Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  “No tears! no tasks! no masters! nothing upon compulsion!” say the opposite party in education. “Children must be left entirely at liberty; they will learn every thing better than you can teach them; their memory must not be overloaded with trash; their reason must be left to grow.”

  Their reason will never grow, unless it be exercised, is the reply; their memory must be stored whilst they are young, because, in youth, the memory is most tenacious. If you leave them at liberty for ever, they will never learn to spell; they will never learn Latin; they will never learn Latin grammar; yet, they must learn Latin grammar, and a number of other disagreeable things; therefore, we must give them tasks and task-masters.

  In all these assertions, perhaps, we shall find a mixture of truth and errour; therefore, we had better be governed by neither party, but listen to both, and examine arguments unawed by authority. And first, as to the panic fear, which, though no argument, is a most powerful motive. We see but few examples of children so extremely stupid as not to have been able to learn to read and write between the years of three and thirteen; but we see many whose temper and whose understanding have been materially injured by premature or injudicious instruction; we see many who are disgusted, perhaps irrecoverably, with literature, whilst they are fluently reading books which they cannot comprehend, or learning words by rote, to which they affix no ideas. It is scarcely worth while to speak of the vain ambition of those who long only to have it said, that their children read sooner than those of their neighbours do; for, supposing their utmost wish to be gratified, that their son could read before the age when children commonly articulate, still the triumph must be of short duration, the fame confined to a small circle of “foes and friends,” and, probably, in a few years, the memory of the phenomenon would remain only with his doting grandmother. Surely, it is the use which children make of their acquirements which is of consequence, not the possessing them a few years sooner or later. A man, who, during his whole life, could never write any thing that was worth reading, would find it but poor consolation for himself, his friends, or the public, to reflect, that he had been in joining-hand before he was five years old.

  As it is usually managed, it is a dreadful task indeed to learn, and, if possible, a more dreadful task to teach to read. With the help of unters, and coaxing, and gingerbread, or by dint of reiterated pain and terror, the names of the four-and-twenty letters of the alphabet, are, perhaps, in the course of some weeks, firmly fixed in the pupil’s memory. So much the worse; all these names will disturb him, if he have common sense, and at every step must stop his progress. To begin with the vowels: each of these have several different sounds, and, consequently, ought to have several names, or different signs, to distinguish them in different circumstances. In the first lesson of the spelling book, the child begins with a-b, makes ab; b-a makes ba. The inference, if any general inference can be drawn from this lesson, is, that when a comes before b, it has one sound, and after b, it has another sound; but this is contradicted by and by, and it appears that a after b, has various sounds, as in ball, in bat, in bare. The letter i in fire, is i, as we call it in the alphabet, but in fir, it is changed; in pin, it is changed again; so that the child, being ordered to affix to the same sign a variety of sounds and names, and not knowing in what circumstances to obey, and in what to disregard the contradictory injunctions imposed upon him, he pronounces sounds at hazard, and adheres positively to the last ruled case, or maintains an apparently sullen, or truly philosophic and sceptical silence. Must e in pen, and e in where, and e in verse, and e in fear, all be called e alike? The child is patted on the head for reading u as it ought to be pronounced in future; but if, remembering this encouragement, the pupil should venture to pronounce u in gun, and bun, in the same manner, he will, inevitably, be disgraced. Pain and shame, impress precepts upon the mind: the child, therefore, is intent upon remembering the new sound of u in bun; but when he comes to busy, and burial, and prudence, his last precedent will lead him fatally astray, and he will again be called a dunce. O, in the exclamation Oh! is happily called by its alphabetical name; but in to, we can hardly know it again, and in morning and wonder, it has a third and a fourth additional sound. The amphibious letter y, which is either a vowel or a consonant, has one sound in one character, and two sounds in the other; as a consonant, it is pronounced as in yesterday; in try, it is sounded as i; in any, and in the termination of many other words, it is sounded like e. Must a child know all this by intuition, or must it be whipt into him? But he must know a great deal more, before he can read the most common words. What length of time should we allow him for learning, when c is to be sounded like k, and when like s? and how much longer time shall we add for learning, when s shall be pronounced sh, as in sure, or z, as in has; the sound of which last letter z, he cannot, by any conjuration, obtain from the name zed, the only name by which he has been taught to call it? How much time shall we allow a patient tutor for teaching a docile pupil, when g is to be sounded soft, and when hard? There are many carefully worded rules in the spelling-books, specifying before what letters, and in what situations, g shall vary in sound; but, unfortunately, these rules are difficult to be learned by heart, and still more difficult to understand. These laws, however positive, are not found to be of universal application, or at least, a child has not always wit or time to apply them upon the spur of the occasion. In coming to the words ingenious gentleman, get a good grammar, he may be puzzled by the nice distinctions he is to make in pronunciation in cases apparently similar; but he has not yet become acquainted with all the powers of this privileged letter: in company with h, it assumes the character of f, as in tough; another time he meets it, perhaps, in the same company, in the same place, and, as nearly as possible, in the same circumstances, as in the word though; but now g is to become a silent letter, and is to pass incognito, and the child will commit an unpardonable errour, if he claimed the incognito as his late acquaintance f. Still, all these are slight difficulties; a moment’s reflection must convince us, that by teaching the common names of every consonant in the alphabet, we prepare a child for misery, when he begins to spell or read. A consonant, as sayeth the spelling-book, is a letter which cannot be pronounced without a vowel before or after it: for this reason, B, is called be, and L, el; but why the vowel should come first in the one case, or last in the second, we are not informed; nor are we told why the names of some letters have no resemblance whatever to their sounds, either with a vowel before or after them. Suppose, that after having learned the alphabet, a child was to read the words

