Mechanical Processes
Reading begins in the "Children's House" as soon as the children reread the word they have already composed with the movable alphabet. This early effort is not indeed the true reading of the word, since interpretation is lacking. The children, it has been seen, know the word because they have actually put it together. They have not gained an understanding of it from the simple recognition of the graphic symbols. What they have done is, nevertheless, an important contribution to real reading. As one considers all of the details of this period of development, it is apparent that its mechanism is closely allied with that of the spoken language.
When the child's attention has been intensively applied to the recognition of the written word, it can easily be fixed on the analysis of the sounds which make up the word. At a certain age the child's interest was aroused by "touching" the letter. He can now be interested in hearing the sounds of the word when pronounced by others and in pronouncing it himself. We have shown that the work on the written language in the exercises with the alphabet was necessary for developing and perfecting the spoken language. It is by so doing that we make it possible to correct defects in speech and to pass naturally over the period when such defects are formed.
We now aim at finding an exercise in the actual mechanism of pronunciation which can be started at the moment of its natural development in such a way that its growth to perfection will follow as a matter of course. It is a question of bringing the children rapidly to pronounce without hesitation. In so pronouncing well, in performing extensive exercises in hearing words and in the interpretation of them from graphic signs, the child brings together in a unit of effect the basic processes of reading and writing.
A good pronunciation of the word read is of great importance. We may say that in the elementary schools of our day this is the principal purpose of reading. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to obtain a good pronunciation when defects have been allowed to develop and become habitual in the child's previous work. In fact, the elimination of these defects, which have been the result of a fundamental error in education, comes to absorb all of the energies of the reading class in ordinary primary schools. So far along as the fifth grade we see teachers struggling to make the children read, that they may acquire a good "pronunciation," and in our reading books there are graduated exercises constructed on the basis of "Difficulties in Pronunciation." It is apparent that all of this stress on the physiological mechanics of pronunciation is foreign to true reading. It is, rather, an impediment to the development of true reading. Such reading exercises constitute, as it were, a foreign body, which operates like a disease to prevent the development of the high intellectual activity which interprets the mysterious language of written symbols and arouses the child's enthusiasm with the fascinating revelations they can give. The eagerness of the child to learn is curbed and cheated when he is compelled to stop his mind from working because his tongue refuses to act properly and must be laboriously trained to work right. This training, if begun at the proper time, when the child's whole psychic and nervous organism yearns for the perfection of the mechanism of speech, would have been a fascinating task; and once started along the right path, the pupil would have continued to follow it with alacrity and confidence. When the time comes for the intelligence to try its wings, its wings should be ready. What would happen to a painter, if at the moment of inspiration, he had to sit down and manufacture his brushes!
Analysis
Our first publication on the methods used in the "Children's House" made clear two distinct operations involved in reading: the interpretation of the meaning and the pronunciation aloud of the "word." The stress we laid on that analysis as a guide to the development of reading was the result of actual experience. Those who followed this work during its initial stages saw how the children, when they read for the first time, interpreting the meaning of the words before them, did so without speaking,—reading, that is, mentally. Interpretation, in fact, is a question of mental concentration. Reading is an affair of the intelligence. The pronunciation aloud is quite a different thing, not only distinguished from the first process, but secondary to it. Talking aloud is a question of speech, involving first hearing and then the mechanical reproduction of sounds in articulate language. Its function is to bring into immediate communication two or more people, who thus exchange the thoughts which they have already perfected in the secret places of their minds.
Interpreted reading: "Smile and clap your hands." The child reads silently an order written on a slip of paper; then proves that she understands by acting the direction given. (A Montessori School in Italy.)