Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/659

Rh can never be sure of pronouncing rightly an English word that he has not heard spoken, nor of spelling correctly one that he has never seen written. The spelling of each word must be learned by sheer force of memory. In this work the pupil's reasoning powers can not be utilized, but must be subdued, while his memory is sadly overworked. In the affairs of the child's daily life, the logical following out of rules is rewarded; in learning to spell, it brings him only discomfiture and bewilderment. He is taught that b-o-n-e stands for bōn (not bo-ne), and t-o-n-e for tōn, but that d-o-n-e stands for dun, that g-o-n-e spells gôn, m-o-v-e spells moov, and b-r-o-n-z-e bronz. Now when he comes in reading to another similar word, as none, he has no means of telling whether to call it nōn, nun, nôn, noon, or non; he can only look up at his teacher and wait to be told. The influence of the spelling-class quickly drives him to repress any inclination to reason, and he gives himself up to a blind following of authority. No child learns English spelling without getting the pernicious notion that cram is better than thinking, and that common sense is a treacherous guide. The child who can take what he is told without asking why, who can repeat a rule without troubling himself about its meaning, gets along best. On the other hand, the child who has difficulty in learning to spell may be expected to develop strong logical faculties. He is constantly trying to spell according to some principle, and, of course, constantly coming to grief. Thus a boy who had long been at the foot of his spelling-class was one day given the word ghost, and, making a desperate attempt at the sort of spelling he had oftenest heard succeed, he spelled it g-h-o-g-h-j-s-t. This bringing upon him shouts of laughter, he said, with clinched fist and tearful eyes: "You needn't laugh; you all spell homelier 'n that!" So much attention is given to spelling that children obtain false ideas of its importance. The spelling, or representation, becomes to them the word, while the real word is called the pronunciation, and is thought of as an appendage. They learn to despise the poor speller, a prejudice which is never outgrown, and above all they become so absorbed in the manipulation of words that they have little chance to grasp the ideas which the words stand for.

If our notation of numbers were as irregular as our notation of speech, so that the numbers from forty to forty-five, for instance, should be written, say as follows: 40, 741, 420, 43, 414, 225; and if no one could tell at sight whether a number like 7,243,812 contained several figures which were "silent," or had exceptional values, who can doubt that the study of arithmetic, instead of being a valuable discipline, would be mere mentally enervating drudgery? If it were proposed that children should learn a style of writing music which gave different values to the same characters, similarly placed, in different pieces, and added a host of "silent" notes, the evils of learning such a system would be plainly seen. Yet many people, who have