  Here is some apple-pye.

  He would pronounce the letters thus:

  Acheare ies esoeme apepeele pewie.

  With this pronunciation the child would never decipher these simple words. It will be answered, perhaps, that no child is expected to read as soon as he has learnt his alphabet: a long initiation of monosyllabic, dissyllabic, trissyllabic, and polysyllabic words is previously to be submitted to; nor, after this inauguration, are the novices capable of performing with propriety the ceremony of reading whole words and sentences. By a different method of teaching, all this waste of labour and of time, all this confusion of rules and exceptions, and all the consequent confusion in the understanding of the pupil, may be avoided.

  In teaching a child to read, every letter should have a precise single sound annexed to its figure; this should never vary. Where two consonants are joined together, so as to have but one sound, as ph, sh, &c. the two letters should be coupled together by a distinct invariable mark. Letters that are silent should be marked in such a manner as to point out to the child that they are not to be sounded. Upon these simple rules our method of teaching to read has been founded. The signs or marks, by which these distinctions are to be effected, are arbitrary, and may be varied as the teacher chooses; the addition of a single point above or below the common letters is employed to distinguish the different sounds that are given to the same letter, and a mark underneath such letters as are to be
omitted, is the only apparatus necessary. These marks were employed by the author in 1776, before he had seen Sheridan’s, or any similar dictionary; he has found that they do not confuse children as much as figures, because when dots are used to distinguish sounds, there is only a change of place, and no change of form: but any person that chooses it, may substitute figures instead of dots. It should, however, be remembered, that children must learn to distinguish the figures before they can be useful in discriminating the words.

  All these sounds, and each of the characters which denote them, should be distinctly known by a child before we begin to teach him to read. And here at the first step we must entreat the teacher to have patience; to fix firmly in her mind, we say her mind, because we address ourselves to mothers; that it is immaterial whether a child learns this alphabet in six weeks or in six months; at all events, let it not be inculcated with restraint, or made tiresome, lest it should retard the whole future progress of the pupil. We do not mean to recommend the custom of teaching in play, but surely a cheerful countenance is not incompatible with application.

  The three sounds of the letter (a) should first be taught; they may be learned by the dullest child in a week, if the letters are shown to him for a minute or two, twice a day. Proper moments should be chosen when the child is not intent upon any thing else; when other children have appeared to be amused with reading; when the pupil himself appears anxious to be instructed. As soon as he is acquainted with the sounds of (a) and with their distinguishing marks, each of these sounds should be formed into syllables, with each of the consonants; but we should never name the consonants by their usual names; if it be required to point them out by sounds, let them resemble the real sounds or powers of the consonants; but in fact it will never be necessary to name the consonants separately, till their powers, in combination with the different vowels, be distinctly acquired. It will then be time enough to teach the common names of the letters. To a person unacquainted with the principles upon which this mode of teaching is founded, it must appear strange, that a child should be able to read before he knows the names of his letters; but it has been ascertained, that the names of the letters are an incumbrance in teaching a child to read.

  In the quotation from Mrs. Barbauld, at the bottom of the alphabetical tables, there is a stroke between the letters b and r in February, and between t and h, in there, to show that these letters are to be sounded together, so as to make one sound. The same is to be observed as to (ng) in the word long, and also as to the syllable ing, which, in the table No. 4, column 4, is directed to be taught as one sound. The mark (.) of obliteration, is put under (y) in the word days, under e final in there, and also under one of the l’s and the (w) in yellow, to show that these letters are not to be pronounced. The exceptions to this scheme of articulation are very few; such as occur, are marked, with the number employed in Walker’s dictionary, to denote the exception, to which excellent work, the teacher will, of course, refer.

