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very few people, and I am not one of them, who can make the sounds that correspond 
io the English alphabet separately, and make them correctly, because they do not sound 
juite, when they are separate from one another, as they do when they are combined in 
groups ; so I think there is every reason why children should not be tanght to make 
the separate sounds very early, and I think there are many reasons that go to show that 
t is possible to live and die happily without doing that. 
Mz. Coox : It strikes me the speaker was making a point in regard to association 
shat was not quite valid. Is not the symbol merged with the thing so that we look 
right through the symbol at the thing?” Now we begin, for example, to translate this 
aew symbol, 50%, and we say 50% equals £&%, or another expression for the same 
thing exactly ; and do not these three blend, so that there are three phases of the same 
thing, rather than that we should go through series here, and afterward get to the 
object itself? And if we are to use an object of this kind, are we to go through the 
symbol by tracing, and end with this? This is a particular thing itself. It seems to 
me that the idea of association is held to obtain in the child’s mind if it has really dis- 
appeared. Now I have made quite a little study upon this particular point, Mr, 
Balliet, and I find that if the pupil is required totalk in either of these languages, if you 
please, that there is no movement through a series. You move from one line to another 
simultaneously. It is simply three phases of the same ides. 
Proressor HERVEY, of New York : There is one question I would like to ask. Is it 
oetter for me to know how to spell a word by knowing the way it feels when I write it, 
alone, or is it better for me to know how it looks, and how it feels to see it, and to pro- 
nounce the letters? In other words, is it better for me to have three hooks or only one ? 
Now, in my own experience I cannot find any instance where the possession of those three 
pegs in my mind has been at all burdensome, but there have been times when I was very 
glad of the other two pegs when the first one had refused to do duty for me. I would 
ike to ask if that does apply in this question ? 
Miss Ricg, of Chicago : I should like to know if those who read by sight, in thinking 
of the sound, speak as well or read as well orally as they would if they thought the 
word when they read. Many of us have learned our Latin in the beginning in that way. 
My experience with pupils has been that those write best, most perfectly in form, and 
read best orally, who read by the ear, as you say. I should like to know what your 
agxperience is in this matter. 
Proressor BALLIET : It is true that children do not read as well orally at an early 
age, if you train them silently. On the other hand, if you begin with oral reading, 
they will not read as well silently And it is purely a question whether it is oral read- 
ing or silent reading that you wish learned best. Reading ought to be made the leading 
method of interpreting literature. We can well afford to read aloud that part of lit- 
srature which is very fine, the aroma of which we want to get, and the beauty and bal- 
ance of sentence; and we can well afford to read that aloud, and get it in that way, 
rather than to be ear-minded and be hampered when we want to look up facts quickly, 
not being able to read more than one-third as fast as we ought to read. It is the silent 
reading that tells in a child’s life, and it is with rapid silent reading the same as it is 
with rapid addition, the quicker you do it the better you get it. That applies to light 
Aiterature only, of course. It trains children how to study. It trains children how to 
master books, and how to master them thoroughly and quickly. 
As far as the spelling is concerned—whether it is better to hold a word by different 
nooks, several hooks, than one—I should say, in the first place, that it does not pay to 
nold words by any hook that you use only once in three months. You can afford to 
z0 to Webster’s dictionary in such cases. It does not pay to drill in school upon words 
and spelling which the children use very rarely. They can afford to go to the dictionary. 
What we want to do is to make spelling a function of the muscles of -the hand, and a 
[unetion of the nerve centers of the brain that control the hand. In other words, make 
children motor-minded, so that as a thought comes into the mind it moves the hands 
:0 record it unconsciously ; then, as in speaking, the thought, as it enters consciousness. 
moves these muscles. Spelling is to printed speech exactly what prenunciation is to oral 
speech. It is harder to make them motor-minded in spelling than it is in talking, but 
50 far as their vocabulary is concerned they can be trained to spell unconsciously, and 
‘hen comes the economy of force. The child wastes energy to the extent to which he 
$s conscious of his spelling. We are wasting-children’s time by having them spend it