YRARGLI

PREFACE

WHEN a certain remarkable woman wished to teach the alphabet to each of her succeeding children, she dressed them in their Sunday clothes, and the task was accomplished. It is from such instincts of motherhood that we have always drawn our educational practice; and the doctrine of "Interest as Related to Will," the distinctive tenet of modern education, had long been known before Professor Dewey gave enunciation to it as a principle of pedagogy. Nevertheless, the practice of the schoolroom is still far from being in accord. We hammer at the child's brain as though it were so much cold steel, in the belief that if we hammer hard enough and long enough, some impression must be made.

Probably the most constant charge which the public makes against the schools is that the children are not taught to spell. It must be admitted that they do not spell so well as they should. One reason for this undoubtedly is that spelling is usually presented as a mere grind on letters. We do this despite the fact that the teaching of the order of certain letters so arranged that they become a word, the guardian of a thought, is a far easier task than the teaching of the unrelated letters of the alphabet. To what purpose did a whole class write correctly the word error, when later they explained that "Indians have bows and errors"; that "Errors (Arabs) live in the desert"; and bade one 'Be an error (terror, hero) in the fight"? In future when the members of this class shall have need to express the idea "error," why should we expect e-r-r-o-r to come forth automatically to represent it? Suppose when the teacher had written the form "error" upon the board she had elicited from the class in addition to "two r's and o-r" such sentences as: "Mary made an error in her addition yesterday," and "Galileo was not in error when he declared that the earth moved," would she not have helped

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her pupils to make that association between the idea and its symbol which must exist before spelling can be of any use. Repetition and drill are necessary, - emphatically so, but they should be preceded by intelligence and interest. Teachers would often be astounded at the results obtained should they put their pupils to the test of using in original sentences the words they spell so glibly. Not until each word in the column has been so used can a teacher be assured that the child has added it to his vocabulary.

After interest in a word has been aroused, the child's mind must be concentrated upon the peculiarity of its spelling and appealed to through all possible avenues, the eye, the ear, and the hand. So clear and strong should be the image formed that it becomes individual, even personal. For this reason, words included in this book have not been classified after the "ace, mace, lace" fashion, but have been purposely distributed so that each new word invites to fresh attack. There is no less authority for this mode of procedure than William T. Harris, who says that spelling lists "should be arranged so as not to bring together a number of words of the same combination, and thereby paralyze the memory, as is too frequently the case in the lists given in spelling-books which, for example, collect in one lesson the words ending in tion, or tain, or ture, or cious, etc., thus giving the pupil by the first word that is spelled a key to all that follow." In the first grade, however, there is a list of words containing the fundamental phonograms for ear training.

The words in the book have not been syllabicated for two reasons: that the child's image of the new word may be a unit, and that he may master it more thoroughly by analyzing it for himself.

Especial attention is called to the exercises in construction which offer the child a larger practice in the ultimate use to which spelling is put that of composition. They are planned to correlate with the child's life at home and at school and to give him, as need arises, the spelling for particular words. (See index on pages xiii and xiv, also Suggestions to Teachers.) It is believed that in each case the lists of words will be found to include not only words requiring drill, but also words that will lead to a fuller life and a choicer diction.

It is certainly desirable for a child to associate “modest demeanor," "self-control," and "august presence" with Washington; "patience," "sympathy," and "endurance" with Lincoln; and the time to fix the spelling of these words is while they are fresh with interest. The custom of observing the progress of the natural year has been utilized. For instance, the "Sleigh Ride" on page 33 with the “Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle" of Poe's "silver bells" will afford opportunity for impressing sleigh, merrily, and nipping upon these little third-grade people.

The child is offered in the pages of this book a most carefully chosen and graded vocabulary. His limited yet constantly increasing power of comprehension has determined the one, and the responsibility of shaping his thoughts, the other. From grade to grade are repeated certain words which, according to the general experience of teachers, are particularly difficult for children to master, such as: which, their, coming, separate, until, necessary, possible; and it is hoped that if the child meets them over and over again, on some occasion he will don his Sunday clothes and learn them.

It is neither possible nor desirable in the short years of a child's school life to teach him to spell all the words in the language. But it is possible to give the child the spelling of common words, and what is even more valuable, a "spelling conscience" that will send him to the dictionary when in doubt.

The spelling-book is usually considered the driest and most mechanical of the text-books, whereas, rightly constructed and used, it will become a source of highest culture: mastering the words of his mother-tongue, the child masters the thought of the race. To teach children to appreciate words and discriminate between them should be a matter of conscience with teachers; for such appreciation insures not only a respect for correct form in spelling, but makes for character. "A man's power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it," says Emerson, "depends upon the simplicity of his character, that is upon his love of truth and desire to communicate it without loss."

Acknowledgment for permission to use extracts from the writings

of James Russell Lowell, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Alice Cary, John Townsend Trowbridge, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Burroughs, Frank Dempster Sherman, and Louise de la Ramée is due to Houghton, Mifflin & Co.; of Helen Hunt Jackson, from "Poems," to Little, Brown & Co.; of Henry van Dyke, from "Little Rivers," of Robert Louis Stevenson, from "Across the Plains," "Virginibus Puerisque," and "A Child's Garden of Verses," of George W. Cable, from "The Cable Story Book," of Eugene Field, from "The Eugene Field Book," and of Frank Stockton, from "Fanciful Tales," to Charles Scribner's Sons; of Hans Christian Andersen to Dodd, Mead & Co.; of Jane Andrews, from "Seven Little Sisters," and "Each and All" to Ginn & Co.; of Bliss Carman to Small, Maynard & Co.; of George William Curtis, from "Prue and I," to Harper & Bros.; of Joaquin Miller, from "Complete Poetical Works," to the Whitaker and Ray Co.; of William Cullen Bryant, from "Complete Poetical Works," to D. Appleton & Co.; of Phillips Brooks, from "Letters of Travel," to Mr. William G. Brooks; of Matthew Arnold to The Macmillan Co.

In addition, I take pleasure in expressing my indebtedness to the score of my fellow-teachers who have tested these pages with their pupils and made kindly suggestion and criticism.

G. A.