to every classified ad. If such a perfect governess isn't to be found, then the mother will have to train a caregiver herself to do the job. In other words, she can use what she knows of education to set out the caregiver's duties. 'I'd like the children to learn to read in this way because...' or, 'I want the children to learn history in such a way that the lessons will have such and such effect.' Spending a half hour explaining instructions to a sensible caregiver should be all that's needed to secure a month of lessons for the children. If the lessons are planned well, a lot can be accomplished in a very little time so that the children have as much time as possible to play and exercise in the fresh air.

Three Questions for the Mother

If the mother is supposed to explain to the caregiver what she expects of learning writing, French, geography, then she must have definite opinions herself. She must ask herself seriously, Why must the children learn at all? What should they learn? How should they learn it? If she takes the time to give serious consideration to these questions, she will then be in a position to direct her children's education. At the same time, she will be surprised to find that three quarters of the time her children have been spending on their lessons has been a waste of time and energy.

Children Learn So That They Can Grow

Why must children learn? Well, why do we eat? Isn't it so that our bodies can live and grow and be able to do what they need to do? In the same way, the mind needs to be fed and developed with its own kind of food. Our minds need the mental sustenance of collected knowledge. But our bodies need more than food, they also need the exercise that's appropriate to

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each part of the body. A young mother told me the other day that she had such skinny arms that she never liked to show them, but carrying a five-month-old baby had cured that. She could now toss and lift him easily, and her arms were shapely enough that she was no longer embarrassed by them. Just as our limbs grow with exercise, so does mental effort in specific portions of the brain make those parts stronger. People tend to overlook the fact that the mind must have its food. We tend to think we should learn to know, rather than learning so we can grow [as persons]. Parrot-like repeating of lessons and cramming insufficiently-learned facts to pass a test are inferior ways of taking in information because our minds don't really assimilate knowledge that's gained that way.

Doctoring the Material of Knowledge

On the other hand, specialists are apt to attach too much importance on separate mental 'faculties.' We see books about education that include elaborately planned programs where individual lessons are supposed to develop perspective, or imagination, or judgment. This idea of 'faculties' comes from a false analogy that likens the mind to the body. This concept of the mind as a collection of separate entities is about to become as obsolete as the idea of phrenology, where reading bumps on the head is supposed to provide information about the person. It appears now that the mind is one unified entity that can't be divided, although it can do different things. This kind of contriving to artificially sort and separate knowledge so the child can digest it is unnecessary. A healthy child's mind can direct itself and apply itself to do whatever it needs to in order to assimilate whatever knowledge is presented. Almost any subject that our common sense tells us is good for children will exercise various powers of the mind at the same time, if it's presented the right way.

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Children Learn in Order to Get Ideas

The second reason children learn is so that fruitful ideas are sown in the fertile ground of their minds. The dictionary describes an idea as the image that the mind forms of anything outside itself, whether tangible or abstract. If the business of education is to provide the child with ideas, then any teaching that doesn't leave the child with a new mental image in his mind has failed. Think of the listless way that children often slog through reading and long lists and geography and math, and you'll see that it's rare for any part of a lesson to flash upon the children with enough vividness to leave a mental picture. It's not too far-fetched to say that a school day in which a child receives no new idea is a wasted day, no matter how diligently he has completed his lessons.

Ideas Grow and Produce After Their Own Kind

The dictionary isn't quite accurate in its definition of an idea. An idea is more than a mental image. It is more like a spiritual seed with living energy--it has power to grow and produce after its own kind. It is the very nature of ideas to grow and propogate. It has the same mysterious properties of plant seeds. If an idea is planted in a child's mind, it will secrete its own food, grow, and bear the fruit of many more similar ideas. Our own experience confirms this. If we become interested in some public person, or revolutionary new theory, it seems like, for days afterwards, we are constantly hearing or reading something about it. It seems as if the whole world is thinking about that very thing that's on our mind. The fact is, the new idea that we've

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received is in the act of growing, and in the process, it's reaching out to get the food it needs. This feeding process happens with intense keenness during childhood. Ideas grow faster in the minds of children than in adults.

Sir Walter Scott and George Stephenson Worked With Ideas

Scott got a whole group of ideas from the tales, ballads and folklore of the Scottish Border countryside where he grew up. His boyhood was enriched with these ideas, they flourished and made more ideas, and the Waverley novels were the fruit they produced. George Stephenson, as a boy, made little clay engines with his friend, Thomas Tholoway. Later, when he was working as an engineman, he was always observing his engine, cleaning and studying it. An engine was his dominant idea and its fruit was the invention of the locomotive.

The Value of Dominant Ideas

But what does this theory of dominant ideas have to do with education? This: give a child one single valuable idea, and you've done more for his education than if you tried to stuff a barrel full of information into his mind. Any child who grows up with a few dominant ideas in his mind has his own self-education taken care of and his career marked out.

Lessons Must Provide Ideas

In order to be receptive to an idea, the mind needs to have an attitude of eager attention. We've already mentioned how to manage that elsewhere. One more thing--a single idea may be so fruitful that the child becomes fixated on it. For that reason, parents can't allow the child's selection to be left to random chance. His school lessons should provide plenty of ideas that will go on educating him.

Children Learn to Get Knowledge

It isn't just to help intellectual growth and

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provide ideas that the child learns. The common notion that children learn so they can get knowledge is also true. It's so true, in fact, that the knowledge received in childhood makes more of an impression than anything he will ever learn and sets the foundation for everything else learned later in life. Yet at the same time, the child can only learn so much. His mind is like a bottle with a narrow neck, and it makes sense to be selective and pour in only the best knowledge.

Diluted Knowledge

But the poor children are so often let down by those who should have their best interests at heart. Adults who aren't mothers tend to talk and think even more childishly than the child himself in their attempts to attract his interest. If children talk twaddle, it's because grown-ups have talked twaddle to him. If left to himself, a child's remarks are wise and sensible, considering the experience his age has afforded him. Mothers seldom talk down to their children. They know them too well and, therefore, have more respect for them. But professional educators, whether they write the curriculum or do the teaching, are apt to present a tiny grain of real knowledge diluted in a whole gallon of talk, leaving it up to the child to do the work of figuring out which part is the knowledge and separating it from the flood of worthless twaddle.

Dr. Arnold's Knowledge as a Child

Generally, children who grow up with adults and never have juvenile books are better able to glean from the literature of adults. It is said of Dr. Arnold that when he

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was three years old, he was given a gift from his father, Smollett's book The History of England as a reward for correctly identifying pictures and portraits and telling about their historical relevance. That game probably laid the foundation for his love of history, which made him famous. When he worked at Oxford, he was able to quote from Dr Priestly's Lectures on History from memory accurately--although he hadn't seen the book since he was eight years old! Of course, he was an exception. My point is, if he had been reading the typical twaddle that is forced on most children, he would never have been able to remember entire passages even a week later, much less forty years after reading the book.

The Kind of Literature Appropriate for Children

The kind of weak literature we see today both in their stories and lessons is a reaction against the old days when little children were expected to memorize reams of data by rote that they didn't even understand. Dates, numbers, rules, catechisms, densely packed pamphlets of information were thought to be the best material to educate children. We have gone to the other extreme and given children school books with pretty pictures and sweet texts, almost as interesting as story books. What we don't realize is that this merely gives children the same tedious facts, but in a weak, diluted form--and plenty of it. Teachers and parents are meticulous about the diet that nourishes their children's bodies, but yet they're

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careless about the mental diet they provide for the child's mind. I am anxious to discuss this issue about the quality of lessons and literature for children.

Four Tests That We Should Apply to Children's Lessons

We see that children's lessons should (a) provide mental nourishment for mind growth, (b) provide several things for the mind to do for exercise, (c) provide fruitful ideas and (d) provide knowledge that is accurate, valuable in its own right, and interesting enough to remember with profit and pleasure even in adulthood. Before we apply these four tests to the different subjects that children are usually taught, I would like to review a few points from previous pages.

Review of Six Points Already Considered

1. The knowledge that is most valuable to a child is what he gets in the open air (with some guidance) by seeing with his own eyes, hearing with his own ears and feeling with his own fingers.

2. School time has no right to steal the time that the child is entitled to have for long hours of daily exercise and discovery.

3. The child should be taken every day, if at all possible, to some scenic place where he can find new things to examine and add to his collection of knowledge. His attention should be drawn to a certain flower or boulder or bird or tree. He should be encouraged to investigate common things in his environment because that will be the foundation of his scientific knowledge.

4. Active, healthy playing is just as important as school lessons for both physical health and mental brain growth. Children need time for both play and lessons.

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5. The child should be left to himself a lot, although with supervision. This way he can go off and use the information he has received in his own way, and be more open to the influence of nature.

6. The child's happiness depends on his progress. He should enjoy his lessons, and there should never be friction over schoolwork.

With so much expected of his lessons, let's next consider what he should learn and how it should be taught.

II. The Kindergarten As A Place to Learn

The Mother is the best Kindergarten Teacher

We already know the benefits of the kindergarten school. Its success requires rare qualities in a teacher. She must be cultured, have some understanding of the psychology and art of education, be sympathetic with children, be tactful, have common sense, possess a lot of information about common things, have a cheerful disposition and be able to manage children well. The kindergarten method depends on these things as part of its contrived method to make children comfortable with a Superior Intelligent Being--their teacher. With the right teacher, a kindergarten is beautiful, like a taste of heaven. But with an ordinary, commonplace teacher, the charming songs and games and activities become very wooden. If the essence of kindergarten rests on one person who serves as sort of a spiritual enchantress to the children, then shouldn't a child's own mother be the ideal kindergarten teacher? Who else has as much tact, sympathy, common sense and culture?

