Page images
PDF
EPUB

interesting stories, and (some time afterwards) to require them to set down one of these stories in writing.

"History," writes Preceptor, "unless treated from its romantic and picturesque side, is by no means adapted for these exercises. Until a child is old enough to understand the relative importance of historical events—a narrative of wars, rebellions, intrigues, treaties, and negotiations is mostly unintelligible, and entirely dull. Biography is not much better for very young children. In the life of a great statesman or general, neither the obstacles to success, nor the successes, nor the failures are upon the level of a child's experience and understanding, and the following brief 'Life of the Earl of Essex'-which was actually sent up to me-represents, without exaggeration, the marvellous instinct with which the boyish mind relieves itself of indigestible encumbrances, and selects those few attractive incidents which it can retain without injury: The Earl of Essex was a great man. He lived in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who gave him a ring and a box on the ear. He was executed in that reign." For older children, some of the stories of ancient history (such as the death of Leonidas at Thermopyla) can be made intelligible and attractive; but, for the younger, it will be more profitable to employ fiction, and the ordinary fairy tales will be found the best and simplest. If the teacher can tell stories of his own, and if his own stories interest children more than the far better tales which he remembers from Grimm and Hans Andersen, the inferior are, for the purpose in hand, superior. In any case, spoken stories are much better than stories read from a book.

[ocr errors]

The favorite stories should be repeated several times before the child is asked to write them down. Thus, besides stimulating his imagination, you will have insensibly enlarged his vocabulary and his store of idioms; and if you do not too much "speak down to " the child, he will gradually shake off the first stiffness of a child's style, and acquire flexibility and variety.

Teaching by stories has two great advantages over teaching by letters. First, you can criticise the boy's narrative, when dull and tedious, by reminding him that he has left out this or that point of interest; secondly, you can criticise faults of arrangement by pointing out how the disarrangement confused the story. This cannot be done so well with a letter, which the pupil may naturally regard as a narrative of his own, which he tells as it occurred to him; but the story is yours, and the pupil more readily acquiesces in your right to dictate how it should be told, and appreciate the superiority of your version over his.

[blocks in formation]

At this stage the pupil may now, without danger of corrupting or, if I may use such a word, artificializing his style, be taught the use of a

few forms of sentences.

He ought to have begun, before this time, to learn English Grammar; but, whether he has begun or not, he can be drilled in the use of conjunctions and participles by turning two sentences into a third, thus:

(1) "Dinner was now ready. (2) We all sat down."

(3) "As dinner was now ready, we all sat down."

Or, again, having given the child two short and simple sentences, such as, "John laughed. Thomas cried," you may drill him in the exercise of combining these two sentences, by means of some "joining word," thereby producing many different senses, thus: "John laughed because, since, as, while, when, though, Thomas cried."

You may then show the pupil how, without altering the sense, these "joining words" may be put first in the sentence: "If, because, since, as, while, when, though, Thomas cried, John laughed."

The following exercise may be useful as a pattern, with the aid of which it will be easy for the teacher to construct others of the same kind:

"Once the weather was very dry. A thirsty crow searched everywhere for water. She could not find a drop. She was croaking for sorrow. She spied a jug. Down she flew at once. She eagerly pushed in her bill. It was of no use. There was plenty of water in the jug. She could not reach it. The neck of the vessel was so narrow, She had tried in vain for half an hour to reach the water. She attempted to tip the jug over. It was too heavy for her. She could not stir it. She was on the point of giving up in despair. A new thought struck her. Said she, 'I will drop some stones in the jug. The water will rise higher. In time it will rise up to my bill.' She was nearly fainting with thirst. She bravely set to work. Each stone fell. The water rose. Half an hour had passed. The clever crow had drunk every drop in the jug."1

48. ENGLISH GRAMMAR.

If rightly taught, this subject may be made (even for young children of six or seven) a most interesting and rational study; but, as generally taught, it is the most mechanical, the most meaningless, and the most stupefying of all studies.

The reason for this deplorable failure is that the subject is over

1 "It is probable," writes Preceptor (but the Author has no experience to warrant more than a conjecture), "that much more may be done than is usually supposed possible, to improve the style of older students, by the use of typical sentences. Take, as an example, Denham's description of the Thames:

"Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull,

Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full,'

on which many changes might be agreeably rung. 'Learned without pedantry, and witty without malice; though brief he was never obscure, and though forcible never coarse.' 'Thongh generous yet just, though rapid yet never rash, he was firm without obstinacy, and discreet without a trace of fear.'"

loaded with superfluous technicalities and confused mis-statements borrowed from Latin grammar. For example, in such a sentence as "The tall tree is in the field," a child is even now occasionally taught to "parse" the word "tree" as “a common noun, neuter gender, third person."

Now as there are no inflections of gender at all in English adjectives, it is impossible, from the structure of a modern English sentence, to tell whether "tree" is neuter (as in Greek), or feminine (as in Latin), or masculine (as in French). All that can be said with truth (in English) is, that the word "tree" represents an object that is inanimate, which some people irrationally call "neuter."

Is this worth saying? Is it worth while compelling a boy, every time he parses 66 a Noun," to write down that it represents an animate

or inanimate object. Why may he not, with equal advantage, write down that it represents a fluid or solid substance?

Again, the epithet "common," in "Common Noun," is intended to indicate that the Noun is not a proper name denoting a single object, like "Thomas"; nor does it denote something of an abstract nature, like "walking," "blindness," but it is a name "common" to the whole class of trees. But of what possible advantage is it to overload a child's memory (we cannot say his mind) with distinctions so subtle as these?

