Reading: How to Teach It

by Sarah Louise Arnold

…

The moon, the rainbow in the heaven, the Milky Way, the firefly, the owl and owlet, the beaver, the rabbit, the squirrel—these saluted the baby boy, and awakened his interest. “What is that?” he cried, with eager question. “And the good Nokomis answered.” The little Hiawatha “learned of every bird its language.” He was taught, not by old Nokomis alone, but by bird and beast, flower and field.

So with every child who enters the school-room upon that fateful first Monday in September. He brings with him, not an empty head, but a mind stored with the memories of varied experiences. Just as the little Hiawatha gazed, pondered, questioned, learned—so this child has seen, has heard, has questioned, has thought, has acted. What he brings to school, who can tell? What has he seen and heard? What has he liked and desired? What has he questioned and learned? How little we know of this unwritten history! And yet it determines the net result of all our teaching. For nothing which we attempt to teach finds lodgment in the child mind unless it is linked with some past experience and awakens actual interest. Much of our reiterated instruction falls upon deaf ears, fails utterly to awaken the dormant interest, because it is ill chosen. We must know something about the life of the children before we can wisely teach them.

The thoughtful teacher remembers this truth and directs her work accordingly. Instead of rushing with headlong zeal into the routine of reading, writing, and number—under the impulsion of the Course of Study, and the memory of classes which failed to “pass”—she makes haste slowly, and devotes the first days of the term to lessons which help to reveal the experience of the children. Observation of and talks about common things; conversations which lead the children to tell what they can do, or like to do; story telling; picture drawing;—these afford opportunity for expression, and serve to show the teacher something of her pupils’ attainments, and the line of their interests as well. Meanwhile, they are becoming accustomed to the school-room routine, and so emerge from the period in which they gazed, dumb and dazed, at the many marvels with which this new school world is crowded. They come to know the teacher as their friend, and they become free and confident in her presence. Thus the true atmosphere of the school-room is created—the only atmosphere in which wholesome and natural teaching and learning can thrive.

This is not a prodigal misuse of time. It is the part of thrift to so spend in the beginning, for the returns are evident in the ease and readiness with which pupils and teacher afterward work together—the value of every lesson being enhanced by the mutual good will and understanding.

The school differs from the home and the kindergarten in that its allotted tasks are evidently determined by a motive and plan outside the child’s comprehension. In many cases this must be so. The lessons which involve the mastery of the symbols used in reading, writing, and number, or the drill and practice necessary to attain skill in music or drawing or writing, have no self-evident goal for the child. So many lines, so many letters, so many problems, he attempts, because the teacher says so, and in his new universe the teacher is supreme. At home he has always chosen more or less; so, too, in the kindergarten his interest and choice determined the story or the game or the topic of conversation. He has delighted in building houses, modelling balls, weaving mats, playing games—and all, so far as he knew, for his own immediate pleasure and accomplishment. Other results, to him unknown, were of course secured. He builded better than he knew. But in every case he rejoiced in some immediate accomplishment which he desired.

In too many cases the decreed exercises of the school are meaningless and purposeless to the beginner. Such exercises easily degenerate into dull and fruitless routine, indifferent and profitless to teacher and pupil alike. To arouse desire and awaken conscious motive is the teacher’s most important work, and in teaching reading it should receive first consideration. She, therefore, after securing such freedom and coöperation as promise a fertile soil for her seed-planting, calls the children about her to explain the purpose of the lessons which will fill their days.

Perhaps she reads to them a story which they like, a new story which they have never heard. When she reaches the interesting climax she pauses to say, “I haven’t time to read the rest of the story now. How I wish you could read! Then you might take the book and read the story yourselves. Would you not like to learn to read, so that you could read stories like these?”

In Hugh Miller’s graphic description of his childhood experience in reading, this element of purpose and desire is strongly emphasized. “The process of learning and acquiring had been a dark one,” he says, recalling his struggles with letters and syllables. He “slowly mastered” these “in humble confidence in the awful wisdom of the schoolmistress, not knowing whither it tended,” when (as a member of the Bible Class—“in the highest form”) his mind “awoke to the meaning of that most delightful of all narratives, the story of Joseph. Was there ever such a discovery made before?”