READING AS AN INTELLECTUAL PROCESS. 223 



accurate comprehension of good English; and this ever underlies the 

 defect of expression. Of all the young men of whom the complaint is 

 so justly made, I do not believe there is one to be found who has the 

 faculties well developed which are necessary to a good reader. The 

 primary fault is not to be found in the instruction in composition, but 

 in the instruction in reading, and this last includes every subject in 

 which the pupil has a book to use. Show me a person who is a good 

 reader in the real sense of the terra, one who has a strong power of 

 attention, quick perception, active association, and other requisites to 

 a fair mental reader, and I will show you a person who will not come 

 far short of reasonable demands in his composition. The one follows 

 the other naturally and invariably. This statement will be fully sup- 

 ported by any class after six months of faithful study of the English 

 classics. 



Of this want of comprehension there are several sources which are 

 unwittingly fostered : 



1. While children, we are compelled to study and read over an<l 

 over again the same lessons. The mastery of words is made the end 

 and the only end, in the view of both teacher and pupil, instead of re- 

 maining to each as a means only, a subordinate matter. Curiosity, at 

 that age the natural governor of attention, is destroyed ; and nine- 

 tenths of our task-reading is performed with an indifference and weak- 

 ness of tliought which do not deserve the name of reading. This 

 will continue so until the reading-matter put into our schools is greatly 

 increased in variety and amount. Rarely, and only at long interA'als, 

 should a lesson be read more than once. The habit of seeming to read, 

 of performing the physical part, while the mental faculties lie as dead, 

 is easily formed. But it should be resisted. The problem before the 

 primary teacher is this: To keep firmly fixed in the child's mind that 

 the chief thing is the idea, while at the same time he is duly impressed 

 with forms and words. Not only must the tongue utter, but the spirit 

 must see what we read. 



2. Also, in childhood we are allowed or required to read what we 

 do not understand. A common illustration of one form of this evil 

 occurred recently in the closing exercises of a first-class normal school. 

 The pupil-teacher was to exhibit her power by means of a lesson in 

 writing to a large class of bright boys about seven years of age. She 

 had placed upon the black-board, as her copy, those four familiar lines 



"Work while you work, 

 Play while you play," etc. 



The writing was certainly most admirable ; but the inquiries of the 

 lady-principal revealed the fact that the children had not the least 

 conception of the first two lines. Most, indeed, seemed not to have 

 thought any thing about the meaning. This is a sample, taken, how- 

 ever, from normal training, of the vast number of ways in which as 



