E. O. Vaile

“ In such cases nothing will avail but the perfect appreciation of the words from their connections. I would not encourage the habit of "jumping at the idea," but I would encourage the habit of digging it out by main strength. There is such a thing as wrestling with a thought until it seems to unfold itself to our comprehension: and he is not worth much as a reader who does not know by experience what it is to grapple with a passage, and to hold on to it until light breaks from within it. Our education tends to shield us entirely from such contests. ”

“ He is to be pitied who, even in mature years, never finds his soul pregnant with a thought, while he feels that the words adequate to convey it are wanting. There may be mental perception without the power to reflect it. This is a dangerous fact with which to allow children to become impressed, because of the universal proneness to find refuge behind it from that wholesome effort at expression so essential to growth, and the clear apprehension of thought. For, without doubt, an idea is more firmly grasped and retained, and becomes negotiable only, by its clear enunciation. ”

“ It is an infallible omen as to the future of any boy or girl. The right habit is acquired only painfully and slowly. It represents a most high and valuable degree of self-discipline, as well as of intellectual activity. Much more can be, and should be, done for it in our upper schools than is accomplished. Any course of training is defective from which pupils pass without that appreciation for the dictionary and that interest in it which they feel for a worthy teacher, full of knowledge, always accessible, and ever in the best humor. ”

“ Of this want of comprehension there are several sources which are unwittingly fostered:
1. While children, we are compelled to study and read over and 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 remaining 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 weakness of thought which do not deserve the name of reading. ”

“ Blunt our keen perceptions upon things which we do not or cannot penetrate, and we become insensible to the fact that our instrument 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 reading without attaching 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. ”

“ They cannot be fully understood except as seen in their connection." The power to appreciate these connections, to feel their force, is a valuable acquisition, and one in which our youth are sadly deficient. It is a power, for want of which no amount of use of the dictionary will compensate; it is most requisite where the dictionary is not thought of, and should not be, in cases where common words are used with modified or figurative meanings. The intellect is not so robust under our modern methods, as when every boy ciphered for himself, and overcame his difficulties as best he could. ”

“ Of course, such material, of which the active teacher will find abundance, must be used judiciously. The purpose must be to develop, not simply to entertain. Such specimens must be carefully adapted to the capacity of the class. Time must be given, and encouragement to "weigh and consider." Every contrast, comparison, and lurking sense, must be hunted out. No exercise in science or classics can equal this as a sharpener of the wits (to say nothing of wit) . The child is made to realize what real comprehension is. ”

“ The great thing is, that the reader should obtain a clear, consistent, and reasonable idea, taking into consideration all the circumstances and connections.
But there is a thing which education can invariably secure, and that is a ready consciousness that we do or do not obtain a clear, coherent idea from what we read. It would be unreasonable to demand that education should give us the power to understand all that we read; but it is perfectly reasonable to demand that it should give us the power to discriminate quickly between what we understand and what we do not understand ”

“ We have a complete understanding of a term, when in our mind the association is so perfect between the arbitrary sign and the thing signified that the sign spontaneously suggests the thing. It is undoubtedly true that the first words addressed to a child are interpreted to him, and the idea fixed in his mind by the language of action and of circumstance which accompanies them. It is precisely the process by which a dog or a monkey is taught to perform its antics. ”

“ Years are wasted before many of us discover that most of our ordinary reading is performed with not more than one-half of the mind, without real mental activity. There are persons who have been hard of hearing all their lives without realizing it, simply because experience has not given them an idea of a power more acute than their own. It is somewhat so in the matter of attention. It is rather a discovery to us when we first realize what may be accomplished by concentration of force; when we feel that attention is not passivity, but energy. ”

“ Ordinary memorizing, instead of aiding, is the direct enemy of thought. As we are impressed by the peculiarities of language, the vigor of the sentiment loses. The best reader, so far as seeing the author's mind is concerned, is the poorest proof-reader in regard to mere typographical errors—attention to the vehicle is so much withdrawn from the content. Hence, that study or reading is not entirely worthless which fails to give us the power to reproduce. The power of expression generally lags behind the power of thought. ”

“ It is pertinent to ask how we know, how we become certain, that we correctly conceive the idea of a word or a sentence. The only answer which can be given is, that our judgment seems to rely upon the general symmetry of the whole thought, a harmony of parts, a connection through and through which satisfies the mind that it is right. The judgment may err here as well as elsewhere. The accuracy of this mental perception depends wholly upon the general power and activity of the reader. ”

