ON MENTAL AND PHYSICAL FACTORS INVOLVED IN EDUCATION. 335 
Now these results apply to all practised readers, to those taught by 
the Phonic Method as well as those brought up on Look-and Say. In 
Germany, indeed, the Phonic Method is almost universal. How, then, 
does the child taught by the Phonic Method arrive at this instant 
recognition of words as wholes? 
Meumann asserts that ‘ the development of the reading (and writing) 
processes is governed by the law oF the fusion of isolated acts into 
compounded acts through practice.’ ‘For,’ he tells us, ‘the pro- 
cedure in reading is the same as oa ‘ll willed performances : all the 
external performances and movements become gradually automatic 
through the natural process of their continued repetition and practice.’ 15 
But he gives us no indication as to which are ‘ the external perform- 
ances ’ and which remain as the chief instigators of the whole procedure. 
That this latter position is occupied by a few ‘ determining letters ’ 
suggesting their sounds has already been dismissed. 
Meumann does, however, make some further attempt to explain 
what takes place. He likens the acquirement of reading to that of 
piano-playing from notes.'® But throughout all this analogy, Professor 
Meumann has failed to note a most important difference. The child at 
the beginning of the process of learning to read can already talk. To 
make the learning of piano-playing correspond to the learning of reading, 
we should have to suppose a child who could already play on the piano 
before beginning to learn from notes; and not merely a few easy pieces, 
but practically all the pieces he is afterward to play from notes. In 
such a case it would not be necessary for the child to render a number 
of ‘ external performances ’ automatic by laborious repetition. They 
ure already automatic! It would only be necessary for the child to 
perceive the notes with sufficient clearness to produce what he can 
already do. In short, the child who comes to the learning of reading 
can already use and understand words. He has only to connect oa 
ready-made activities with the sight of the printed matter. 
What really happens in the case of the ‘ Phonic ’ child is that, as he 
masters the difficulties of deciphering, he has more attention freed for 
the printed word as a whole and for the corresponding sound-whole. 
These are respectively at the beginning and end of the struggle with 
each word. And as that struggle absorbs him less, his attention can 
pass more freely between the extreme terms. He thus. forms the 
essential association—that, namely, between printed whole and sound- 
whole. In other words, he gradually succeeds, in spite of (or, if 
preferred, alongside of) his phonic training, in reading by Look-and-Say. 
His phonic training does, indeed, confer. upon him the advantage 
that when his rapid reading is arrested by a difficult word he can resort 
to the process of deciphering. Thus he has a greater mastery over his 
words than a child who could only attack them by Look-and-Say.?” 
But it is found that the Look-and-Say method, whenever’ it is 
employed with intelligent children, and always when it is’ used by 
intelligent teachers with normal children, involves a more or less 
subconscious process of analysis and synthesis which secures the same 
1¢ Op. cit., p. 260. 3 Op. cit., p. 258. 18 Op. cit., pp. 259-60. 
27 Vide Judd, ‘ Genetic Peychology for Teachers,” p, 254. 
