Methods for the Teaching of Reading and Writing
Spontaneous Development of Graphic Language. While I was directress of the Orthophrenic School at Rome, I had already began to experiment with various didactic means for the teaching of reading and writing. These experiments were practically original with me.
Itard and Séguin do not present any rational method through which writing may be learned. In the pages above quoted, it may be seen how Itard proceeded in the teaching of the alphabet and I give here what Séguin says concerning the teaching of writing.
"To have a child pass from design, to writing, which is its most immediate application, the teacher need only call D, a portion of a circle, resting its extremities upon a vertical; A, two obliques reunited at the summit and cut by a horizontal, etc., etc.
"We no longer need worry ourselves as to how the child shall learn to write: he designs, then writes. It need not be said that we should have the child draw the letters according to the laws of contrast and analogy. For instance, O beside I; B with P; T opposite L, etc."
According to Séguin, then, we do not need to teach writing. The child who draws, will write. But writing, for this author, means printed capitals! Nor does he, in any other place, explain whether his pupil shall write in any other way. He instead, gives much space to the description of the design which prepares for, and which includes writing. This method of design is full of difficulties and was only established by the combined attempts of Itard and Séguin.
"Chapter XL: Design. In design the first idea to be acquired is that of the plane destined to receive the design. The second is that of the trace or delineation. Within these two concepts lies all design, all linear creation.
"These two concepts are correlative, their relation generates the idea, or the capacity to produce the lines in this sense; that lines may only be called such when they follow a methodical and determined direction: the trace without direction is not a line; produced by chance, it has no name.
"The rational sign, on the contrary, has a name because it has a direction and since all writing or design is nothing other than a composite of the diverse directions followed by a line, we must, before approaching what is commonly called writing, insist upon these notions of plane and line. The ordinary child acquires these by instinct, but an insistence upon them is necessary in order to render the idiot careful and sensitive in their application. Through methodical design he will come into rational contact with all parts of the plane and will, guided by imitation, produce lines at first simple, but growing more complicated.
"The pupil may be taught: First, to trace the diverse species of lines. Second, to trace them in various directions and in different positions relative to the plane. Third, to reunite these lines to form figures varying from simple to complex. We must therefore, teach the pupil to distinguish straight lines from curves, vertical from horizontal, and from the various oblique lines; and must finally make clear the principal points of conjunction of two or more lines in forming a figure.