“ It is the teacher's duty to get the child's mind on to the thought; to repeat the sentence, or to have it repeated, up to the point of difficulty, and to lead him by his own intellect to suggest a word, or the word, which will harmonize with the previous words. Indeed, he may not pronounce the word before his eyes, but, with any proper training, he will be far from suggesting a vocable which will present a solecism to his infantile perception. It is impossible to conceive of learning to read without miscalling words ”

“ 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. ”

“ They know of no means of acquisition but "study," in the school-room sense. To them it is not quality of effort, but quantity. They can appreciate exertion only in the bulk. They know little of intensity of labor, or of its rewards. To them simple reading means a very feeble, unsatisfactory hold upon the matter read. With the mind only thus half awake, comprehension of the author is very feeble; and, as a consequence, we find substantial, profitable reading a dull exercise to many who, by their training, as we think, ought to find pleasure in it. ”

“ Another faculty, and the foundation of all, upon which good reading depends, is the power of attention. Upon it directly depend the powers of association, of perception, and of memory. It is said that Sir Isaac Newton attributed his discoveries entirely to his habit of complete concentration of mind, and not to any superior quality of mind.
It is not a rare experience to most persons to find that they have read a passage, and yet that they are entirely unconscious of its contents. The physical man seems to have done its part perfectly ”

“ This is a sample, taken, however, from normal training, of the vast number of ways in which as children we are permitted or required to handle words without associating any meaning with them. The same may be seen in the thoughtless 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! ”

“ There is no reason why it should be so late in life before this force becomes a substitute, as it were, for curiosity. From want of this mastery of the will over attention, the great majority of our youth close their school-life without realizing of what they are really capable.
Instead of aiding to impart this power, ordinary school-work does positively the reverse. Humdrum repetition is made a substitute for attention. By dint of drilling and memorizing, recitations are prepared, but without concentration of thought. Our children simply mark time; they do not advance. ”

“ 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 are taught as though 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 business in life to understand, to receive, to unload, as it were, that which others have put aboard. ”

“ Something more reliable than a mere impulse is needed to make a strong mind. Back of all must stand a strong will, with the ability and disposition to use it. M. Marcel well says, "The great secret of education lies in exciting and directing the will." In later mental acquirements we realize the omnipotence of will. It is the want of this prime element which makes our attention so weak in the period of immaturity. In childhood, attention is a direct product of curiosity. As we grow older, curiosity is sated, and becomes weak as a motor. ”

“ When we do this, association is the most prominent faculty at work. In fact, according to our strength in this faculty we will weigh and consider. An author's sentiment will be flanked, as it were, on both sides, by phenomena from our experience to support or attack him. The degree of this faculty distinguishes the strong from the weak; the teacher from the learner; culture from crudeness. It means digestion, assimilation. It is in this faculty that genuine learning differs from mere memorizing; thorough acquisition from cramming. It vivifies knowledge ”

“ But this is just what a vast number of those who ought to be good readers will not do. They will not perceive these distinctions until study or comment brings them to their attention. I say a good reader will consciously perceive these differences; he will think of them as he goes along: for many persons will retain in a physical chamber of the mind, as it were, an echo of the words, and repeat them verbatim, but these distinct ideas will not penetrate their consciousness. Submit to the average readers of Byron this line upon the Gladiator ”

“ There is need for a new exercise and method in the teaching of reading; an exercise for teaching pure mental reading; a means of instruction in which things more reliable than words shall be taken as proof that the idea is grasped; a test of the accuracy of mental perception in which such unreliable evidence shall not be heard. ”

“ The power to grasp another's thought seems to have deteriorated with the other faculties. Now every thing has to be explained. The ability to see through good English without the aid of commentary, tone and inflection, seems to be a lost art in our schools. Recently a large class in one of the best high-schools in the country showed itself to be entirely unable to comprehend such sentences as these: "Words are the counters of wise men; the coin of fools." "Worth makes the man; the want of it the fellow." ”

“ Nothing takes its place until we discover that attention is under the control of the will, and until, by perseverance, we acquire the power of thus controlling it. It is only then that we make rapid conquests, and that genuine mental discipline shows itself. ”

“ IN our day arithmetic is looked upon as a science of which every boy at fourteen ought to be master. Such was not the case a century or so back. In England, as well as upon the Continent, arithmetic was long considered a higher branch of science, and a university study, like geometry. In part, this is accounted for by the strong conviction which has always possessed mankind until within the last two hundred years, that numbers have about them very potent and mystical properties. ”

“ Every class-room has its own presiding genius which fellowships with no other. Every specialist tends to reproduce himself. Furthermore, there is a feeble association between what is learned from books and what is learned from practice. Life in the school-room and life out of it are separate existences. ”