An adaptation of phonic combined with the word method can be found in Education by Life. It is simpler than Miss Dale's, and being combined with the word method, children get much more quickly to real stories. Stanley Hall advocates the individual teaching of reading, and since Dr. Montessori called every one's attention to this we have used it much more freely, and have found that once the children know some sounds, there is a great advantage in a certain amount of individual learning, but class teaching has its own advantages and it seems best to have a combination. Long since we taught a boy who was mentally deficient and incapable of intelligent analysis, by whole words and corresponding pictures. Miss Payne has developed this to a great extent. It is practically an appeal to the interest in solving puzzles. The children choose their own pictures and are supplied with envelopes containing either single sounds, or whole words corresponding with the picture. They lay h on the house, g on the girl, p on the pond, and later do the same with words. They certainly enjoy it, and no one is ever kept waiting. Sometimes the puzzle is to set in order the words of a nursery rhyme which they already know, sometimes it is to read and draw everything mentioned.
It is not only how children learn to read that is important: even more so is what they read. Much unintelligent reading in later life is due to the reading primer in which there was nothing to understand. Children should read books, as adults do, to get something out of them. The time often wasted in teaching reading too soon would be far better employed in cultivating a taste for good reading by telling or reading to the children good stories and verses.[32]
[Footnote 32: It is difficult to find easy material that is worth giving to intelligent children, and we have been glad to find Brown's Young Artists' Readers, Series A.]
A revolution is going on just now in the method of teaching writing. It is now generally recognised that much time and effort have been wasted in teaching children to join letters which are easier to read unjoined.
A very interesting article appeared in the Fielden School Demonstration Record No. II., and Mr. Graily Hewitt has brought the subject of writing as it was done before copperplate was invented very much to the fore. The Child Study Society has published a little monograph on the subject giving the experience of different teachers and specimens of the writing.
Little Marjorie Fleming was a voracious reader with a remarkable capacity for writing. Her spelling was unconventional at times, but there was never any doubt about her meaning. She expressed herself strongly on many subjects, and one of these was arithmetic. "I am now going to tell you the horrible and wretched plaege (plague) that my multiplication gives me you cant conceive it the most Devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7 it is what nature itself cant endure." Yet "if you speak with the tongues of men and angels and make not mention of arithmetic it profiteth you nothing," says Miss Wiggin.
There are a few little children who are really fond of number work. There are not many of them, and they would probably learn more if they were left to themselves. There are even a few mathematical geniuses who hardly want teaching, but who are worthy of being taught by a Professor of Mathematics, always supposing that he is worthy of them. But the majority of children would probably be farther advanced at ten or twelve if they had no teaching till they were seven. They ought to learn through actual number games, through keeping score for other games, and through any kind of calculation that is needed for construction or in real life.
There are but few true number games, but dominoes and card games introduce the number groups. In "Old maid" the children pair the groups and so learn to recognise them; in dominoes they use this knowledge, while "Snap" involves quick recognition. Any one can make up a game in which scoring is necessary. Ninepins or skittles is a number game, and one can score by using number groups, or by fetching counters, shells, beads, etc., as reminders. The number groups are important; they form what Miss Punnett calls "a scheme" for those who have no great visualising power, and they combine the smallest groups into large ones. It ought to be remembered that the repetition of a group is an easier thing to deal with than the combination of two groups, that is, six is a name for two threes and eight for two fours, but five and seven have not so definite a meaning.[33]
[Footnote 33: This very morning a child cutting out brown paper pennies for a shop said, 'Look! there are two sixes; that would be a big number!']
The Tillich bricks are good playthings, and so is cardboard money—shillings, sixpences, threepences, pence and halfpence.