LECTURES ON LETTERS.
We find in a recent number of that well-known and reliable newspaper, the London Punch, an interesting sketch of a new and improved system of teaching the elementary branches of education. It proceeds upon principles somewhat different from those which have generally obtained in the popular methods of instruction. It was prepared by the Editor of the journal referred to, for the Council of Education established a few years since by the English Government, for the express purpose of discussing and promoting improved methods of public teaching. In a note accompanying the work, the author states that, as soon as it was completed, he forwarded it, by
the parcels conveyance company,
with a polite note to the Secretary of the Council.
We regret that our limits will not permit us to present to the readers of the New Monthly Magazine a full description of this novel work. We can only give a slight sketch of the manner in which it proposes to teach the Alphabet. The author thinks that, in the systems in general use hitherto, advantage has not been sufficiently taken of the pictorial form, as capable of connecting with the alphabet, not only agreeable associations, but many useful branches of knowledge.
He would begin with the letter A, by rendering it attractive to children as a swing, and the opportunity might then be taken of leading the conversation to the swing of the pendulum, the laws which govern its oscillations, and the experiments of Maupertius, Clairault, and Lemmonier, upon its variations in different latitudes.
G, the child might be told, stands for George, and the pictorial illustrations of St. George and the dragon (the latter about to swallow its own tail) would enable the teacher to enter upon a disquisition relative to the probable Eastern origin of the legendary stories of the middle ages.