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Home Doesn't Need to be Converted into a Kindergarten

Although every mother is a kindergarten teacher in the sense that Froebel meant, that doesn't mean that every home should be run like a kindergarten classroom. The methods and activities planned for a kindergarten class are only a way to make sure that certain principles are carried out, and the mother can find out for herself what these principles are according to Froebel or she can even come up with her own. For instance, in the kindergarten class, the child's senses are carefully trained according to a specific progression: he looks, listens, and touches to learn. He learns about sizes, colors, shapes and numbers. He learns to copy and to tell back precisely. In this training of the senses, the kindergarten method duplicates the same method that a baby uses by himself as he studies a ball or rattle.

Field of Knowledge Too Confined

Even with this emphasis on training the child's senses, it's yet possible to undervalue the child's ability to learn by investigating things with his senses. The area in which he is allowed to gather his data is often artificially limited. During his first six or seven years, children should be becoming intimately acquainted with the properties of every natural object they can reach rather than confined to the space and schedule of a classroom. It's true that kindergarten affords him knowledge of exact ideas such as the difference between a parallelogram and a hexagon, or a primary and secondary color, and he learns to see carefully enough to duplicate a folded paper or woven yarn, but this is at the expense of a lot of the real knowledge of the outside world that should have been gained during his best window of opportunity. The nice, exact graduated way that kindergarten schedules learning is fine, but the mother has the advantage of being able to provide it casually by fitting it around the child's normal routine. A mother isn't going to

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let contrived lessons replace the natural, wider training of the senses that is the most important duty for her children.

A child in a kindergarten class is only given tasks that are within his ability to do, and then he is expected to do them perfectly, which is a good principle, as we have discussed. But I have seen a four-year-old child blush and look as ashamed as if he had been caught lying, just because he had folded his paper irregularly. But a mother or caregiver is able to see that children do their small tasks perfectly--and this is what's important--without the child experiencing any of the stress that children feel in trying to perform to please their beloved smiling goddess, their kindergarten teacher.

Training of an Eye for Detail and a Careful Hand

Kindergarten activities provide opportunities for training the eye and hand. But at home, a thousand opportunities present themselves naturally in trifling things like straightening a tablecloth or a picture, or wrapping a package. Every conscientious mother can think of a thousand ways to provide these kinds of opportunities naturally as she goes about her daily routine. Still, as a way of providing methodical teaching and having fun, it's fine to use some games, songs and kindergarten activities--so long as the mother doesn't put too much stock in them and depend on them for education. Everything the child does should be used to educate him.

'Sweetness and Light' in the Kindergarten

In the kindergarten classroom, a child is surrounded in an atmosphere of sweetness and light. A sturdy little five year old doesn't want to be a jumping frog with the rest of the class, so the kindergarten teacher comes along with

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calm, unruffled gentleness, takes his hand and leads him away from the circle. He is not reprimanded, but since he doesn't want to do what everyone else is doing, he is not allowed to stay in the circle. The next time, he is content to join in and be a frog. This is a good principle for disciplining children. Don't treat a child who doesn't want to go along with the program too seriously. Don't assume that he's being naughty. If he doesn't want to participate in harmony with everyone else, just leave him out. Avoid friction. Above all, don't let him disturb the gentle, serene atmosphere. Simply remove him from everyone else when he doesn't want to cooperate.

Kindergarten claims to acknowledge the joyful nature of children, to allow them full and free expression of the exuberance within them, without the mischief that tends to accompany children who are left to themselves to find outlets for their energy. This combination of gladness and gentleness is exactly what should be cultivated at home with children. The rough, noisy behavior sometimes seen in children isn't necessary, especially inside. But the children should be happy, and even a momentary absence of sunshine in her children's faces should be a cause of grave concern to the mother. In general, we can say that some of the principles used in kindergarten are just the ones that a mother should strive to have in bringing up her children at home. A kindergarten class is only one of several ways to carry out these principles, but is unnecessary and, in the wrong hands, kindergarten practices may even become wooden and artificial. But they can work nicely with a mother's overall scheme of education in her own family.

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III. Further Consideration Of The Kindergarten

The Childhood of Tolstoy

No field of research has as little real study as the world of childhood. We see children every day, but no one has explored the inner workings of a child's mind. Thoughtful people suspect that our lack of knowledge causes us to make mistakes that injure children seriously. For example, all of our schemes of education presume that a child's mind and inner person starts out very small and grow as his physical body grows. But we don't know that that's the case. Children keep their thoughts to themselves for the most part, except for the charm and frank comments they sometimes share with us. But on those rare occasions when we do get a glimpse into a child's mind, we are startled that he has a keener intelligence, wiser thoughts and a larger soul than we adults. When a genius [such as Tolstoy] lifts the veil by writing about his own childhood, we are very grateful. When enough people, both geniuses and average people, have shared about their childhoods, there may be enough data to do a study from that. Then maybe we'll understand more about how a child thinks and realize what unfair things we've put children through in the name of education. In Leo Tolstoy's book Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, he writes about his childhood so personally that a mother will recognize her own child in the portrait he gives us.

'You're like my own dear mother,'

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wrote little Leo in a poem he wrote for his grandmother's birthday. Later he felt ashamed for it and sure that his father and grandmother would discover what a hypocrite he was. 'Why did I have to write that? She isn't even here, and I didn't have to write that. I do love grandma, and I respect her, but she's still not the same, and now I have lied.' This is the kind of thing children think about. We read it and recognize our own dim, childish memories from a time long ago when our own conscience was that exquisitely delicate. That memory should remind us to be careful of the tender consciences of children.

'The Story of a Child'

While I'm on this subject, I'd like to mention another book where a child reveals her inner world. This child was once called to give evidence long, long ago. This kind of study is very valuable because it forces us to remember our own childhood, to relive it and reproduce it with our imagination. This is the only way to understand children because children, in spite of their sincere openness and inclination to chatter, are not that easy to understand. They never say out loud the sort of things written in Margaret Deland's The Story of a Child. [Page images of some of this story are available from The Atlantic Monthly] Children don't explain these things to each other because they know that other children already know them. They don't tell grown-ups because they don't think grown-ups, not even their mothers, would understand. The family dog might, so children's secrets will be whispered in the dog's ear while the mother tries in vain to get her child to open up to her.

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A poem says, Each person is alone in his own world of happiness or sadness. Our lonely spirits live and move about, separate from each other. We see things around us as happy or sad, depending on the mood of our heart.

And that's true even more for children than with ourselves. It's just a part of our nature that we can't change. The only way we'll ever be able to really be intimate with a child is to reach down deep and remember our own childhood. But we usually think of that memory as unimportant and let it slip away. So, Margaret Deland helps us to recover our own childhoods in her story about Ellen, although there's a difference. Our impulses seemed just as irrational, trivial, loving heroic and bothersome to grown-ups then, as Ellen's do to the adults in the story. We remember those days with tenderness, but also with discomfort. It does us no harm if the story makes us a little more humble, a little more careful, convinced that there's more going on in the child's mind than they're telling us. They need us to help and bless them. However, we disagree with one thing the author said. She thinks that it would be good for adults to understand children better, yet she says that the children aren't harmed too much by not being understood--after all, most of us grew up just fine in spite of not being understood and other difficulties. That may be true in one sense, but in another sense, one of the saddest things in the world is when magical, wonderful children mature into common, uninteresting adults who don't ruin the world, but don't exactly make the world a better place, either.

Tolstoy's childhood and little Ellen seem at first glance to be very different from what we've been talking about in kindergartens. But, as a matter of fact, seeing what children are really like from these two examples proves our point very well.

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It wasn't long ago that the most important teacher at the University of Edinborough was Sir James Simpson, who discovered chloroform. Recently his nephew, Prof Simpson, who succeeded him, was asked by the University's librarian which science books in the library were not needed so she could get rid of them. He told her just to take all the textbooks more than ten years old and stick them in the cellar! Science is obsolete in ten years. Education is a science. What seemed true ten years ago, much less a hundred years ago, is known to be not the whole truth today.

'Concepts beyond their own understanding were given to those exalted visionaries.'

Depending on how urgent we feel our educational effort is, we'll feel more or less appreciation and inclination to implement the truths of pioneers who had prophetic insight, pioneers like Froebel. Unfortunately, although we humans would like to take the easy way out, there is no single educational guru. We have to think for ourselves and work out the best way to raise our children.

What We Owe to Froebel

We reverence Friedrich Froebel. We share many of his great thoughts. What he said wasn't new. Some of it, like the child's relations to the universe, has been around since the days of Plato. Others are common knowledge and experience, which proves that they are true. Froebel collected various thoughts and practices that were scattered and combined them into one system. But even more importantly, he inspired an enthusiasm for childhood that still continues. The

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classic Froebel kindergarten teacher is a true artist. She is inspired in her work, and most sincere teachers catch some of her enthusiasm, her sense of the beauty of childhood and her joy with her work.

What a Person Needs

Yet I have one reservation. Our first priority should be preserving the individuality and personality of the child. People do not grow in gardens, much less hothouses. It's no advantage to a person to have his entire environment artificially adapted to his needs. Precise sun and shade and pruning and fertilizing are fine for a plant grown merely to be of use and enjoyment to its owner. But people have bigger uses in the world. [Kindergarten, literally, means 'children's garden.'] A mother or teacher who considers her child a plant to be tended by herself as the gardener might have tragic results if human nature--both hers and the child's--didn't intervene.

Nature as a Teacher

The idea that says we need to add to Nature from the time a child is born is dangerous. Nature does require some guidance from us--some restraining, a lot of faithful watching. But other than that, the wisest things parents can do is give the child space, and leave as much as possible to Nature, and to God.