Lastly, why should the pupil be taught to repeat that "tree," in the above sentence, is "in the Third Person"? This merely means that the verb "is," agreeing with the Subject or Nominative "tree," is in the" Third Person"; and (seeing that every Noun may be said to be "in the Third Person" when it is the subject of a Verb) why not be content to confine this statement to the Verb, instead of extending it to the Noun? If the pupil is told that the Verb has different forms, according as its subject is the First, Second, or Third Person, and that every Noun subject requires the Verb to be "in the Third Person," that is intelligible; but to force a boy to write down, after every Noun, that it is "in the Third Person" is a cruel waste of time for a dull boy, and an impudent attempt to impose upon a quick boy. Naturally, the vast majority of boys, the dull and ordinary, not being able to apprehend the slightest reason for all these reiterated technicalities, give up the subject as unintelligible, and, trusting entirely to memory, dispense altogether with the understanding.

The consequence is that while many children who have learned English Grammar for several months or years can repeat with great promptness long, difficult, and sometimes erroneous and inadequate definitions of the Parts of Speech, and are fluent in such valuable pieces of grammatical information as that "cow" is the feminine of "bull," and "ram" the masculine of "sheep," they are very often unable to tell the Parts of Speech in the easiest sentence with any degree of certainty or accuracy. In no other subject are children

so frequently in the habit of answering wildly, and in a tone of interrogation, displaying that promptness to substitute new answers for the old answers, which is an invariable proof of total ignorance.

Discontent with the results of the parsing system has led many to substitute for it "Analysis of Sentences." But even the teaching of this subject has been unnecessarily complicated and confused by a want of common sense and of constant reference to first principles. For example, one of the most popular treatises on Analysis confuses together (or till recently confused) the two quite distinct uses of the Relative Pronoun in the two sentences, (1) "The man that is passionately fond of music gains much pleasure," and (2) "The concert had great attractions for my brother, who is passionately fond of music."

In (1) the words, "that is passionately fond of music" are equivalent to an Adjective, viz., "music-loving"; in (2) the words "who is passionately fond of music," are equivalent to "for he is passionately fond of music," and constitute a new sentence conveying the reason for a previous statement. But, in the Treatise just mentioned, one uniform rule having been mechanically laid down for the use of the Relative Pronoun in analysis, this manifest distinction was ignored; and certified masters of considerable standing and of more than ordinary ability were taught, and taught others, to perpetuate this indiscriminating error, and to say that in both cases "the Relative Pronoun introduces an Attribute."

The remedy seems to be in teaching English Grammar and Analysis, 1st, and most important of all, not to teach anything that the teacher does not himself understand and perceive to be true; 2d, not to teach anything that does not develop the mind of the pupil or facilitate the comprehension of language; 3d, to avoid technicalities as far as possible, and, where they are necessary, to use such terms as explain themselves; 4th, although it may be necessary in a written Grammar, which aims at completeness, to deal with a great number of grammatical distinctions and to use a good many technical terms, the teacher will do well to pass over some, or altogether omit them, in order to dwell more on others which are of greater importance.

One of the best mental exercises in Grammar for young children is the "Parsing," or distinguishing the Parts of Speech. Mechanically taught, this is useless, or worse than useless; but if children can be taught to classify words rationally, as they would classify leaves, or stones, or figures, the hrocess combines something of the interest of botany with something of the interest of logic. The following are the principles on which a child should be taught how to tell the Parts of Speech:

1. The pupil must be taught by experiment, i.e., experimenting

with words.

2. As the specimens with which a boy is taught botany must be such as he himself can see, handle, and dissect, so the words with which a boy is to be taught grammar must be such as he himself can

use with ease and accuracy, because he thoroughly comprehends their meaning.

3. Starting from his own words the pupil must be led to answer the question, what his words do, or what they tell him. For example, in "Thomas runs," "runs" tells you what Thomas does, Thomas tells you the name of the person who runs; or, again, in "the black dog runs quickly," "black" tells you what kind of a dog it is; "quickly " tells you how he runs.

4. Having made separate columns for these different classes of words, the boy may collect specimens (extracted from sentences of his own) of the words that tell him (1) the names of persons and things; (2) the kinds of things; (3) what any thing does; and (4) how, when, or where anything is done.

5. After this, you may teach the pupil (by experiments) how inconvenient it sometimes is to repeat a name, or noun, every time we want to speak of a person or thing; and thus you may lead him to see the use of "he," etc., etc., and other (5) words that stand for nouns. (6) By showing him how to join two sentences by the insertion of a word between them, you lead him to classify "words that join sentences," which for a time he may be allowed to call Joiners.

6. The ordinary definition of a Preposition, which introduces the word "relation," is totally unfit for children. But you may point out how, in answer to the question where? whither? or whence?-i.e., in answer to questions about place-we find ourselves unable sometimes to reply in one word, and are obliged to use two or three words, as "in the room," "to the room," "from the room." Words thus placed before names are called Prepositions (i.e., “placed before"). When a list has been made of them by experiment, they may be committed to memory.

7. Not till the child is familiar with the classification of the functions of words, i.e., readily able to tell you what words do, should he be introduced to the names of the classes of words based upon this classification.

8. Some teachers wrongly suppose that there is little difference between this system (which may be called the inferential) and the ordinary system (which may be called explanatory); and they fancy that equally satisfactory results can be obtained by allowing the pupil to start with the definitions of the terms Verb, Adverb, etc., provided that, after he has assigned any word to its class, he is compelled to tell you why the word is a Verb, Adverb, or whatever else.

But a little experience and the laws of human nature should prevent us from confusing two systems radically distinct.

9. When a boy has once said that a word is a verb, he will easily find a reason for it somehow. Our object is to keep the mind of the pupil free from prejudice; but having committed himself to a theory, he is no longer impartial. And the duller sort of boys are so fond of

« PreviousContinue »