AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION. 381 



and subtract ones to ten. Each, day a passage of poetry was read 

 at the opening and closing of the session ; little songs were taught, 

 gentle gymnastic exercises were introduced between the lessons, 

 and the free-arm movement in making long straight lines was 

 added to their lessons in writing. This work of the first week 

 is given to show how the experiment was begun. The classes 

 entering the second and third years were started with different 

 sets of lessons, but substantially on the same lines. 



Throughout the three years reading was taught as in the first 

 week. When there were enough, sentences to make a four-page 

 leaflet of print, they were printed and read in that form. The 

 first transfer from script to print was made at the end of six 

 weeks. The printed leaflets were distributed ; the children mere- 

 ly glanced at them; as yet they were of less interest than the 

 objects usually distributed. I said, " Look at the papers ; see if 

 there is anything on them that you have seen before." Soon one 

 hand was raised, then another, and another. " Rosamond, what 

 have you found ? " "I think one of my sentences is here, but it 

 don't look just like the one on the board." In less than ten min- 

 utes, by comparison of script and print, they read the whole 

 leaflet, each pointing out " my sentences." After a few readings 

 the children took the leaflets home, the sent(3nces were erased 

 from the boards, and the same process repeated with the new 

 matter that was accumulating. The reader may think there was 

 great waste of time and effort, since the new vocabulary and the 

 written and printed symbols must have been forgotten almost as 

 soon as learned. I expected the children to forget much, and 

 was surprised to find that they did not. One morning in March, 

 a visitor who was looking over the accumulated leaflets asked to 

 have them read. I told her they had been read when first 

 printed only; but she urged the test, so I distributed them as 

 they happened to come. The first leaflet fell to the youngest girl, 

 and I think I was more amazed than our visitor when she read it 

 without faltering. The visitor asked her, " What does palmate- 

 ly- veined mean, where you read ' The leaf of the cotton-plant is 

 palmately-veined ' ? " The child replied, " I can show what it 

 means better than I can tell it." " Show us, then, Marjorie," I 

 said. The child drew on tbe board a fairly correct outline of a 

 cotton-plant leaf, inserted its palmate veining, and turning to the 

 visitor pointed to that veining. All the leaflets were read with- 

 out help, nothing was forgotten, neither ideas nor words, as the 

 visitor assured herself by questions. 



No effort was made to use a special vocabulary, to repeat 

 words, to avoid scientific terms ; there was no drill in phonics or 

 spelling ; no attention was given to isolated words as words — a 

 thought was the unit and basis of expression. In the science les- 



