scendants more or less resembling it, which we still have with us. Later Phonic Systems. — In general these have uniform characteristics. They are mainly analytico-synthetic. The sounds, instead of being stated arbitrarily as belonging to certain letters, are "developed" from words and then recombined: rat becomes r-ǎ-t, the sounds only being given. The “family family" relation is still maintained, but the combinations made are strictly of words, the meaningless aggregations of sounds such as dat and lat being no longer allowed. This change indicates a tendency on the part of the advocates of phonetic teaching toward sounder educational principles. The presentation of a whole word is at least a partial recognition of the way a child naturally learns things. It is to be feared, however, that even yet in too many instances the word is presented as a combination of sounds rather than as the symbol of an idea. The word rat does not stand so much for the interesting, if unpopular, little rodent whose name it is, as for the synthesis of the three sounds represented by the letters r-ǎ-t. There are so many further modifications of so-called phonic reading that it is impossible to follow them. Surely even Mrs. Pollard would be unable to recognize some of the descendants of her scheme. But these modifications are all in more or less full recognition of a psychological basis of teaching. Some go so far as to present entire sentences and even whole verses for inspection by the children - a sort of by-guess reading and to encourage the recognition of some words as words before taking up the phonic analysis. Every step to ward making " reading " always reading, the getting of thought, and using all mechanical devices merely as aids, is encouraging. Danger in Secondary Ends. Of course it is claimed that this is the purpose of all phonic systems. Doubtless in the mind of the teacher it is, but in the mind of the young child the manifest aim is the real aim, and untold harm is done in our schools by presenting continually secondary ends rather than primary. This error is common not merely in the reading lesson, but in other subjects as well, and especially in creating motives for study and even for conduct. The eye of the child should whenever possible be kept upon the real end in view. This has an immediate bearing upon the creation of ideals and the development of character. In many instances it may be impossible to do this; the real end may be too remote and abstruse for the child to grasp, but usually it is possible certainly in many more instances than our school practice would indicate. In teaching reading it is not only possible but easy. "Reading" can as easily be reading as the mere calling of words. English not Phonetic. Even with this higher consideration aside, there are fundamental linguistic reasons why "phonics " can never be the real basis of instruction in reading. Our language is not a phonetic language. Because of its history, of the many elements that have entered into its composition, and especially of the distortions that it has suffered at the hands of ignorant early printers and of many pseudo-philologists, a very large part of its syllables are purely arbitrary combinations of letters which must be committed to memory, without aid from logic, or science. So large a part of the words - in common use are thus irregular that attempts to form scientific classifications, instead of aiding the memory, merely cause confusion. Take, for instance, one of the most reliable of the rules, that a final e, silent after a single consonant, lengthens the short vowel preceding the consonant. This is usually given to children very early, as one of the laws suitable for infant minds, and it is one of the guideposts to the foreigner trying to thread his way among the crossroads of our language. The start is nimble: tap, tape; rip, ripe; cap, cape; and so forth. But soon come tare, hare, bare, and perhaps thirty more. Well, we will classify these as an exception and go on. We have not gone far when we run upon dove, love, above, and a long list another exception. And so with halve, salve, and the like, and then live, give, are, were, and the rest, until the exceptional instances seem to outnumber the regulars. And yet, as I have said, this is one of the most reliable of the rules; indeed, it is almost the only one of sufficient embrace to be of much consequence. From this comparative regularity all the way to ough with its eight different pronunciations is a road strewn with " troubles." The diacritical markings are merely danger signs, useful so long as they remain, but leaving panic when removed. Is it not vastly better to teach reading as reading and get such assistance from phonics as we can, than to overwork this valuable aid, misrepresent values, and fail at least of the higher results? Psychological Methods. Of the psychological methods of teaching reading to beginners there are two general classes, one taking for its unit the word, representing an idea, the other taking the sentence, repre senting a complete thought. In both, the meaning of the word rather than its phonetic composition receives the first consideration. - The Word Method. The word method in operation is simplicity itself. A familiar object is presented before the children and named by them. The name is then written on the blackboard. Thus the written and visible symbol of the name of a familiar object becomes associated with the same name as known to the ear. The child becomes, as to the word, eye-minded. After the names of several objects have been learned in this way, a few necessary connecting and descriptive words, as verbs and adjectives, are taught. Thus the child becomes possessed of a small working vocabulary. Next, sentences are constructed of these words and read by the children. So far the process is one of simple word memory. The words are treated first as wholes by themselves and then as parts of a sentence. Here lie both the strength and the weakness of the method. Tests of the Word Method. The real tests are two: 1. Are the pupils to go on indefinitely memorizing new words as wholes, Chinese fashion? 2. Can the words treated thus independently be united smoothly into sentences, so that reading shall be repeating thoughts and not merely calling words? Necessity of Spelling.-As to the first test, naturally the words must ultimately be broken up into their sonant elements and these elements must be used in building other words; that is, children must learn to spell and to recognize new words by spelling before rapid progress can be made in learning to read. Here comes the claim of the phonic teacher. By phonics the children learn these sonant elements of words and are made independent in reading new words. This would be true enough if our language were a phonetically regular language, but it is not, as has been stated above, and attempts to teach by a phonetic system, when such a system includes so little, results in artificiality and teaching much that " isn't so." Children who learn to read by the word method must early learn to spell. But this spelling must be in the old-fashioned way of memory, aided here and there by those few phonic facts that are of general significance. Some of these may be taught by rule, though the many exceptions are likely to make most of the rules confusing rather than illumining. Most of the phonic facts will be grasped by the children by a sort of unconscious generalization. Colonel Parker, who was an advocate of the word method, used to insist that this unconscious generalization was sufficient and that the children needed no special drill in phonics. How Children Learn. Of the two, a purely phonic system and a word method with its spelling unaided by formal phonics, the latter unquestionably rests on a sounder psychological basis; it is more nearly like the way in which children acquire their first knowledge of the world in many phases. The most familiar objects. are learned first singly by memory alone. Then the mind unaided forms a simple generalization. Acquaintance is first made with Towser, the family dog. Then every dog is Towser. Later Towser and all the rest become dogs. But the generalization was first made unaided and unconsciously, when the neighbor's dog was called Towser. Whatever may be its other faults or merits, the word |