HOW SPELLING DAMAGES THE MIND. 639 



can never be sure of pronouncing rightly an English word that he 

 has not heard spoken, nor of spelling correctly one that he has never 

 seen written. The spelling of each word must be learned by sheer 

 force of memory. In this work the pupil's reasoning powers can not 

 be utilized, but must be subdued, while his memory is sadly over- 

 worked. In the affairs of the child's daily life, the logical follow- 

 ing out of rules is rewarded ; in learning to spell, it brings him only 

 discomfiture and bewilderment. He is taught that b-o-n-e stands for 

 bon (not bo-ne), and t-o-n-e for ton, but that d-o-n-e stands for dun, 

 that g-o-n-e spells gdn, m-o-v-e spells moov, and b-r-o-n-z-e bronz. Now 

 when he comes in reading to another similar word, as none, he has no 

 means of telling whether to call it non, nun, non, noon, or non ; he 

 can only look up at his teacher and wait to be told. The influence of 

 the spelling-class quickly drives him to repress any inclination to 

 reason, and he gives himself up to a blind following of authority. 

 No child learns English spelling without getting the pernicious no- 

 tion that cram is better than thinking, and that common sense is a 

 treacherous guide. The child who can take what he is told with- 

 out asking why, who can repeat a rule without troubling himself 

 about its meaning, gets along best. On the other hand, the child 

 who has difficulty in learning to spell may be expected to develop 

 strong logical faculties. He is constantly trying to spell according 

 to some principle, and, of course, constantly coming to grief. Thus 

 a boy who had long been at the foot of his spelling-class was one 

 day given the word ghost, and, making a desperate attempt at the sort 

 of spelling he had oftenest heard succeed, he spelled it g-h-o-g-h-j-s-t. 

 This bringing upon him shouts of laughter, he said, with clinched 

 fist and tearful eyes : "You needn't laugh ; you all spell homelier 'n 

 that ! " So much attention is given to spelling that children obtain 

 false ideas of its importance. The spelling, or representation, be- 

 comes to them the word, while the real word is called the pronun- 

 ciation, and is thought of as an appendage. They learn to despise 

 the poor speller, a prejudice which is never outgrown, and above 

 all they become so absorbed in the manipulation of words that they 

 have little chance to grasp the ideas which the words stand for. 



If our notation of numbers were as irregular as our notation of 

 speech, so that the numbers from forty to forty-five, for instance, 

 should be written, say as follows : 40, 741, 420, 43, 414, 225 ; and if 

 no one could tell at sight whether a number like 7,243,812 contained 

 several figures which were " silent," or had exceptional values, who 

 can doubt that the study of arithmetic, instead of being a valuable 

 discipline, would be mere mentally enervating drudgery ? If it were 

 proposed that children should learn a style of writing music which 

 gave different values to the same characters, similarly placed, in differ- 

 ent pieces, and added a host of " silent " notes, the evils of learning 

 such a system would be plainly seen. Yet many people, who have 



