Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/222

208 a book and is left wholly to himself to make out and comprehend what he pleases. The pupil who has gained sufficient prowess not to feel the need of asking some one to read with him, but trusts to himself, always acquires that passion for process reading which is too severely satirized in Gogol's "Petrushka," and in consequence of this passion makes great progress. God knows how such kind of reading gets into his head, but in some way he becomes accustomed to the shape of the letters, to the formation of syllables, to the pronunciation of words, and even to their meaning; and I have more than once by experiment satisfied myself how we have been put back by our strenuous insistence on the pupil understanding absolutely what he reads.

Many self-taught persons have learned to read well in this way, although its faults must be manifest to every one.

The third method of teaching reading consists in the learning by heart prayers, verses, or any printed page, and in pronouncing what has been learned, following it from the book.

The fourth method—that which was found so injurious in the Y. P. school—is reading from a single book. It corrected itself in our school. At first we had not books enough to go around, and so each two pupils had one book put before them; then this began to amuse them, and when the announcement was made,—"Class in Reading,"—the students of equal strength would pair off and sit down—sometimes three with one book—and one would read and the rest would follow and make corrections.

You would make a muddle of the whole thing if you tried to seat them yourselves; they know who are their mates, and Taraska will infallibly select Dunka.

"Now, come here and read, and you go to your place!"

Some do not like at all such reading in common, because it is not necessary.

The advantage of reading together in this way