Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/232

220 In "easy reading," children do not call the words printed, but others partly synonymous, or at least consistent. How is this to be looked at? It is a very trifling fault, so far as the real intellectual part of reading goes; the part we need in life, and which of all things should be taught. This fault, as it is called, is a good omen. You do not find the sluggards and the blockheads guilty of it. They continue the infantile fault first spoken of. This substitution of equivalent terms for those printed is done, and can be done, only by the bright, the active, the thoughtful. Observation will prove that this is invariably so. This fault teachers can well afford not only to tolerate, but to encourage. It indicates the presence of the only thing that is wanted—the clear grasping of the thought. It arises only because the pupil so fully comprehends that he is able by anticipation to supply a word for the author, if not the word. Such mistakes are worthy of remark, and, for the purpose of actually learning to read, there cannot be a better recitation than one made up entirely of such errors. Twenty reading-lessons devoted to this paraphrasing, and kindred work, to one of the ordinary kind of lessons, would work a wonderful change in the mental status of our children.

It is true, in the abstract, that words are the signs of ideas; but it is not true that the utterance of words by children is a sign that they possess the idea. We are taught in childhood upon the assumption that every sentence pronounced leaves its distinct and proper counterpart in our mind. None can know so well as teachers how far this is from being true; and how much more reliable as an indication of full mental perception, tone, inflection, emphasis, feature are, than the recital of the words. There is no fact which so loudly calls for the consideration of teachers as this—that the reading or reciting of words is a very uncertain sign that the idea is lodged in the child's mind. There is need for a new exercise and method in the teaching of reading; an exercise for teaching pure mental reading; a means of instruction in which things more reliable than words shall be taken as proof that the idea is grasped; a test of the accuracy of mental perception in which such unreliable evidence shall not be heard. There are devices which partly answer this purpose, but they cannot be described here.

If the real object to be aimed at in teaching reading were apprehended, there would be more use made of maxims, forms, riddles, etc. Every philosophic teacher must perceive their utility. They are of value only as a means of discipline; but there is nothing which so easily and strongly stimulates concentration of thought. They afford an opportunity to judge infallibly whether or not the learner clearly perceives. He is a rare child, indeed, who can read a pun, or any joke, to himself, and whose countenance will not promptly reveal to the slightest observation whether or not he "sees it." This cannot be said of ordinary sentences.