Page:Handbook of simplified spelling.djvu/55

 Thus, the pupil, while stil compeld to rely largely on his eye-memory for the spelling of many words and classes of words, would be led to look for, and to find, a logical basis for the spelling of many other classes of words.

Placing the Blame Where It Belongs

While the pupil would be taught to spel only the simpler forms, he would—until these forms became adopted into general usage—learn to recognize the same words in their longer and more complex spellings when he encounterd them in print. He would thus be led—sensibly or insensibly, according to the interest taken in the subject by his teacher—to understand that an effort was being made in his behalf to apply reason and common-sense to spelling. He would come to regard the remaining irregularities, not as inevitable and irremediable, but as unreasonable hindrances to be overcome now, and to be got rid of as soon as possible.

He would find his efforts to reason from the spelling of one word to that of another more likely to be correct in their results; while the more enlightend teachers would not treat his "mistakes" as humorous or reprehensible, but would applaud them as logical, pointing out that the real fault lay, not in the working of the pupil's mental processes, but in current bad practis.

Would Demand Better Spelling

As teachers came to recognize how much more easily their pupils learnd the simpler spellings, and how greatly this lightend the burden of the spelling-lesson, it is not to be douted that they would demand that the simplification of spelling be carrid forward as rapidly