I am old, so old, I can write a letter.

Writing and reading have no place in the actual Kindergarten, much less arithmetic. The stories are told to the child; drawing, modelling and such-like will express all he wants to express in any permanent form, and speech, as Froebel says, is "the element in which he lives." His counting is of the simplest, and the main thing is to see that he does not merely repeat a series while he handles material, but that the series corresponds with the objects. Even this can be left alone if it seems to annoy the little one. In the school he is on a very different level, he has attained to the abstract, he can use signs: he can express thoughts which he could not draw, and can communicate with those who are absent. He can read any letter received and he is no longer dependent on grown-ups for stories. He can count his own money and can get correct change in small transactions, and he can probably do a variety of sums which are of no use to him at all.

Between these two comes what Froebel called the Transition or Connecting Class, in which the child learns the meaning of the signs which stand for speech, and those which make calculation less arduous for weak memories.

Much has been written as to when and how children are to be taught to read. Some great authorities would put it off till eight or even ten. Stanley Hall says between six and eight, while Dr. Montessori teaches children of five and even of four. Froebel would have supported Stanley Hall and would wait till the age of six. The strongest reason for keeping children back from books is a physiological one. In the Psychology and Physiology of Reading[30] strong arguments are adduced against early reading as very injurious to eyesight, so it is surprising that Dr. Montessori begins so soon. It has been said that her children only learn to write, not to read, but it is to be supposed that they can read what they write, and therefore can read other material.

[Footnote 30: Macmillan.]

If we agree not to begin until six years old, the next question is the method. The alphabetic, whereby children were taught the letter names and then memorised the spelling of each single word, has no supporters. But controversy still goes on as to whether children shall begin with word wholes or with the phonic sounds. It is not a matter of vital importance, for the children who begin with words come to phonics later, and so far as English is concerned, the children who begin with phonics cannot go far without meeting irregularities, unless indeed they are limited to books like those of Miss Dale.

In other languages which are phonic the difficulties are minimised. Children in the ordinary Elementary Schools in Italy, though taught in large classes, can write long sentences to dictation in four or five months.[31] But in Italian each letter has its definite sound and every letter is sounded. It is true that these children appear to spend most of their time in formal work.

[Footnote 31: A class of children who began in the middle of October wrote correctly to dictation on March 28, "Patria e lavoro siamo, miei cari bambini, parole sante per voi. Amate la nostra cara e bella Italia, crescete onesti e laboriosi e sarete degni di lei."]

The Froebelian who believes in learning by action will, of course, expect the children to make or write from the beginning as a method of learning, whether she begins with words or with sounds. But in English, unless simplified spelling is introduced, the time must soon come when reproduction must lag behind recognition. One child said with pathos one day, "May we spell as we like to-day, for I've got such a lot to say?"

The phonic method dates back to about 1530. The variety used in the Pestalozzi-Froebel House is said to have originated with Jacotot (1780-1840). It is called the "Observing-Speaking-Writing and Reading Method." Froebel's own adaptation was simpler; it was his principle to begin with a desire on the part of the child, and he gives his method in story form, "How Lina learned to write and read." Lina is six, she has left the Kindergarten and is presently to attend the Primary School. She notices with what pleasure her father, perhaps a somewhat exceptional parent, receives and answers letters. She desires to write and her mother makes her say her own name carefully, noticing first the "open" or vowel sounds and then by noting the position of her tongue she finds the closed sounds. As she hears the sound she is shown how to make it. Her father leaves home at the right moment, Lina writes to him, receives and is able to read his answer, printed like her own in Roman capitals. He sends her a picture book and she is helped to see how the letters resemble those she has learned and the reading is accomplished.

In England the phonic method best known is probably Miss Dale's. It is very ingenious, the analysis is thorough and the books are prettily got up, but to those who feel that reading, though a most valuable tool, still is but a tool and one not needed for children under seven, the method seems over-elaborate. Much depends upon the teacher but to see fifty children sitting still while one child places the letters in their places on the board suggests a great deal of lost time. The system is also so rigidly phonic that it is a long time before a child can pick up an ordinary book with any profit.

Stanley Hall holds that it is best to combine methods, and probably most of us do this. "The growing agreement" is, he says, "that there is no one and only orthodox way of teaching and learning this greatest and hardest of all the arts, in which ear, mouth, eye and hand must each in turn train the others to automatic perfection, in ways hard and easy, by devices old and new, mechanically and consciously, actively and passively … this is a great gain and seems now secure. While a good pedagogic method is one of the most economic—both of labour and of money—of all inventions, we should never forget that the brightest children, and indeed most children, if taught individually or at home, need but very few refinements of method. Idiots, as Mr. Seguin first showed, need and profit greatly by very elaborated methods in learning how to walk, feed and dress themselves, which would only retard a normal child. Above all it should be borne in mind that the stated use of any method does not preclude the incidental use of any and perhaps of all others."

An adaptation of phonic combined with the word method can be found in Education by Life. It is simpler than Miss Dale's, and being combined with the word method, children get much more quickly to real stories. Stanley Hall advocates the individual teaching of reading, and since Dr. Montessori called every one's attention to this we have used it much more freely, and have found that once the children know some sounds, there is a great advantage in a certain amount of individual learning, but class teaching has its own advantages and it seems best to have a combination. Long since we taught a boy who was mentally deficient and incapable of intelligent analysis, by whole words and corresponding pictures. Miss Payne has developed this to a great extent. It is practically an appeal to the interest in solving puzzles. The children choose their own pictures and are supplied with envelopes containing either single sounds, or whole words corresponding with the picture. They lay h on the house, g on the girl, p on the pond, and later do the same with words. They certainly enjoy it, and no one is ever kept waiting. Sometimes the puzzle is to set in order the words of a nursery rhyme which they already know, sometimes it is to read and draw everything mentioned.