Danger of Undervaluing Children's Intelligence

After watching a seven-year-old do cartwheels down the length of an entire street, or a group of little girls dancing to a barrel organ, or small children playing house on their front steps, or a small girl running an errand to the store for four

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items and required to bring home the exact change, we are less convinced that children need formal kindergarten for physical, mental and moral development. In fact, I wonder if, by devising and depending upon a system, kindergarten doesn't greatly underestimate the intelligence of children. I know a three-year-old girl who was found alone in the living room by a visitor. It was spring, so the visitor thought he would entertain her by talking about 'the pretty baa-lambs.' But she looked at him solemnly with her big blue eyes and said, 'Isn't it dwefful howwid to see a pig killed!' We hope she didn't witness the killing of a pig, or even hear of it, but she made a very effective protest against twaddle, as good as any lady of society. What kinds of things do children play for weeks? The Boer War in the rocky hills of southern Africa, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe and Friday, the battle between Persians and Greeks at Thermopylae, Ulysses and the suitors. Even preschoolers play along at these with their older siblings. And if children would talk to us about their feelings, we'd probably find out that they're bored by games where they frisk like lambs, flap their fins and twiddle their fingers like butterflies.

We All Like to be Humored

You might think that children seem happy to do these things in kindergarten. The strange thing about human nature is that we tend to like being managed by people who go to the trouble of playing on our good nature. Some people even allow their dogs to affect them as if they were

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real people. If even we adults have our weaknesses, why should it be any surprise that a child can be coaxed to do anything by a teacher who smiles and acts so charming? It's true that W.V., the child that the world is in love with, sang her little kindergarten songs as if she enjoyed them, but that was to amuse the grown-ups at bedtime. W.V. had better things to think about the rest of the time. ['W.V.' probably refers to the main character in children's books by William Canton, written about his daughter Winifred.. An article he wrote about 'W.V.'s Bedtime' is online.]

Teachers Mediate Too Much

There are probably still kindergartens where a lot of twaddle is read and sung, where the teacher is convinced that she should write the poems, compose the songs and draw the pictures for her students. The children probably feel like Wordsworth when he wrote 'the world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.' Their teacher is with them too much! Everything is planned, expected, suggested--by her. No other personality can reach the children. No book, no picture, no song, not even Nature itself can approach the children without her processing it first. There is no room left for the children's spontaneity or personal initiation.

The Danger of Charisma

Most of us are misled by the very qualities that are our virtues. The zeal and enthusiasm so prized in the kindergarten teacher may be her undoing. 'But the children seem so happy and good!' Yes, no home can be that cheerful and peaceful. Yet home is a better place for children to grow. I am delighted that a leading follower of Froebel is speaking against the element of charisma in the teacher, but

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the fact is, that charisma is a major element in a successful kindergarten. We all know how that sort of influence has a homogenizing effect on individuality. And, besides that, the artificially controlled atmosphere and environment of the kindergarten classroom isn't good for children.

'Kindergarten' is a False Analogy

The world suffered on the day when educational experts invented the word 'kindergarten.' Originally, the idea probably was a garden life spent outdoors for children. But this isn't the first time that a false analogy has killed a philosophy. The pleasant garden life became a rigidly-ordered hothouse where the children were the plants! That analogy appealed to the orderly, scientific minds of Germans, who don't approve of any spontaneous, irregular movement. Culture, prescribed stimulus, sweetness and light became elements of a formula for a great educational system. From potting shed to frame to flower bed, the little plant receives everything in carefully controlled amounts to maximize growth. The plants appears healthy, stays neatly in place in the flower bed, and soon brings forth its flower.

Thinking of people as analogies is always dangerously misleading. Man has no equivalent in nature. The plant analogy is very attractive, which makes it even more misleading. It's rare for a plant to show purpose, but it's normal for a person. The result of any way of thinking will be influenced by that thinking, and to base education on a garden/plant analogy either

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insults God [because it implies that people are no more than plants], or it results in artificially controlling and tampering with the natural, spontaneous development of God's creation, a real human child.

Formal Mother-Games are Too Much for an Infant

First of all, let's discuss scientifically devised mother games, which is a sweet idea because mothers implement these games with love. Yet, consider that a little baby is very much in tune to his mother's moods. His little face clouds with distress or beams with delight in response to her expressions. When left to themselves, the mother and baby play their own unique little games. He jumps and pulls and yells and giggles and crawls and kicks and gurgles with joy. In the midst of all this play, he is learning what he may and may not do. His hands and feet and arms and legs and fingers and toes are in continuous movement when he's awake. His mouth, eyes and ears are keen and eager. Everything in the natural play between mother and baby is done just for fun with no agenda on the part of either of them; even the mother is as happy to play as he is. Yet Nature is making sure that this play is utilized efficiently for the baby. All kinds of development is happening at a greater rate in the first two years than in any other time of life. But the amount is just right, not too much. When the baby has had enough, he sleeps. Then along comes a well-meaning educational specialist and offers to make this play more productive. The new scientifically proven games are so lovely and fascinating and the baby might as well be doing them as his 'meaningless' jumps and pats. What no one realizes is that the new games are adding more work to the baby's already full agenda in those first two years. His awareness of his mother is so keen that he picks up the subtle pressure in the new play in spite of her smiles and sweet words. He responds by trying even harder. His nerve center and brain power are worked more than Nature intended, and some of his innocent joy in living is taken from him. Although his

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little baby responses to his mother's extra attention are cute, he has less stored power to develop in his own unique areas of giftedness.

The Company of Same-Age Peers is too Stimulating for a Child

Now follow this baby as he grows to kindergarten age and has the stimulus of classmates his own age. It certainly is stimulating! Even for us grown-ups, no group is as stimulating as a number of people our own age and social position. That's one reason why college is so fun. Being with same-age peers is good fun for all young people for a limited time. But twenty-year-olds have some self control. They don't generally let over-stimulation make them act unacceptable, although even twenty year olds sometimes let the situation get the better of them and don't manage themselves well. So what can be expected of a preschooler? Just because a child looks calm and unemotional doesn't mean he is. The spark and excitement of being with our equals from time to time can stir us up in a healthy way. But for every day, being in a mixed group with different ages, like we get in family life, makes for the most rest and room for individual development. We have all seen children who are more sensible, reasonable, fun and resourceful at home than they are at school.

The Danger of Usurping Nature

The more completely organized and appealing kindergarten is, the more dangerous it is. It's possible to "help" Nature so much that we usurp her, and then our contrived activities deprive the child of the time and space to let Nature do its work. 'Go see what Thomas is doing and make him stop,'

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is not wise practice. Thomas needs to have the freedom to do whatever he wants to with his arms and legs, unless it's time to sit properly at the meal table. He should run and jump and bounce and tumble, lie on his tummy watching a worm, or lie on his back watching bees in a fruit tree. Nature will look after him and inspire him to want to know lots of things. There must be someone around to tell him what he wants to know. He will want to do all kinds of things, and he needs someone to show him how. He will want to try being many things, including some naughty things, and someone needs to be there to guide him.

Importance of Personal Initiative

Here is the real crux of the kindergarten issue. The busy mother doesn't have time to be always available to answer questions, give instruction and provide guidance. It's impossible to keep her child from developing bad habits. But there's more to training a child than habits. Education is a life as well as a discipline. Good health, strength, alertness, bright eyes and quick movement are gained from a free outdoors life. As far as habits, the most useful, powerful habit anyone can have is the habit of personal initiative. Resourcefulness will enable a family of children to invent their own games and things to do through a whole, long summer. That's worth a lot more than a lot of knowledge about cubes and hexagons. Learning to be resourceful doesn't come from continual intervention by the mother. It mostly comes from masterly inactivity.

Parents and Teachers Must Create Opportunities

Our biggest educational mistake is thinking we need to mediate too much. Nature is her own mediator. She herself finds work for the eyes, ears, taste and touch. She presents puzzles to challenge the mind and feelings to inspire the heart. The

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mother's (or teacher's) part in the early years (actually, all through life) is to provide opportunities, and then to get out of the way, staying in the background in case a guiding or restraining hand is badly needed. Mothers abdicate their duty and put their children into what they believe are better hands [kindergarten] because they don't understand that wise letting alone is the main thing they need to do. Every mother has a servant named Nature to arrange the appropriate work and rest for her child's mind and muscles and senses.

In one way, poor children are better off than rich ones. Poor children learn naturally from the routine of their home life. It's possible to get more mileage from home life with some ordering of the child's routine. Taking care of themselves and their own little things can be educational in itself. At age six or seven, more formal lessons can begin. These lessons don't need to be watered down or presented in a dumbed down version for the children's keen minds to learn from them.

'Only' Children

What about only children, or children with only a baby brother who's too young to play with? Isn't kindergarten a huge benefit for these lonely children? Maybe, although a neighbor child as a friend, or a lively young teen, might be better. Only children can teach themselves to paint, glue, cut paper, knit, weave, hammer and saw, model with clay and sand, and build castles with blocks. Some may even have taught themselves to read, write and count as well as collecting all kinds of knowledge and concepts about the world around them, by age six or seven. The important thing is, the child should only do these things because he chooses, so long as

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he is encouraged to do whatever little projects he attempts with a standard of excellence.

The Child Should Have Freedom To Order Some of his Own Life

The routine of family life will provide the peace of an ordered life. For the rest of his time, there should be more free time for growing than even the most charming school can afford. Just because lessons are disguised as games doesn't make them a good idea. Children want the freedom to play and the space to create their own rules and games and pretend roles. Most of us don't have much opportunity to order our own lives. It's nice to let children have that opportunity while they can, and experience the joyous experience of deciding what to do, and when and how, in their play.

Helen Keller

What I've said about natural development being better than a system that's too organized is supported with evidence that is uniquely valuable to the study of education. I'm talking about Helen Keller's autobiography.

