Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/661

Rh The effect on the mind is certainly no better. The Chinese have to memorize a compound symbol for each word in learning to read, but the patient endurance of such a burden is not consistent with the character of any other people than the submissive, imitative, unprogressive Chinese. The Japanese, who have long been clogged by the same system, have recently taken measures to throw it off.

"But what can be done?" will be asked; "shall children grow up without learning to spell?" No, but the memorizing of these anomalies and contradictions can be, at least, put off till the pupils' minds are in little danger of being perverted by it. Enough of the enormous amount of time spent in this drudgery can be saved to make possible the introduction of the study of things into the primary schools, and many of the one hundred millions of dollars which we spend each year for public education can be turned to imparting real knowledge instead of the mere tools of knowledge. These ends may be attained by the use of phonetic spelling as an introduction to the customary spelling. Children can and do learn to read English spelled phonetically in a very few lessons, and learn the traditional spelling so quickly afterward that much less time is required for the whole process than is commonly devoted to memorizing the current spelling alone. Classes taught to read in this way, in Massachusetts, so early as 1851, proved the advantage of the method to the satisfaction of that able educator, Horace Mann, and the method has been successfully employed in many places in this country and in the British Isles. The following extract from a letter written by Mr. William Colbourne, manager of the Dorset Bank, at Sturminster, England, since deceased, furnishes a special example, though it may be conceded to be exceptionally favorable:

"My little Sidney, who is now a few months more than four years old, will read any phonetic book without the slightest hesitation; the hardest names or the longest words in the Old or New Testament form no obstacle to him. And how long do you think it took me—for I am his teacher—to impart to him this power? Why, something less than eight hours! You may believe it or not as you like, but I am confident that not more than that amount of time was spent on him, and that was in snatches of five minutes at a time, while tea was getting ready. I know you will be inclined to say: 'All that is very well, but what is the use of reading phonetic books? He is still as far off, and may be farther, from reading romanic books.' But in this you are mistaken. Take another example. His next elder brother, a boy of six years, has had a phonetic education so far. What is the consequence? Why, reading in the first stage was so delightful and easy a thing to him, that he taught himself to read romanically, and it would be a difficult matter to find one boy in twenty, of a corresponding age, that could read half so well as he can in any book. Again, my oldest boy has written more phonetic