It is not only how children learn to read that is important: even more so is what they read. Much unintelligent reading in later life is due to the reading primer in which there was nothing to understand. Children should read books, as adults do, to get something out of them. The time often wasted in teaching reading too soon would be far better employed in cultivating a taste for good reading by telling or reading to the children good stories and verses.[32]

[Footnote 32: It is difficult to find easy material that is worth giving to intelligent children, and we have been glad to find Brown's Young Artists' Readers, Series A.]

A revolution is going on just now in the method of teaching writing. It is now generally recognised that much time and effort have been wasted in teaching children to join letters which are easier to read unjoined.

A very interesting article appeared in the Fielden School Demonstration Record No. II., and Mr. Graily Hewitt has brought the subject of writing as it was done before copperplate was invented very much to the fore. The Child Study Society has published a little monograph on the subject giving the experience of different teachers and specimens of the writing.

Little Marjorie Fleming was a voracious reader with a remarkable capacity for writing. Her spelling was unconventional at times, but there was never any doubt about her meaning. She expressed herself strongly on many subjects, and one of these was arithmetic. "I am now going to tell you the horrible and wretched plaege (plague) that my multiplication gives me you cant conceive it the most Devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7 it is what nature itself cant endure." Yet "if you speak with the tongues of men and angels and make not mention of arithmetic it profiteth you nothing," says Miss Wiggin.

There are a few little children who are really fond of number work. There are not many of them, and they would probably learn more if they were left to themselves. There are even a few mathematical geniuses who hardly want teaching, but who are worthy of being taught by a Professor of Mathematics, always supposing that he is worthy of them. But the majority of children would probably be farther advanced at ten or twelve if they had no teaching till they were seven. They ought to learn through actual number games, through keeping score for other games, and through any kind of calculation that is needed for construction or in real life.

There are but few true number games, but dominoes and card games introduce the number groups. In "Old maid" the children pair the groups and so learn to recognise them; in dominoes they use this knowledge, while "Snap" involves quick recognition. Any one can make up a game in which scoring is necessary. Ninepins or skittles is a number game, and one can score by using number groups, or by fetching counters, shells, beads, etc., as reminders. The number groups are important; they form what Miss Punnett calls "a scheme" for those who have no great visualising power, and they combine the smallest groups into large ones. It ought to be remembered that the repetition of a group is an easier thing to deal with than the combination of two groups, that is, six is a name for two threes and eight for two fours, but five and seven have not so definite a meaning.[33]

[Footnote 33: This very morning a child cutting out brown paper pennies for a shop said, 'Look! there are two sixes; that would be a big number!']

The Tillich bricks are good playthings, and so is cardboard money—shillings, sixpences, threepences, pence and halfpence.

When the names have a meaning the children will want signs, i.e. figures. Clock figures (Roman) can be used first as simplest, showing the closed fingers and the thumb for V; the only difficulty is IX. The Arabic figures can be made by drawing round the number groups, or by laying out their shapes in little sticks. 5 and 8 show very plainly how to arrange five and eight sticks; for two and three they are placed horizontally, the curves merely joining the lines.

In teaching children to count, the decimal system should be kept well in mind, and the teacher should see that thirteen means three-ten, and that the children can touch the three and the ten as they speak the word. Eleven and twelve ought to be called oneteen and twoteen, half in joke. The idea of grouping should never be lost sight of, and larger numbers should at first be names for so many threes, fours, fives, etc. In order to keep the meaning clear the children should say threety, fourty and fivety, but there should be no need to write these numbers. The Kindergarten sticks tied in bundles of ten are quite convenient counting material when any counting is necessary. Tram tickets and cigarette pictures can be used in the same way.

The decimal notation is a great thing to learn, how great any one will discover who will take the trouble to work a simple addition sum, involving hundreds, in Roman figures. Children are always taught the number of the house they live in, which makes a starting-point. If, for instance, 35 is compared with XXXV a meaning is given to the 3.

Many teachers make formal sums of numbers which could quite well be added without any writing at all. By using any kind of material by which ten can be made plain as a higher unit—bundles of sticks or tickets, Sonnenschein's apparatus, Miss Punnett's number scheme, or the new Montessori apparatus with its chains of beads: the material used is of no great consequence—children should be able to deal as easily with tens as with ones, and there is no need for little formal sums which have no meaning.

Everything in daily life should be used before formal work is attempted. "Measure, reckon, weigh, compare," said Rousseau. Children love to measure, whether by lineal or liquid measure, or by learning to tell the time or to use a pair of scales.

There are a few occasions when interest is in actual number relations, as when a child for himself discovers that two sixes is six twos. One boy on his own account compared a shilling and an hour, and said that he could set out a shilling in five parts by the clock. He looked at the clock and chose out a sixpence, a threepence, and 3 pennies. But usually what is abstract belongs to a stage farther on.

So we can end where we began, by letting Froebel once more define the
Kindergarten.

"CrÈches and Infant Schools must be raised into Kindergartens wherein the child is treated and trained according to his whole nature, so that the claims of his body, his heart and his head, his active, moral and intellectual powers, are all satisfied and developed.

"Not the training of the memory, not learning by rote, not familiarity with the appearances of things, but culture by means of action, realities and life itself, bring a blessing upon the individual, and thereby a blessing upon the whole community; since each one, be he the highest or the humblest, is a member of the community."

PART II

THE CHILD IN THE STATE SCHOOL

I. THINGS AS THEY ARE