nitrogen,' and then perform the usual experiment of burning phosphorus under a bell jar placed in water. He should, first of all, make clear, by a series of questions, that the jar, at the beginning, contains only air-that is, contains only oxygen and nitrogen. Then he should similarly make clear that the burning of the phosphorus exhausts the oxygen; that the phosphorus goes out before the whole of it is consumed, because there is no more oxygen; that the water rises to take the place of the gas used up, and that therefore the height of the water is the measure of the oxygen, and the space above is filled with nitrogen. So treated, the experiment will be an illustration as well as an experiment. Pestalozzi, to whom is due the credit of making the object lesson an essential part of modern education,1 employed it, not for the training of the senses but for the teaching Language of language; his idea being to make children understand the meaning of words by making them familiar with the things for which the words stood. Even now one sometimes finds a teacher who is not emancipated from the theory of Pestalozzi, that the object lesson is a lesson on language, not objects—a teacher who, giving a lesson on leather, for instance, spends his energies in trying to explain the terms odorous, flexible, opaque, &c. An observation lesson might be given on 1 The idea itself was much older. Rabelais makes Ponocrates and his pupil Gargantua talk of the virtues, properties, and nature of everything placed on the table at meal times; collect roots, plants, and fruits during their walks, and watch every kind of workman follow his daily occupation. Comenius, in his Didactica Magna, says, 'Let the senses be applied to the subject as often as possible, e.g., let hearing be joined with vision, and the hand with speech. It is not enough to apply to the ears, but the teacher must present to the eyes, that through them the instruction may reach the imagination. Leave nothing till it has been impressed by means of the ear, the eye, the tongue, the hand.' Andreas Reyher, under the patronage of Duke Ernest the Pious, actually put the ideas of Comenius into practice in the schools of Saxony, and Rousseau, in his Émile, emphasises the need of cultivating the senses. the properties of leather by first demonstrating how many of them are found in the original hide, and how many are imparted in the manufacture, and then by explaining how the various uses of leather depend upon the possession of them; but that would be a lesson on the properties, not on the meanings, of certain hard words employed to denote them. Incidentally and indirectly an object lesson may teach new words or convey clearer ideas of the meanings of old ones. 'The attempt to teach children to be accurate in observation cannot be separated from the need of making them accurate in description. After the children have been trained to observe a fact, they should be trained in making a correct statement of it in a sentence of their own. This early answering in complete sentences will lead to correct use of the English language both in talking and writing, and will store the mind with a useful vocabulary.'1 In every lesson the most important facts should be emphasised. In a lesson on winds, for instance, the fact that heated air rises is the most important. When the teacher Emphasis has, by illustration, explanation, questioning, and recapitulation made that clear in all its bearings, till it has become a part of the children's working knowledge, he can proceed to show the application of it in the production of wind. Then, whatever may be forgotten, the leading principle will be remembered, and the children will be able to group the rest of the lesson around it. Inexperienced teachers either fail to emphasise anything, treating essentials and accidents alike, with the result that the children form no idea of the lesson as a whole, and perhaps remember an illustration but forget what it was intended to illustrate, or they emphasise something unimportant. In a lesson on coins, for example, they may, while silent on the necessity of alloying gold and silver, give exact proportions of the 1 Circular 369. But it must be repeated that the primary purpose of an object lesson is not to teach language but to train the perceptive powers. metals in each kind of coin, write the numbers on the blackboard, and have them repeated till the figures are learned by heart. A good blackboard summary is a great aid to proper emphasis, because it calls attention to the leading, and only to the Blackboard leading, facts, which are otherwise likely to be lost summary sight of in a mass of details. A good summary is also a great aid to memory, because it appeals to the eye, and enables a definite and comprehensive view of the lesson as a whole to be taken in at a glance. A summary should be methodically arranged and plainly written-should be produced little by little as the lesson proceeds, and, if the children are young, should contain no hard words. READING Educative INTRODUCTION JUST as the pipes conveying water to a town have comparatively little intrinsic worth, but give all who wish it command of a vast reservoir of the precious fluid, the art of readand practical ing is valuable, not for its own sake, but because value of read- it enables its possessor to draw at will from an ing inexhaustible store of wisdom and knowledge. "In books lie the creative phoenix-ashes of the whole past." All that men have devised, discovered, done, felt, or imagined lies recorded in books; wherein whoso has learned the mystery of spelling printed letters may find it and appropriate it.'1 Our orthography illogical While the practical utility of reading is inestimable, the act of learning to read English does not greatly promote the mental development of the learner. It would be more likely to hinder than to help that development if children were in the habit of making conscious inferences from facts. Our orthography is so hopelessly illogical that, though its apologists maintain that it fosters. patience and perseverance, they cannot deny that it discourages reasoning. The student who reasoned would conclude that since dando combined make do, and t and o combined make to, g-o, l-o, n-o, s-o, and w-o must make, goo, loo, noo, soo, and woo. Only a mind too young to generalise could fail to see the anomaly; only a faith too young to question could accept it. 1 Carlyle: Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, iv. 189. In its earliest stage reading means the immediate recognition of the sound corresponding to the written or printed symbol, A threefold and the difficulty of recognition is infinitely inanomaly creased when one symbol often stands for different sounds, when one sound is often represented by different symbols, and when a symbol often has no vocal significance whatever. Thus in the lines: Though the tough cough and hiccough plough me through, the one symbol gh stands for f, p, the guttural ch and nothing; while the one sound k is represented by k in king, c in cat, ch in chemist, ck in black, qu in liquor, and que in casque. teaching Reading METHODS OF TEACHING READING In languages like Italian and Welsh, which are blessed with a phonetic system of spelling, the pupil passes through the Methods of first stage of learning to read almost as soon as he has mastered the alphabet; but in languages like English, which have no consistent orthography, the first stage is very much longer. In these no royal road is possible, but various plans have been tried for removing some of the difficulties in the way, and of lessening those which cannot be removed altogether. The oldest and worst method of teaching is that generally known as the Alphabetic; indeed, other methods have been 1. The Alpha- introduced in order to remedy its defects. Children betic method began by learning the names of the letters; they were then required to give the names of all the letters in a particular combination, and told that these names made a certain word. It would be almost impossible for the most cruel ingenuity to contrive a plan better calculated to place fresh obstacles in a path already thick with them. In consequence of our irregular orthography, while there is often a wide interval |