At nineteen months old, Helen had meningitis and lost her sight and hearing and, as a result, couldn't speak. She never recovered her lost senses. Here was a soul totally shut off and sealed from the rest of the world. There was no way for any stimulus or information to approach except through the single sense of touch. Yet her book The Story of My Life, which she typed by herself with hardly any revision, is a classic for its pure, rich style alone, not to mention the fascination of the subject matter. How was this miracle accomplished? Helen says that a prison of darkness enveloped her childhood, except for a few impressions. There were roses, which she was able to smell. There was love, although she was not a loving child then. When

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she was seven, Anne Sullivan came to be her teacher. She had been blind herself for some years and had been at the Perkins Institute for the Blind, which was founded by Dr. Howe, the man who unlocked the mind of Laura Bridgeman. But Anne Sullivan was not just the result of an institution. She was a wonderfully sensible, decent person and trusted her own resourcefulness. She was aware from the beginning that her job was to liberate the personality of her student, not to impose her own. Helen Keller says that the arrival of her teacher was like Israel's coming up from Egypt. She heard what seemed like God's voice from Mt Sinai saying that 'Knowledge is love and light and vision.' Then she tells the amazing story of how it was all done, how the word 'water' was the key that unlocked the window of her mind, and the word 'love' unlocked her closed heart. After that, more words came every day, bringing new ideas. This imprisoned, desolate child entered a larger world of thought and knowledge and gladness and insight than most of the rest of us do who can see and hear. The tool in this great accomplishment was nothing more than the familiar alphabet in sign language, followed by books in Braille.

Anne Sullivan's Views on Systems of Education

Like all great discoveries, the unlocking of Helen's human soul was marked by simplicity in all its individual steps. Miss Sullivan had little use for psychologists and their methods. She would not submit Helen to experiments and refused to allow her to be treated as a phenomenon, but insisted that she be treated as a person. She said, 'I don't want any more kindergarten materials. I am getting suspicious of elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to

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suppose that every child is some kind of idiot who has to be taught how to think. But if a child is left to himself, he will think more and better, although he may take more time. Let him come and go when he wants, let him handle real things and draw his own conclusions by himself instead of sitting in a classroom at a little round table while a sweet-voiced teacher suggests that he build a wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow from strips of construction paper, or make straw trees glued to pots made of beads. Such teaching fills the mind with contrived associations that have to be unlearned before a child can develop his own ideas from real first-hand experiences.' It's a great thing to have a new kind of study of education, one in which we envision the human mind triumphing, not only over insurmountable natural obstacles, but over the dead wall of artificial systemized education. That can hinder a poor child more completely than blindness and deafness hindered Helen Keller.

Kindergarten in the United States

The question of whether kindergarten is the best way to educate young children is so important that I think the Board of Education's Special Reports should be read by all educators.

We can see the epitome of educational theory in action in the US. I say 'theory' rather than 'practice' because the American mind seems severely logical (like the French mind) and very impulsive. A new theory appears, they discuss it, and the next thing you know, they've put it to trial in some grand scheme for the betterment of their people's education. In other words, educational science in America seems to be more deductive (taking a general theory and assuming that specific systematic measures will work based on that)

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than inductive (seeing which specific practices seem to work and drawing a conclusion from that, and then using that to come up with a general theory). In America, theories are implemented with surprising zeal and sincerity doing all kinds of experimental practices [deductive]. The opposite, inductive, would arrive at a theory only after trying all kinds of experimental practices, each of which shed a little more light on the issue. Perhaps the American way of deducing is easier, and, really, they end up experimenting anyway, so maybe what they're doing is a little inductive after all. Kindergarten is a good example. Although the word is German, kindergartens really aren't that common in Germany. Froebel's ideas have been developed more in America. His idea about kindergarten has become so trendy there that it almost has cult popularity, and the teachers are like prophets. But even now, its popularity is waning.

Mr. Thistleton Mark Talks About Kindergarten

Mr. Thistleton Mark wrote a very useful paper called Moral Education in American Schools. He said that even hardcore Froeblians eventually come to need more than the unsupported dogma of great reform. The very word 'kindergarten' is no longer limited to the specific methodology that Froebel had in mind. It is now more of a generic term. American educationalists are moving towards the broader, more natural idea of education, one closer to the phrase, 'Education is a life.' But I wish they'd stop using the term 'kindergarten.' It strains the mind to use Froebel's word for his narrow concept as a label for the more generous and living practices that are actually in use today. Even improved

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kindergartens still struggle under the confines of Froebel's original system. Dr Stanley Hall says just that in our next section.

Dr Stanley Hall Talks About Kindergarten

Dr Hall said that the most important difference Americans had made in Froebel was mother-games, where the mother dispenses all of the knowledge in kindergarten. She uses simple doggerel, passionless music and mediocre pictures about mundane childhood events that specialists have decided children need to think about. I tried these materials with the best of intentions. I read the stories, strummed the songs and looked at the pictures. I gave lectures where I tried to infuse that system of education with whatever meaning I could. But now I believe that they encourage teachers to be unscientific and unphilosophical. Such lessons may not even be sound. It's time to replace outdated systems of education with the better ways that are available now.

Another problem with kindergarten is its emphasis on 'gifts and occupations.' Froebel was wise in coming up with this concept, but those who have implemented it haven't done it well enough to do the idea justice. He thought his system was a perfect curriculum to teach children to play and keep busy doing useful things, but he was wrong. His system may have been good for deprived children in rural areas, but for children who are used to the stimulation of the modern city, his system is artificial and dull. With Dr. Hall's comments, I must end this brief

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consideration of the very important question,--Is kindergarten the best place to train a child?

IV.--Reading

When to Teach Reading is Open to Discussion

Reading is the first of our instruments of education. But, should a child absorb the ability to read unconsciously, starting from the time he's a baby, or should all attempts to give reading lessons wait until the child is 6 or 7 years old and is more ready? In a helpful letter that Susanna Wesley sent to her son John, we read her description of how she taught her children to read:

Susanna Wesley's Reading Plan

She says, 'None of them was taught to read until they were five years old, except Kezzy. I was pressured to teach her earlier, and it took her years to learn to read what the other children learned in a few months. Here is how I taught reading: The day before a child's first reading lesson was to begin, the house was cleaned and set in order. Every child was given a list of tasks and chores to do and instructed not to come into the teaching room between 9-noon, and between 2-5, because we'd be doing reading lessons in there. The first day, the child was expected to learn all the letters. All of the children learned it in a day except for Molly and Nancy. It took them a day and a half to learn them perfectly, and I thought they were less intelligent because of it. After all, the other children learned it so quickly. Samuel, who was the first child I taught, learned the alphabet in just a few hours. In February (1696), the day after he turned five we started his

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reading lessons. As soon as he knew the letters, we began with the first chapter of Genesis. I taught him to spell the first verse, and then to read it again and again until he could read it smoothly without hesitating. Then we did the same with the second verse. Soon he could learn ten verses at a time. Between Easter (Apr 22) and Whitsuntide (Jun 17, Pentecost; 50 days after Easter), he had made so much progress that he could read an entire chapter. He was always reading and had such a good memory that I never had to tell him the same word twice. Even stranger, whenever he learned one word from his lesson, he could recognize it wherever he saw it, whether in his Bible or any other book. By this means, he learned to read English very well.' (from The Life of Wesley by Robert Southey, 1820)

Conscientious mothers should keep track of the methods they try on their children and make a note of which ones work.

Many people think that learning to read is complicated because of the peculiarities of English, and that we shouldn't impose such a challenge on a child at too young an age. But, the truth is, most of us can't even remember how or when we learned to read. For all we know, it could have come by nature, like learning to run. Even mothers of the educated class don't usually know how their children learned to read. 'Oh, he taught himself,' is usually the only answer a mother can think of about her little Richard's ability to read. Thus, it's clear that the idea that it's hard to learn how to read is a notion assumed by grown-ups, not children. Books like Reading Without Tears wouldn't exist if tears weren't sometimes shed over reading

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lessons, but those tears are the fault of the teacher.

The Alphabet

Children usually learn their letters on their own. A child has a box of magnetic letters and picks out p for pumpkin, b for bird, h for horse, and knows both the big and little letters. But learning the alphabet should also be an opportunity to enhance the child's observation. He should be encouraged to really see what he's looking at. Make a big B in the air and have him say which letter it is. Let him make a round O and a squiggly S, and the first letter of his name, while you guess them. Making the small letters from memory is harder and takes more observation. A tray of sand is helpful. The child can draw his finger boldly through the sand to make a D, his first straight line and curve combination. There are lots of ways to make learning the letters fun. There is no need to rush. Let him learn them one at a time, and so well that he can pick out the letter d, both big and little, every time it appears on a page of large print. Let him say d for duck, dog, doll by drawing out the sound of the d at the beginning. Then find words that end with a d to practice saying, making sure to end with a crisp, individual 'd' sound rather than a 'dee' or 'duh.'

A child left alone will learn the alphabet himself, but most mothers can't resist the fun of teaching it. And there's no harm in teaching it, since this kind of learning is merely a game to the child, and if the alphabet is carefully taught to the child, he will learn to appreciate both the form

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and sound of words. So, when should he begin? Whenever his box of letters interests him. Even two-year-olds sometimes can name a few letters. That's fine as long as finding and naming letters is a fun game for him. But he must never be coaxed or required to show off or prodded to find letters when he'd rather play something else.

Making Words

The first word-making activities will also seem fun to the child. Treating them as a game while still teaching what letters can do is the best way to start before actually making sentences. Pick up two of his letters, the a and the t, and make the word 'at.' Tell the child that we use the word when we say 'at home' or 'at school.' Then add a letter to turn it into bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, sat, rat, and so on. They should all be real words [no fair using dat, jat, yat!] See if the child can guess what the word is with the new consonant. Put all the words in a row and see if he can read them. Then do the same with other short-vowel words [-in, -un, -ar, -ad, etc.] Soon the child will be able to read dozens of short words, and will learn to figure out others. He might even start playing the game by himself, trying to figure out how many words he can make that end with -en or -od. Let him take his time.

