224 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



children we are permitted or required to handle words without associ- 

 ating any meaning with them. The same may be seen in the thought- 

 less singing of our Sabbath-schools. Thus words become the only 

 things which we think of; and we lose the feelings which accompany 

 clear comprehension, or the want of comprehension. Accustomed to 

 a dull tool, we lose the consciousness that it is dull. But let us rarely 

 have a dull one in our hands, and how intolerable it seems to work 

 with it ! Blunt our keen perceptions upon things which we do not or 

 cannot penetrate, and we become insensible to the fact that our in- 

 strument is dull, and fails to perform its proper work. It is better, 

 by all means, that the child should attach wrong ideas to all he reads, 

 than that he should form the habit of readino; without attachin"- 

 any ideas. Let any friend of education look upon the stolidity of 

 the average product of our schools, which comes from this mechanical, 

 absolutely thoughtless reading, and he cannot but feel that we are 

 producing a large amount of artificial stupidity. I do not say that 

 pupils should never be required to read or learn what they do not com- 

 prehend ; but I do say that such should never be the requisition so 

 long as they are in danger of falling into the habit of which I speak, 

 nor until they have the habit of reading with the distinct realization 

 that they do comprehend or that they do not. 



3. I have said that the power of expression is possible only after 

 a proper development of the capacity to receive impressions. The 

 power and the habit of conveying thought will follow as a conse- 

 quence of, and in proportion to, the power and the habit of receiving 

 thought. This plainly indicates the plan which should be adopted by 

 any rational system of primary instruction in reading. As a matter 

 of fact, however, the universal practice of teachers is in direct opposi- 

 tion to this principle. It is assumed on all hands that the practice of 

 reading can have no other object than to impart elocutionary skill; to 

 cultivate the power of oral expression. The great question which 

 governs the method in this branch is not. Do we understand others? 

 but, How to make others understand us. It is taken for granted that 

 distinctness of articulation, correctness of inflection, etc., surely indi- 

 cate the presence of the thought within. Pupils are drilled almost 

 daily in reading from the time they are six until they are sixteen, and 

 yet they cannot read. They pass over that which to them is intelli- 

 gible and that which is not intelligible alike, without the least discrimi- 

 nation. Words, words merely, are their only currency. Professors ot 

 elocution, and teachers, of reading, do not impart the power we need. 

 They teach us an accomplishment, but neglect our necessity. They 

 make oral reading a high and important end, while it is simply a means, 

 and should so be used. Our children ai"e taught as thous^h a large 

 portion of their existence were to be spent in reading aloud ; whereas, 

 probably not one-fiftieth of all the reading done by people in ordinary 

 circumstances is of that kind. For most of us, it is our intellectual busi- 