  Parents, at the first sight of this new alphabet, will perhaps tremble lest they should be obliged to learn the whole of it before they begin to teach their children: but they may calm their apprehensions, for they need only point out the letters in succession to the child, and sound them as they are sounded in the words annexed to the letters in the table, and the child will soon, by repetition, render the marks of the respective letters familiar to the teacher. We have never found any body complain of difficulty, who has gone on from letter to letter along with the child who was taught.

  As soon as our pupil knows the different sounds of (a) combined in succession with all the consonants, we may teach him the rest of the vowels joined with all the consonants, which will be a short and easy work. Our readers need not be alarmed at the apparent slowness of this method: six months, at the rate of four or five minutes each day, will render all these combinations perfectly familiar. One of Mrs. Barbauld’s lessons for young children, carefully marked in the same manner as the alphabet, should, when they are well acquainted with the sounds of each of the vowels with each of the consonants, be put into our pupil’s hands.

  The sound of three or four letters together, will immediately become familiar to him; and when any of the less common sounds of the vowels, such as are contained in the second table, and the terminating sounds, tion, ly, &c. occur, they should be read to the child, and should be added to what he has got by rote from time to time. When all these marks and their corresponding sounds are learnt, the primer should be abandoned, and from that time the child will be able to read slowly the most difficult words in the language. We must observe, that the mark of obliteration is of the greatest service; it is a clue to the whole labyrinth of intricate and uncouth orthography. The word though, by the obliteration of three letters, may be as easily read as the or that.

  It should be observed that all people, before they can read fluently, have acquired a knowledge of the general appearance of most of the words in the language, independently of the syllables of which they are composed. Seven children in the author’s family were taught to read in this manner, and three in the common method; the difference of time, labour, and sorrow, between the two modes of learning, appeared so clearly, that we can speak with confidence upon the subject. We think that nine-tenths of the labour and disgust of learning to read, may be saved by this method; and that instead of frowns and tears, the usual harbingers of learning, cheerfulness and smiles may initiate willing pupils in the most difficult of all human attainments.

  A and H, at four and five years old, after they had learned the alphabet, without having ever combined the letters into syllables, were set to read one of Mrs. Barbauld’s little books. After being employed two or three minutes every day, for a fortnight, in making out the words of this book, a paper with a few raisins well concealed in its folds, was given to each of them, with these words printed on the outside of it, marked according to our alphabet:

  “Open this, and eat what you find in it.”

  In twenty minutes, they read it distinctly without any assistance.

  The step from reading with these marks, to reading without them, will be found very easy. Nothing more is necessary, than to give children the same books, without marks, which they can read fluently with them.

  Spelling comes next to reading. New trials for the temper; new perils for the understanding; positive rules and arbitrary exceptions; endless examples and contradictions; till at length, out of all patience with the stupid docility of his pupil, the tutor perceives the absolute necessity of making him get by heart, with all convenient speed, every word in the language. The formidable columns in dread succession arise a host of foes; two columns a day, at least, may be conquered. Months and years are devoted to the undertaking; but after going through a whole spelling-book, perhaps a whole dictionary, till we come triumphantly to spell Zeugma, we have forgotten to spell Abbot, and we must begin again with Abasement. Merely the learning to spell so many unconnected words, without any assistance from reason or analogy, is nothing, compared with the difficulty of learning the explanation of them by rote, and the still greater difficulty of understanding the meaning of the explanation. When a child has got by rote,

  “Midnight, the depth of night;” “Metaphysics, the science which treats of immaterial beings, and of forms in general abstracted from matter;”

  has he acquired any distinct ideas, either of midnight or of metaphysics? If a boy had eaten rice pudding, till he fancied himself tolerably well acquainted with rice, would he find his knowledge much improved, by learning from his spelling-book, the words

  “Rice, a foreign esculent grain?”

  Yet we are surprised to discover, that men have so few accurate ideas, and that so many learned disputes originate in a confused or improper use of words.

  “All this is very true,” says a candid schoolmaster; “we see the evil, but we cannot new-model the language, or write a perfect philosophical dictionary; and, in the mean time, we are bound to teach children to spell, which w
e do with the less reluctance, because, though we allow that it is an arduous task, we have found from experience, that it can be accomplished, and that the understandings of many of our pupils, survive all the perils to which you think them exposed during the operation.”