Making Words with Long Vowels

When the game becomes so easy that it's no longer fun, do long vowel words in the same way. Use the same syllables as before, only add a silent 'e,' so that -at words become -ate

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words such as late, date, rate, etc. The child can be told that the 'a' in rate is a long a, and the 'a' in rat is a short a. His experience with short vowel words will make long vowel words easier.

Then can come words ending with -ang, -ing, -ong, and -ung, such as ring, fang, long, sung. Then do words beginning with 'th,' such as that and then. Then do words ending with 'th,' such as with, math, both, bath, moth. As you go, more words will suggest themselves. This is not yet reading, but is preparing the foundation for reading by making words familiar things that won't be so intimidating when the child sees them in real books. Make sure that when the child says the words that he does it distinctly and confidently so that he can hear each letter's sound.

Early Spelling

Teach the child from the beginning to close his eyes and try to spell the word he has made. Reading isn't the same as spelling, and you don't have to spell well to be able to read well, but it's still important to be able to visualize the way a word is spelled. A child who can see quick enough to take in the letters of words while reading them will be a good speller. The child should start developing this habit from the start. Get him used to seeing the letters that make up words, and it will become second nature to him.

If words always followed the same rules in English, using the same spelling patterns, then reading would be easy. The child could simply learn the rules and be able to read anything. But many words in English are a rule unto themselves. The child has no choice but to learn those irregular words by sight. He must memorize and recognize words like 'which' as familiarly as he knows the letter B. And he learns this by

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looking at the word intently so that the image of the word is stamped into his mind. This process should happen simultaneously while learning letters. The more variety there is in his reading lessons, the more he'll enjoy them. Making words will encourage his interest in words, but learning to recognize words by sight will help him to be a good reader.

Sight Reading

The teacher must be patient enough to go very slowly, making sure that the child's footing is secure in each lesson before moving on. The first lesson might be

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are,"

Read just those two lines to the child. Read it very slowly, sweetly, and dramatically enough to make it interesting. Point to each word as you read. Then to point to 'twinkle,' 'wonder,' 'star,' 'what,' and ask him to say each word as you randomly point to it. After he can recognize each separate word out of context, and not before, let him read those two lines carefully and with expression. Insist right from the start that he read with clear, beautiful enunciation and feeling. Don't let him even begin a habit of reading in a dry, dull monotone that bores both him and whoever is listening. By this time, he will naturally have no trouble reading the first two lines precisely [instilling a feeling of success and competence, rather than defeat and tears]. He will learn the rest of the poem in subsequent lessons.

Reading Prose

At this stage, his lessons progress slowly and there's no reason not to let his reading lessons, both poems and prose, double as

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recitation exercises. There are lots of little poems that can be used; it's easy to find suitable ones. But prose might be even better because it uses more words found in everyday speech, as well as words of Saxon (old German) origin, and irregular spelling. Short fables, or graceful, simple prose such as Parables from Nature, or, better yet, prose poems such as those by Anna Letitia Barbauld (read some of her work here or here) make good recitation material.

But the Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star reading lesson isn't over yet. The child should hunt through a couple of pages of clear, large print for each of the words he has learned: little, star, you, are, until each word becomes as familiar as an old friend when he sees it on a page of text. To prevent discouragement, the teacher can clue him as to which paragraph or line contains one of the words. By the end of the lesson, the child has learned 8-10 words well enough to recognize them anywhere, and all in probably ten minutes.

The next sight reading lesson should begin with a hunt for familiar words [as a review] and then the next lines of the poem:

"Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky,"

should be learned the same way. Good spelling is no more than proper seeing by observing the letters in a word in the same way one might see the features of someone's face. To encourage this, ask the child, "Can you spell sky?" or any of the other short words. The first time may catch him unaware, but he will rise to the challenge and be sure to get it right the

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next time you ask. Don't let him spell the word, or even say the letters out loud while the word is in front of him.

Comprehension is no problem. The child will have lots of bright, intelligent comments and questions and will take care of the comprehension part of the lesson himself. It is more likely that the teacher will have to be careful not to let his questions draw her away from the reading lesson.

Careful Pronunciation

Most children need help in pronouncing their words properly. They need to learn to say 'high,' sky,' 'like,' 'world,' with careful preciseness. They will tend to hurry through words like 'diamond' and 'history' so that they sound like 'd'mond' and 'his'try.' Another reason to strive for slow, steady progress is to make sure the child says every word with full attention so that he develops the habit of careful enunciation. Every day he learns to recognize a few more words by sight. The more words he knows, the longer his lesson will have to be to fit in 10-12 more new words.

A Year's Work

'But what an excruciatingly slow pace!' you might say. It isn't as slow as it seems. Doing it this way, a child will learn 2000-3000 words over a year's time without much effort, which amounts to reading, since mastering that number of words will enable him to read most of the books he will be faced with fairly easily.

Ordinary Method

Compare the steady progress and bright interest of this method with the tediously wearisome lessons of the ordinary method. The poor child blunders through one or two pages in a dreary monotone--no expression, no clear enunciation. When he comes to a word he doesn't

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know, he tries spelling it, but that doesn't help. He is told what the word is and he says it, but no mental effort is made to remember it. So, the next time he stumbles on that word, he has to go through the whole process all over again. When the day's lesson is over, the child is miserably bored--and hasn't even learned one new word. Eventually he learns to read, somehow, as a result of constant repetition. But think of the abuse to his intelligence by using a system of teaching that forces him to expend effort every day with little or no result. This gives him a distaste for books before he has even learned to use them.

V. - The First Reading Lesson

It is so important that children should be taught to read in a reasonable way that I am including two articles that I wrote for The Parents Review in the hopes that they will clarify and familiarize readers with the suggested method.

Two mothers are talking.

'Do you mean that you would start a child with two or three syllable words before he even knows his letters?'

'Yes, it's possible to read words without knowing the alphabet in the same way that you might recognize a face without being able to single out its individual features. And we do learn the alphabet before reading words--not just the names of the letters, but the sounds each letter makes.'

'Our children learn their letters without us even teaching them. We keep a shoebox handy with a half inch of sand at the bottom. Before they're even two years old, the toddlers make round

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O's and crooked S's and a T for Thomas, and so on, with their chubby, clumsy fingers. The older ones teach them by making it a game.'

'The sand is wonderful! We have various gimmicks, but the sand is the best one. Children love to be active. The cute, shaky lines they make with their own little fingers are ten times more interesting to them than just looking at the shape of the letter in a book.'

'But the reading! I can't believe you teach three syllable words in the first lesson! It's like teaching a toddler how to waltz!'

'It seems that way because you forget that a group of letters is just a representative symbol of a word, and a word is only a representative symbol of a thing or an action. Here's how a child learns: First, he understands the concept of a table. Then he sees several different tables and realizes that they all have legs that he can climb, and sometimes cloth covers that he can pull at, and lots of interesting things on top to try and reach. Sometimes he can pull things off the table and make them fall off with a crash, which is fun. The grown-ups call this pleasant thing with its interesting aspects a 'table.' Soon, he can say 'table,' too. In his mind, the word 'table' comes to mean all of these things in a vague way. 'Around the table' and 'on the table' expand his concept of 'table.' In the same way, he chimes in when his mother sings, and she says, 'Baby sing.' Soon he realizes what sing, kiss and love are.'

'Yes, they're so cute! It's amazing how many words a child can understand before he can say them. 'Kitty,' 'doll,' 'stroller,' soon come to mean interesting ideas to him.'

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'That's just it; once a child becomes interested in something, he learns what the abstract sound-symbol for it sounds like--I mean, he learns the name of it. I say that, when he's older, he should use the same principle to learn to read, by learning the visible symbol for it on a printed page. It's actually easier for a child to read 'pumpkin-pie' than 'to,' because 'pumpkin pie' conveys a much more interesting idea.'

'Maybe that works with long three-syllable words. But how do you teach simpler, one-syllable words, or words with only two letters?

'I wouldn't go out of my way to teach him one-syllable words at all. The bigger the word, the more interesting it looks. And that makes it easier to read--provided the word conveys something interesting to the child. It's pitiful to see a bright child struggling over a reading lesson that insults his intelligence--ath, eth, ith, oth, uth, or something a little better--the cat sat on the mat. How would we adults like it if we had to learn German by slogging through every conceivable combination of letters, arranged solely by how similar they sound? Or, even worse, what if what we read had to be graduated by the number of letters in each word? We'd be hopelessly lost in a fog of words if we were faced with a page full of three-letter words all drearily alike, with nothing distinctive to capture our attention. Why should children be any different? Do we think it's good for them to grind in this mill just because they're children? And this is just one way children are needlessly and cruelly oppressed.'

'You're taking high moral ground! Still,

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I don't think I'm convinced. It's much easier for a child to spell cat than potato chips.'

'But spelling and reading are two different things. You need to learn to spell so you can write things, not so you can read them. A child might be droning over a reading lesson. She stumbles over the word, 'cough' and spells it out. You tell her the word is cough. She repeats it, and, by repetition, she begins to associate that arrangement of letters with the sound of the word cough. She recognizes and reads it, and you think she's figured out that c-o-u-g-h spells cough. But she hasn't. She may still spell it c-o-f.'

'Yes, but cough is a difficult word. It has a silent u and the gh sounds like f. But if there were no silent letters and if all the letters sounded like they look, reading would be easy. In that respect, the phonetic enthusiasts have a point.'

'I suppose you would agree that plough should be spelled plow, through thru, enough enuf, ought ot, and so on. But this idea assumes that, when we read, we look at each letter individually, consider each of their sounds, blend them, and form the word. But that's not how we read. Instead, we recognize the collective letters as the symbol of the word we're used to reading. Only when we come to a word we don't know do we resort to sounding it out by the letters, but we are very aware that this way only guesses, so we're careful not to say the word out loud until we hear someone else pronounce it.'

