AN EXPERIMENT IN PRIMARY EDUCATION. 621 



sentence from the context ; when the wrong word was thus suggested, 

 she was obliged to spell out the real word by sounds, always seek- 

 ing first the central or predominant sound, and building up the word 

 around it, instead of enumerating the letters in order. Thus in the 

 word scratch she took out the letters a t, as the central nucleus, pre- 

 ceding the first by the sound of r, then of c, then of 5 ; then, when the 

 sound scrat was complete, adding that of ch. She was made to read as 

 much and as rapidly as possible, relying upon constant repetition and 

 association of ideas to secure familiarity. Thus unconsciously the 

 conception was continued, that written as well as spoken language 

 was an outgrowth of thought before the attempt was made to study 

 it as an object of thought. This method is like that of learning to 

 walk before studying the laws of Weber on locomotion. 



This method may seem slovenly, but, after all, it is both the natural 

 and scientific method of studying an unknown tongue, which must be 

 deciphered by the context. How else did Champollion read the Ro- 

 setta stone, or Eliot find a written language for his Indian Bible ? 

 Throughout this period the task of reading was treated as something 

 so easy as to be insignificant, and was so regarded by the child her- 

 self.* The main intellectual work of the day's lessons (whose duration 

 was never more than an hour and a half) was concentrated upon the 

 arithmetic, map-drawing, analysis of flowers, and the geometrical 

 studies, that she now pursued by the help of Hill's " First Lessons," 

 and Spencer's " Inventional Geometry." She studied angles, vertical 

 and adjacent, the relations of angles and circles, and the measurement 

 of the former by the latter. Exercises in these were practiced daily 

 with compass and ruler ; and, when lines drawn with the pencil failed 

 to give a large enough visual impression, they were designed with 

 colored sticks. This enlargement of the material illustration never 

 failed to clear up any obscurities. At the time these notes cease, the 

 child was six and a half years old. 



I have tried to make clear in these few notes the outlines of a 

 (single) experiment, which seems to me to show that the mental edu- 

 cation of even a very young child may be imbued with scientific 

 methods and even ideas which should furnish suitable preparation for 

 advanced scientific studies. It can not be a matter of indifference that 

 'such habits of mind are acquired from the beginning, or only after 

 much previous faulty training. What comes first will always remain 

 the most important, will always dominate the rest. Experience in the 

 medical education of women has repeatedly brought home to me the 

 difficulty of teaching such an art as medicine to persons who come to 

 it through the prevailing systems of school discipline, especially those 

 which are applied to girls. Experience with one little girl at least con- 

 vinces me that the aptitude for vivid and accurate perception, and for 



* What is easy, when taken instinctively, may be incredibly difficult when itself be- 

 comes the object of thought and study. 



