Two elements of learning to read have been presented here: sentence reading and word mastery. Of the study of the meaning of the words and the development of the power of imagination we shall speak elsewhere.
Reading without purpose is sauntering, not exercise. More is got from one book on which the thought settles for definite end in knowledge, than from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye. A cottage flower gives honey to the bee, a king’s garden none to the butterfly.
—Edward Bulwer.
CHAPTER IV.
THE STUDY OF THE LESSON.
In our emphasis of certain phases of the new education, there is a tendency to swing away from the use of the text-book, so that the children depend largely upon the teacher’s oral instruction and explanation. It often happens that the teacher, in her zeal, forgets that the growth of the children depends upon their own doing, and imagines that her thought and experience will suffice, without effort on the part of her pupils. This state of affairs exists in the reading class oftener than in any other. Time is often wasted in smoothing out difficulties which never existed as such to the children, and obstacles are explained away before they are recognized by the child as obstacles. Meanwhile the teacher is doing the work and the pupil is losing the opportunity to gain power by wrestling with his little problems himself.