'But children are different.'

'No. children are just the same, maybe even more so. We adults,

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if we wanted to, could break up words into syllables or sounds to figure out individual pieces, or we could put the combinations we know together to help us figure out the rest of the word. But children can't do that yet. They have to learn to recognize a word by the way it looks. The more unusual it looks, the easier it is to recognize, as long as the word is one they've heard and whose meaning they know.'

'I'm not sure I quite get it. Can you tell me, step by step, how you would give your first reading lesson? An illustration would be really helpful.'

'Okay. Michael had his first lesson yesterday, on his sixth birthday. The lesson was part of the celebration. By the way, I think it's a good idea to begin a new study with a child on his birthday or some other significant day. That way, he starts by thinking of the new study as a special privilege.'

'That makes sense. But go on, did Michael already know his letters?'

'Yes, he had picked them up, but I had been careful that he didn't do any little readings. You know how Susanna Wesley used to spend hours in her room with the child who was having his first reading lesson, and the child would come out able to read a good part of Genesis 1? Well, Michael's first reading lesson was a solemn occasion, too. We took a week or two preparing for it. First, I printed up six copies of Old Mother Hubbard with bold, large type.

Then we had a fun pasting day when we glued the sheets to card stock.

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Then we cut up the first three lines of all six copies, line by line, word by word. We put the words into a box and we were done, our preparations were complete.

Then for the lesson. Michael and I shut ourselves up in the school room. I have a blackboard in there that I use for school. I printed clearly the word,

Mother

Michael watches with more interest because he knows his letters. I point to the words and say, 'Mother,' and he repeats it.

Then we scatter the words in the box out on the table, and he easily finds a half dozen 'Mother's.'

We do the same thing with the words cupboard, to, old, bone and so on until all the words in the first three lines are learned. The list of words on the blackboard grows into a long column, and Michael reads the list backwards, forwards, every way except in the order they appear in the verse.

Then Michael arranges the loose cut-out words into columns like those on the blackboard. Then he arranges them into his own columns and reads them.

Last, to his delight (the whole lesson has been fun!), he finds the words in order as I dictate:

Old Mother Hubbard;
Went to the cupboard,
To give her poor dog a bone;

He arranges his words in the order they appear in the poem.

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Then I pulled out a copy of the poem that hadn't been cut up, and Michael read those first three lines with pleasure, both forwards and backwards. As long as he lives, he will know those thirteen words!'

'I'm sure it was a pleasant enough lesson, but think of all that cutting and gluing!'

'Yes, it was time-consuming. I wish some publisher would sell what we need--nursery rhymes in good, bold type with a box of loose words to match, a box for each rhyme so the child wouldn't be confused by having too many words to hunt through. The trick is, the child needs to look at and really see each new word many times to impress its image in his mind.'

'I see. But with this method, he's only able to read Old Mother Hubbard. He doesn't learn the general skill of reading.'

'Yes he does, he'll be able to read those thirteen words no matter where he sees them. If he learns maybe ten new words a day, he'll know over 600 words in six months. Then he'll know how to read a little.'

'That's impressive, if your children actually remember everything they learn. My children wouldn't. They might still remember Mother Hubbard by the end of the week, but they'd forget the rest.'

'Not if you review what's been learned. When we master the next three lines, Michael goes through the beginning of the poem. As I point to individual words randomly, he tells me what they are. It takes less than a minute, but it secures what he's already learned.'

'That first lesson must have been long!'

'I have to admit--it lasted a half hour. Michael's interest tempted me to do more than I should have.'

'It sounds appealing, like a game. But

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I'm not convinced that a child should learn to read without knowing the phonetic sounds of the letters. You've seen how children read by spelling a word over and then pronouncing it, especially if they've been taught the sounds the letters make rather than just their names.'

'Naturally. Although many English words can only be learned by sight because of their irregularity, some words are a key to a whole group of words. Adding m to other gives us mother, add a br to get brother. We switch off days, we'll do reading one day and phonetic word-building the next day as a way to vary our lessons. That keeps them interesting, which guarantees success.'

VI--Reading By Sight And Sound

Learning to Read is Hard Work

In all of education, there is probably no more difficult and more unpalatable task than the one presented to every child--the challenge of learning to read. We realize how hard it is when we hear of the heroic labor some adults go through to become literate, but we forget that it goes against the nature of a child to busy himself with dreary mysterious black squiggles on a page that all look the same, when the outside world is beckoning with all kinds of interesting things that he wants to know about. But that doesn't mean we should excuse active little Thomas from learning to read. It wouldn't be in his best interest. He needs the skill of knowing how to read, and the discipline of the task itself is good for him. All the same, we should recognize that learning to read is hard work for many children. Let's do what we can to make the task easy and inviting.

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Knowledge of Arbitrary Symbols

First of all, keep in mind that reading is neither a science nor an art. Even if it were, the teacher would still need to put the child's interests first. But it's not. Learning to read is nothing more than figuring out, however we can, the arbitrary symbols for objects and ideas. There is no one 'right way,' and no necessary sequence of steps. There is no beginning, middle and end. The arbitrary symbols we must know so we can read aren't letters. They're words. To illustrate, consider how the letter 'o' sounds different in various words just in the previous sentence: for, symbols, know, order, to, not, words. Memorizing each variation is a quaint (yet useless!) study for a philologist, but it's dreary work and inappropriate for a child. We must admit that the letters that compose English words are an interesting study for language experts, and their study may result in new understanding and future improvements in the way we educate. But for now, letters don't always sound like they look, so teaching to read only by sounding out letters will mean a lot of extra work for the child, and lots of confusion because of the irregularities of spelling. It would be a challenge to try to get every letter to follow the rules.

What is our suggestion in teaching a child to read? (a) He should know maybe a thousand words by sight. (b) He will be able to build on the words he knows and recognize more words. By learning ten new words a day, he'll be reading to some extent in twenty weeks, and he won't be limited by

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the size of the word. The second and less important of our task is teaching the child the sounds of the letters and helping him blend letter combinations.

The child needs some kind of a bridge between the things that interest him, and the arbitrary symbols (sight words) that he needs to know.

These Symbols Should Be Interesting

A child is interested in things, not words. His mind doesn't yet analyze, but he is a quick observer. Nothing is too small for his notice. He can spy out the eye of a fly. Nothing is too intricate for him, and he loves puzzles. But what interests him is whatever he can find out about by looking. And this fact is a key to reading. No meaningless combination of letters, like cla, cle, cli, clo, clu should be presented to him. He should be given real words that mean something interesting to him from the very beginning. It's easy to read 'robin redbreast' or 'buttercups and daisies.' The number of letters in a word doesn't matter because the words themselves convey such interesting ideas that it's easy for the child to fix his attention and make the association to the thing. Once the child has made the association between the printed word and the idea that it conveys, it will be easier for him to use what he knows about the sounds of the letters to make other similar words by building on that word. For example, once he knows butter, it's easy for him to change the b to an m to make the word mutter.

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Thomas's First Lesson

But example is better than theory and more convincing than the most logical reasoning. This is the kind of reading lesson we have in mind: Thomas knows the alphabet, and the sound each letter makes, but no more than that. Today he will jump right into reading without taking any steps at all. Remember, reading is neither an art nor a science and probably has no distinct beginning. Today Thomas is going to learn to read--

"I have a little shadow
That goes in and out with me"

And he will know those twelve words so well that he'll be able to read them wherever he sees them from now on.

'Yes,' a reader might say, 'Just like in the Mother Hubbard lesson. Perhaps the principle is sound, though some might debate it. Even if it is, who has the time to go through all that cutting and pasting to prepare for the first lesson? Perhaps learning from books is an inferior way to learn, but it will have to do for me. I don't have time to make my own word cut-outs.'

I admit, cutting and gluing all those words was tedious, but the lesson served its purpose. It induced my friend Miss Miller to prepare a nice little box with the loose words in big type for us, with two lines in each bag. Anyone who learns to read Old Mother Hubbard this way will already have learned at least a hundred words. That's not bad for a beginner, and the words are useful ones that occur every day. There is one foreseeable objection, though.

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Contractions, such as I'll are ugly to work with. Hopefully poems can be chosen that don't use contractions.

Steps

And now we begin. Materials Needed: Thomas's box of loose letters (perhaps magnetic ones), the baggie of word cut-outs from the first two lines of My Shadow, and pencil and paper (or, even better, chalk and chalkboard). We write in large, clear letters, the word Shadow. Thomas watches with interest. He knows the letters and may even say them out loud as we write. After all, he is probably excited about this great event, the day he's learning to read. But we don't ask him anything about what he may or may not already know. We simply tell him that the word is 'shadow.' He is interested at once. He knows what a shadow is, and seeing the word in print is pleasing because he associates it with the idea of shadows that he already has in his mind. He is told to look at the word 'shadow' until he's sure he would recognize it if he saw it again. Then, from memory, he makes the word 'shadow' with his own loose letters. Then his baggie of words is emptied and he finds the word 'shadow.' Last of all, the sheet with the poem on it is shown to him and he locates the word 'shadow,' but he's not yet allowed to find out which poem it is. The words it, out, goes, me, little, and, have, I, a, in are taught in the same way, in less time than it would take to describe it. As each new word is learned, Thomas makes a column of the words he's already learned and reads the column up, down, and criss-cross from the blackboard.

Reading Sentences

Thomas knows some words now, but he can't yet read sentences. Now comes the delight of real reading. We read off some words to him to find: 'shadow--goes--in' and he places them in that order, and then reads off

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the resulting sentence. He is as excited as if he'd discovered a new planet! Then other arrangements are made. 'shadow goes with me,' 'that little shadow goes out,' 'I have a shadow,' 'a little shadow goes with me,' and so on through numerous combinations. If the identity of the poem can be kept a mystery, that's even better. Making verses up with his loose words will give Thomas a delicious sense that knowledge is power like few other occasions will give him. And from here on out, the idea of reading will be so delightful to him that it will take some very bad teaching to make him ever develop a distaste for it.

