THE SERIES METHOD. 537 



of the courses at the Sorbonne and the College de France, and this is 

 one of the reasons why many of the men and researches which have 

 enriched French science hail from the Ecole Normdle. 



One word more. As I have pointed out, the French Ecole 

 Normdle was the result of a revolution; I may now add that France 

 since Sedan has been doing, and in a tremendous fashion, what, as 

 I have told you, Prussia did after Jena. Let us not wait for dis- 

 astrous defeats, either on the field of battle or of industry, to develop 

 to the utmost our scientific establishments and so take our proper and 

 complete place among the nations. — Nature. 



THE SERIES METHOD: A COMPARISON. 



By CHARLOTTE TAYLOR. 



BROADLY speaking, there are two methods which are used for 

 the teaching of a language : that of the mother and that of the 

 grammarian. The child learns its own or mother tongue from the 

 mother; it learns a foreign tongue from a teacher, whose highest 

 ambition is to be a grammarian. Does the child learn better from 

 the mother or from the grammarian? Without doubt, from the 

 mother, according to the mother method. If this is so, must we use 

 the example of the mother or of the grammarian when we are to 

 begin the teaching of a foreign language? Is there any reason why 

 a foreign tongue should be otherwise taught than the mother tongue? 

 Is it not at least worth the trouble to try the method of the mother, 

 when it is every day demonstrated that pupils who have had five, six, 

 seven years of teaching are unable, on leaving school, so much as 

 to understand when the language they have been studying is used in 

 conversation? 



Let us attempt to obtain light on the differences between these 

 two principal methods that exist for teaching a language. What is 

 the mother's method? How does she teach the child to speak? First 

 let us notice that the mother follows the child : she allows him first to 

 show interest in something and' then helps him to express himself. 

 Here we must pause to notice that what most interests the child is 

 not a thing, an object for itself, but the capacity of the thing to do 

 something, the possibilities of the thing for the performance of an 

 action. A young child takes a thing in its hand and waves it, or 

 strikes it against something, or passes it from one hand to the other; 

 when it is older, it asks invariably, " What for ? " The mother names 

 the thing to the child, and also the action that may be therewith per- 

 formed. The child begins to play. Here a specialty of the mother 



