and who, to study and belief, added zeal. The initial difficulty of sounding consonants apart from vowels may have seemed to some insuperable. Sir Isaac Pitman advocated the employment of his Phonetic system as an introduction to the reading of ordinary books. 3. The Pho- Convinced of the impossibility of having a perfect netic method orthography with an imperfect alphabet, he proposed the basing of a reformed orthography on a reformed alphabet. Rejecting the superfluous letters c, q, and x, he confined each of the remaining twenty-three to that particular sound for which it is most generally used, and added thirteen new characters. It is evident that children who had mastered the Phonetic alphabet would very soon learn to read anything printed in it ; it is not, however, so evident how ability to read words in the regular notation of a new and perfect alphabet would help them to overcome the difficulties of reading words in the irregular notation of an old and imperfect alphabet. Handling a steamer does not seem the best preparation for sailing a barge. It must be admitted that some enthusiastic teachers have obtained good results with Pitman's plan, but enthusiastic teachers will obtain good results with almost any plan. The Leigh method, employed to some extent in American schools, tries to combine a reformed alphabet with an unre4. The Leigh formed spelling. The alphabet is improved by method the addition of new letters, each differing as little as possible in outline from the present letter to which it is most nearly allied. A passage on the next page illustrates the method. Leigh's system is, in a smaller degree, open to the same. objection as Pitman's-that in learning it children are learning to walk along a road which they will not afterwards have to travel; and is also open to an additional objection, that an alphabet in which the differences between the letters are minute must be hard to master. G and-say method The Alphabetic, the Phonic, and the Phonetic methods are synthetic that is, they began with elements (the names or 5. The Look- powers of the letters) and teach children to build them up into words. The 'Look-and-say,' 'Word-and-name,' or Chinese method, is analytic. Beginning with words, it teaches children to recognise them as a whole, and only when they can do this does it proceed to call their attention to the letters composing the words. Arguments for the method One great argument in favour of the Look-and-say method is that every other method is compelled to claim its help. Such words as one, quay, yacht, colonel, and lieutenant must be learned through it, because no printing device, no teaching device whatever, can indicate the entire divorce between certain of the letters and certain of the sounds in these words; and the greatest irregularities are, unfortunately, in the commonest words. The method is, moreover, natural in so far as the child begins to read as he begins to speak,-with whole words. Arguments against the method The chief argument against the Look-and-say system is that, attention being fixed on whole words, there is a tendency to confound words which resemble each other, like though, through, and thorough. Another argument advanced against it is that, though children may by it be taught to recognise old words, they do not acquire the power of dealing with new words. The answer is, that in this, as in the Alphabetic method, children, by a long series of unconscious inferences, do obtain a fairly correct idea of the powers of the letters. A further argument advanced against the Look-and-say method is that, taking in words as a whole for reading purposes does not give that acquaintance with their parts which is necessary for spelling purposes. This is to condemn the method for failing to do what it does not profess to do. It claims to be a method for teaching reading only, not for teaching spelling. There is more force in the contention that the method leads to slovenly enunciation by not emphasising the constituent parts of words. An admirable method employed in Germany, and thence extended to other countries, especially to France, may be 6. A German traced back to Johann Baptist Graser, a Bavarian method Inspector of Schools. About the year 1820 he came to the conclusion that both Reading and Writing might be taught more easily if they were taught together. He embodied his idea in the Schreiblese-Methode (Writing-reading method), which, improved by succeeding teachers, has now developed into the Anschauungs-Sprech-Schreib-Lese-Unterricht. This name (which means combined instruction in things, speech, writing, and reading) is felt even by Germans to be rather cumbrous and real, concrete, intuitive, natural, and verbal have been proposed as substitutes for it. Children are ready for the first lesson in this method after they have been trained in the Kindergarten to use all their senses, to manage a pencil, to draw straight lines and curves in any direction, and to pronounce the words of their little vocabulary clearly and correctly. They begin, not with printed characters and not with the alphabet, but with pictures of common objects whose names are short and regularly spelt— such as a wheel (Rad), a nest (Nest), or a hat (Hut). Beneath the picture on the card in front of the class and on the book in front of each child the name appears in script characters. The teacher has a talk with his little pupils about the object, and then asks them to notice the way in which its name is written. He writes the word on the blackboard and separates it into its elements; he makes the children pronounce the vowel by itself and in combination with the consonant; he tells them to give him other words containing the same sounds, and to point out in their books other words containing the same letters. Then he requires them to write the letters stroke by stroke from his dictation. Printed characters are taught only in the second stage. The essentials of the method are picture, talk, sound, and form of the complete word, resolution of sound and form into their elements, and writing, but the details may be varied according to the fancy and skill of the teacher. It is said to conduce to rapid progress in reading, writing, and intelligence. The German language lends itself readily to the method, because the spelling is fairly regular, and the written characters are composed largely of straight lines; but it has been adapted with complete success to the French language, and there is no |