Thomas's Second Lesson

Thomas looks forward to another fun reading lesson the next day, but he has a spelling lesson instead. It's conducted like this:

He makes the word 'that' with his letters, from memory if he can. If not, he can copy the cut-out word. Say 'that' slowly, give the sound of 'th.' 'Take away the th, what do we have left?' With a little help, he'll get 'at.' How would you make bat? (Say the word very slowly so he hears the b). He knows the sounds of the letters and says b-at readily. Next, ask if he can make flat, which uses two added sounds. See if he can figure that out. Try cat, he will find the c, and that's a word he'll be glad to know. Vat, he easily decides on the sound v, and you can explain what a vat is. The other words are familiar enough to him to need no explanation. Thomas may offer gnat. Explain that the word is spelled with other letters, but he doesn't need to know which ones yet. Thus he finds out casually and gradually that different letters can make the same sounds. But we don't expect him to

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sort it all out yet. We just let him know that nat doesn't spell the symbol that we express with the letters gnat. Slat--he'll be able to give the sound of the first letter, and slat may call for another explanation, and he's learned another interesting word. he's made a group of words with his letters and they're all in a column on the blackboard like this:

th-at
b-at
fl-at
c-at
v-at
sl-at
f-at

He reads the list up and down and criss-cross. Every word means something to him and carries an idea. Then all the loose words he already knows are dumped out and we dictate new sentences, which he arranges: 'I have a cat.' 'That vat goes with me.' 'I have a little bat,' and so on, making the new words with the loose letters.

Unknown Words

Now for something new. We dictate 'The cat is fat.' Thomas is bewildered. He doesn't know 'the' or 'is.' 'Put blanks for the words you don't know. They might be in one of our next lessons.' Now Thomas has a desire and a need--he has an appetite for learning.

Similar Combinations Have Different Sounds

We handle the rest of the words in the same way. Little gives brittle, tittle, skittle. Shadow, I, a, with give no new words. Goes gives does, foes, hoes, toes, woes. Me gives be, he, she. From have we get cave, gave, pave, rave, shave, slave, wave. We pronounce have to rhyme with gave, but Thomas notices that such a pronunciation is wrong and improper. He sees

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that all of these words rhyme with gave, but not one of them rhymes with have. In other words, he sees that the same group of letters don't always have the same sound. But we don't ask him to make any note of this fact. We just let it grow on him gradually after many experiences.

By now he has over a dozen new words on the blackboard from which to make sentences with the word cut-outs from the Shadow poem. 'I gave a little,' A cat goes out,' 'That rat is little,' and so on. We make sure that the sentences make sense. 'Her wave goes skittle,' is silly and not to be used. Thomas writes his new words in a notebook so that he has his very own collection of words he knows.

Moral Training in Reading Lessons

The next day, the following two lines of the poem are learned in the same way. If these lines don't offer much in the way of spelling lessons, we just move on to the next two lines. Our collection of words continues to grow, and, as we go on, we're able to make almost unlimited sentences. In the rare event that a blank has to be used, it only whets the appetite to learn more. By the time Thomas has finished learning My Shadow, he has an impressive collection of words. He is more able to attack new words that have familiar letter combinations. More important, he has achieved some success and has the confidence to approach all kinds of learning with the sense that positive results are within his ability. He learns to read in a way that builds good habits. There is no dawdling or resisting. Instead, there is bright attention and perfect achievement. He enjoys his reading lesson. But he doesn't get the privilege of having a lesson if he shows up

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in a lazy, dawdling mood. Pronouncing each word precisely and clearly is insisted on. When he gets to his favorite part of the lesson, where he arranges the poem with his word cut-outs and reads it, his reading must be a perfect and finished recitation. (Lively nursery rhymes are the best texts for reading lessons.) I think this is a practical, realistic way to teach reading in English. German children may have to work their way through tedious lists of letter combinations because, before children can really enjoy reading, they need to know the combinations. They always follow the same rules. But since English is so irregular and has so many exceptions, the child is fortunate enough to be able to skip that step. (Thomas should not begin his reading lessons until he is ready for the challenge of these kinds of lessons. Some children may need each lesson broken up into two, or even six, smaller lessons, depending on their readiness.)

VII.--Recitation

'The Children's Art'

The best suggestion I have for recitation is Arthur Burrell's book 'Recitation.' [There is a Parents Review article, Vol 1, 1891, pg 92, 'Recitation,' by Arthur Burrell. The article is not yet online.] It suggests that teachers use it in elementary schools, and I think it would be good if teachers followed that suggestion. In fact, I think that even families could benefit from this book, although many of the specific lessons don't apply to educated homes. Recitation is among the most

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useful and advancing tools for education. Arthur Burrell has called it 'the children's art.' It is born in children to recite, like a buried jewel waiting to be discovered, or like an imprisoned spirit just waiting to be freed. Burrell's logical and organized book gives us material to bring forth children's abilities. If used faithfully, even ordinary children get beyond their stiffness and recite artistically and dramatically. Even the great Sir Walter Scott was moved by 8 year-old Scottish wonder child 'Pet Marjorie' Fleming's recitation of a poem about being a widowed woman, sick, oppressed and scared. Marjorie was a prodigy, but Burrell's book gives gradual steps that can teach even ordinary children the fine art of beautiful and perfect speaking. Yet that is only the first step in being able to recite. A child should speak beautiful thoughts so beautifully and with such precise rendering of every shade of meaning that he interprets the author's work to his listener. It takes appreciation for a work to be able to do that, as well as sensitivity and expressiveness. That's why reciting is a learning experience on its own, or, like Richard Steele said about loving his wife, 'a liberal education' in itself. Some may assume that expressive children are merely parroting the way they've heard something said rather than understanding and expressing it themselves. But that's not the case. In Burrell's book, children are taught to

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find the meaning for themselves. The teacher isn't supposed to set a pattern for the child to mimic. The texts he uses are limited to what the child can understand, and the child adds in the expressiveness himself. A clever teacher can entice him by harnessing his naughty attitudes: the child may enjoy coming up with different ways of saying, "I won't!" and from there, the teacher cunningly brings him along by steps until he starts expressing himself in other ways, and even the child is surprised and delighted. The texts suggested are fun for children. Wynken, Blynken and Nod, Miss Lilywhite's Party (by George Cooper) or The Two Kittens should make any child want to recite. Try a poem using the technique suggestions in Burrell's book and you'll see that the result is as unlike ordinary reading aloud as music is when played with or without the composer's expression marks. I hope everyone reading this book will train their children to recite. In the future, it will become more and more necessary for educated people to speak effectively in public, and reciting teaches children to do that.

Memorizing

Reciting and memorizing are two different things. It is good to store a lot of poetry in a child's memory, and it doesn't have to take any work to learn it. A few years ago I visited a lady who was raising her niece using her own educational approach. She handed me an oversized sheet of writing paper with the names of poems. Some were long, difficult poems, such as Tintern Abbey. She said that her niece could repeat any of them that I wanted, yet she had never consciously attempted to learn a single

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verse by heart. The girl did repeat several of the poems on the list, quite beautifully and without stumbling. Then the lady told me her secret. She thought she had stumbled on an amazing discovery, and I agreed. Here's what she would do. She would read a poem all the way through to the girl. The next day, while the girl was sewing a doll's dress or something, she would read it again. She might read it the next day while brushing the girl's hair. She would get in maybe six days of this, depending on the length of the poem, reading the poem at various times, once during each day. And after a few days, the girl could say the poem that she 'had not learned.'

I've tried this often since then, and it does work. The child must not make a conscious effort to say the verses over to himself. Instead, the important thing is to have a mind open to freely receive an interesting impression. Six times of hearing a poem should be enough to have possession of it. Poems such as 'Dolly and Dick,' 'Do you ask what the birds say?' 'Little lamb, who made thee?' are perfect for this. The benefit of learning this way is that the child doesn't start to dislike a poem because of he's tired of it. Also, the habit of forming mental images is developed without the child even being aware of it.

I once discussed this with author Anna Sedgewick while we were talking about Browning. She said that a lady, her niece, had been recovering from a long illness and wasn't allowed to do anything but rest. So, for something to occupy her time, she read Lycidas all the way through. She was surprised the next day to find herself repeating long passages to herself from memory. So she tried the whole poem and found that she was able to recite the whole thing, after

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a single reading. She hadn't learned it before her illness. She had never even read it with particular attention. She was thrilled with her new talent, and decided to test herself. She read Paradise Lost, a book at a time, and had the same result--she could repeat it all after a single reading! She enriched herself by reading many other works while she recovered. But as she got stronger and started doing more things, her mind had more to think about and she lost her amazing ability. Perhaps a child's mind has less preoccupations and is freer to absorb and retain lovely images clothed in beautiful words, like the lady recovering from her illness. But don't forget, even unconscious brain activity puts wear and tear on the brain tissue, so don't over-do it. Don't start until age six; until then, let the child's mind lay fallow. Then, when you do start, attempt only a little. The poems learned should be simple and within his interest and understanding. Don't overwhelm the child, but don't waste the opportunity, either. There is so much noble poetry that a child can grasp, don't waste his time filling his mind with twaddle.

VIII.--Reading for Older Children
[Volume 1 was written with children aged 6-9 in mind; 'older children' would have been 8 or 9 years old.]

In teaching to read, as in other things, the beginning is most important because it lays the foundation for everything else. If a child is taught to read with care and thought, until he has mastered the basic words, he will usually take care of the rest for himself. After that, the teacher has two duties: to make sure that the child develops the habit of being a reader, and that he doesn't get into bad reading habits.

The Habit of Reading

The worst, yet most common flaw in education these days is that children aren't acquiring the habit of reading. Knowledge is given to them with lessons and lectures, but students aren't learning how to study books and how to be interested and enjoy them for themselves. This habit needs to start early. As soon as the child is able to read, he should start reading some of his books on his own. He can read history, legends, fairy tales and other appropriate books. He should be trained right from the start to expect one single reading to be sufficient in order to narrate from it. That will motivate him to develop the habit of slow, careful reading to absorb information even when he reads silently, because he will read every phrase deliberately to understand its meaning.

Reading Aloud

Children should also get some practice in reading aloud, mostly from their school books. Poetry should be included because that will get him used to the subtle nuances of meaning and open his awareness to the intrinsic beauty of words in and of themselves. Words should be a source of pleasure. they are worth our respect, and beautiful words deserve to be spoken beautifully, with clear tones and precise pronunciation. Very young children will pick up on this by example, by hearing well-written works read aloud sometimes.

Limitation

In role modeling, the teacher must be careful not to present an example that the child will duplicate. Children are natural mimics and will copy the exact shade of a phrase and emphasis of certain words. That may be amusing to see, but it's only a trick, like a monkey imitating intelligence. Instead, the child should be finding the author's meaning on his own, and that

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doesn't come from parroting someone else's interpretation, it only comes from knowing how to read and understand for himself.

Reading to Children

Adults enjoy reading to children, but reading aloud should be an extra-curricular past-time, perhaps a fun thing to do before bedtime. Children's minds are naturally inclined to be lazy. If a child gets used to having everything read to him, then he will tend to shirk the challenge of reading for himself. Even we adults like our mental food to be spoon-fed to us; we're more likely to attend lectures rather than read and think for ourselves.

Questions on the Subject-Matter

While a child is reading, he shouldn't be badgered with questions about the significance of what he's just read, or the meanings of certain words. That's as annoying to children as it is to adults. Besides, it's not important that he understand the definition of every single word. A large working vocabulary is achieved little by little as a natural side effect of wide reading. A child unconsciously gets the meanings of unfamiliar words from context. If he doesn't get it the first time he sees it, then he'll get it the second or third time. If it isn't obvious to him, then he'll find out what certain expressions mean because he'll want to know. Asking direct questions to drill a child on comprehension is always a mistake. Instead, let him narrate and tell you what he has read it, or at least a part of it. Children enjoy remembering things in order, but they don't like questions that seem like riddles. If there must be riddles, then let him be the one to ask them, and let the teacher be the one to answer them. It's fine to ask questions that lead to a side issue

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or personal opinion because children are interested in those, such as 'what would you have done if you were him?'

Lesson Books

A child hasn't truly begun his education until he has developed the habit of reading books that are at his intellectual level, and is reading them himself with interest and pleasure. I'm referring to his school books. Too often, school texts are written in a style of insufferable twaddle. That's because the people who wrote them probably never met a real child. People who know children, know that they don't talk twaddle, and they don't like it. They prefer talk that appeals to their understanding. Children's school books should have real substance for them to read, whether they're listening or reading to themselves. Therefore, they should be written with polished, literary skill. What about content? Remember that children are able to grasp ideas and principles as clearly as we grown-ups can, maybe even better, but long, detailed explanations of technical processes, lists of facts and boiled down summaries dull the edges of children's keen minds. Therefore, the selection of their first school texts is a serious, important consideration. A child's first school books must give the impression that knowledge is interesting and reading is enjoyable. Once the child is used to reading his lesson books with pleasure, his education is guaranteed, even though it's only just begun. He will continue to learn on his own in spite of the obstacles that school usually throws in his path.

Slipshod Habits; Inattention

I've already discussed how important it is that the child narrate after just one reading. If he can't, don't let him get the impression that he may, or

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must, re-read the passage. A look of slight regret over the gap in his knowledge because of the missed reading will be enough to convict him. The ability to read with focused total attention isn't learned if children are allowed to daydream during lessons. For this reason, reading lessons must be short. 10-15 minutes of fixed attention to one lesson is enough for children aged 9 and under. A lesson this long should be long enough to cover 2 or 3 pages in his book. The same time limit applies to children who aren't reading yet, and are listening as their lesson is read to them.

Careless Enunciation

When reading aloud, children should make proper use of their vocal organs. Therefore, reading lessons should begin with two or three simple breathing exercises, such as taking a long, deep breath through the nose and slowly exhaling through the mouth. A child who reads through his nose should see a doctor. He may need his adenoids removed. It's a minor operation and, if it needs to be done, it should be done when the child is young. Unrefined local pronunciation and slipshod enunciation must be guarded against. If children have these defects, they can be cured with practice saying pure vowel sounds and developing a respect for words that doesn't allow them to be hastily slurred over. Very young children often enunciate beautifully because a big word is a novelty that they love and make the most of. Our goal is to get older children to respect words and give them due honor.

The habit of paying attention to punctuation comes naturally if children read with understanding. If a child understands what he's reading, he will have no problem knowing how to read the punctuation.

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IX.--The Art of Narrating

Children Narrate Naturally

Narrating, like writing poetry or painting, is an art that's inherent in the mind of every child. It's just waiting to be uncovered. The child doesn't need to go through an educational process to develop it because it's already there. The child only needs a reason to narrate and he does--easily, generously, with events in the right order, using appropriate illustrative details, with the right choice of words, without flowery wordiness or redundant phrases, as soon as he's able to speak easily. This amazing ability lies within every child, yet it is rarely tapped into to serve his education. Robert will come home with an exciting story of a fight between Duke and a stray dog down the street. It's wonderful! He saw it all and tells everything with great eagerness in a style that might rival any epic movie. But our scorn for children is so ingrained that we don't appreciate it. All we see is how childish Robert is being. But if we could only see it and use it, his recounting could be the very foundation of his education.

Until he is six, let Robert narrate only when he wants to. He must never be asked to tell anything. Talking of their own initiative may be the reason why toddlers and preschoolers will have long, strange conversations among themselves. Perhaps they narrate before they can really speak clearly, and the other child, who can't speak any better, takes it all in. Then they try to tell us, their poor dear elders, and we reply, 'Yes,' 'Really!' 'Is that what you thought?' in response to the chatter whose meaning we don't understand. The truth is, we can't be sure what goes on in the dim region of the mind of a child less than two. But once the little boy can use words, he will 'tell' without end to

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anyone who will listen to his story, although he prefers telling his little friends.

This Power Should be Used in Their Education

Let's take advantage of what nature gives us. When the child is six, not before, let him narrate as he hears stories--perhaps the fairy tale we've read him, an episode at a time, after hearing it just once. Or a Bible story read to him straight from the Bible itself, or a well-written animal story, or a book about other lands, such as The World at Home. A seven year old will be starting to read for himself, but will still be getting most of his intellectual diet by listening to good books read aloud to him. Geography, tales from ancient history, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrims Progress, Tanglewood Tales, Heroes of Asgard and other books of the same caliber should be his diet until he is eight. The most important things to remember are that he should only have books that are children's classics, and, once he has the right book, it must not be diluted with explanations or lectures, and it shouldn't be broken up with comprehension questions. It should be given to the child as good, healthy mind food in portions that he can handle. We must trust that his mind is capable of dealing with the nutrition it needs by itself.

By eight or nine, a child is more ready to tackle more serious books, but we're talking in this section about what a child less than nine can narrate.

Method for Lessons

Readings should always be in consecutive order and from a carefully selected book. Before the day's reading, the teacher should talk a little and discuss with the children what happened in the previous lesson. Then she can say a few words about the current lesson, just enough that the children are eager in

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anticipation. But she should be careful not to explain too much and, especially, she shouldn't take too long to get into the reading itself. Then she can read two or three pages, enough to cover a complete episode. After that, she can call on the children to narrate. If there are several children, they can take turns. The children narrate with enthusiasm and accuracy while still retaining a sense of the author's style. It isn't a good idea to nag them about their mistakes. They may begin with a lot of 'um's' or 'and's' but they soon stop doing that on their own, and their narrations become good enough in style and composition to publish in a book!

This kind of narration lesson shouldn't take more than 15 minutes.

The book should always be very interesting. When the narration is over, there should be a little bit of discussion where the moral points are brought out, pictures can be shown to illustrate the lesson, or diagrams drawn on the blackboard. Once the children are able to read well and easily, they can read their own lessons, either out loud or to themselves, knowing that they'll be expected to narrate. Where a book needs some editing for content, such as the Old Testament or Plutarch's Lives, it is better for the teacher to read the lesson aloud before the children narrate.

X.--Writing

Perfect Accomplishment

A lot could be said about teaching writing, but I only have a few hints to offer. First of all, the child should feel the accomplishment of doing something perfectly in every lesson, even if it's just one letter or even a single stroke. The lesson should be short--no more than five or ten minutes. Being able to

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write easily comes with practice, but that can be saved for later. For now [speaking of a child 6-8 years old], it's more important to prevent sloppy, careless writing habits, such as humpy m's or blocky o's.

Printing

A child should practice printing before beginning to write. He can print the simplest of the capital letters first, the ones with straight lines and simple curves. When he can do the capital letters with confidence, he can go on to the smaller letters. He should print in an italic style, but straight up and down rather than slanted. He should write as simply as possible, and large.

Steps in Teaching

The straight stroke used in making letters should be learned first, then the curved stroke as in an s curve. Then letters with a large, simple curve should be learned--n, m, v, w, r, h, p, y; then letters that combine curves such as o, a, c, g, e, x, s, q; then looped and irregular letters––b, l, f, t, etc. One single letter should be formed perfectly in a day. The next day, a similar letter that uses the same elements should be learned so that the element becomes familiar. Then three- or four-letter words should be copied, connecting letters already learne