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advocates . Reading and even writing is taught on this principle by Jacotoc We have not made the experiment in either case ; bat we have seen enough of the success attending the sort of half-way method between the old and the new plan which is proposed by Mrs . Williams ' s syllabic spelling , to be completely alienated from the alphabetical method , and quite disposed to believe that Jacotot ' s plan may be even better than hers , inasmuch a * it embodies the same principle carried out to a greater length . On Mrs .
Williams ' s plan , ( for which she does not claim the merit of discovery , ) the pupil is taught the consonants by their real sound , and not by the arbitrary names which serve no earthly purpose that we can divine ; then the vowels are taught in conjunction with the consonants : then syllables are learned as pictures . These are easily compounded with each other , and with different consonants , and the pupil can then read , finding out for himself , as it becomes necessary , how the syllables themselves are composed . It will be seen at once that there is a mixture of analysis and synthesis in this . Jacotot
allows no such mixture . He teaches all the words of a sentence from the first as pictures , dividing them afterwards into syllables and then into letters . In our young days , it was a hard task to learn the word Constantinople . We lately saw a little girl of four years old , who had not long begun to learn on Mrs . Williams ' s plan , master the difficulty in a minute . Kuh-on ,
Con , St-an , Stan , Tin , O , Pie—Constantinople . Jacotot would have made her repeat the word entire , and then divide it , unless ( as is most probable ) she had previously learned from shorter exercises to take to pieces and put together for herself . Miss Edgeworth long ago to'd us how speedily and easily children might learn to read by a method nearly similar to this , and we have no difficulty in believing that Jacotot * s pupils learn to read and write in about a fortnight .
We should not be surprised if the golden days of compositors , editors , and postmasters , are coming ; for sure we are that the average goodness of hand-writing must be incalculably increased by the abolition of strokes and pot-hooks . Every one who teaches drawing knows that children always get on best when they begin upon a whole subject , provided it be simple enough . A little pupil who sets out with copying a cottage will draw it well as a whole , or in its separate parts , much sooner than one who begins with a sheet full of perpendicular lines , and goes on to as many horizontal lines , and then to a multitude of doors , and then to chimneys , and then to
windows , so that he is heartily tired of all the parts before he is allowed to frame them into a meaning . It is exactly the same with writing , as we had the opportunity of observing long before we heard of Jacotot * s system . We knew a little girl who had not begun to learn to write at six years old , which shocked every body but her parents very much . One day she got hold of a slate on which an exercise was neatly written in small hand . She copied a few words for amusement , and being pleased at the feat , did the same every day ; and in two months wrote a letter in which the childishness of the thought and expression was curiously contrasted with the beauty of the hand writing .
Having declared our entire approbation of the leading principle of Jacotot * s system , ( which is not separately insisted on with sufficient earnestness by Mr . Payne , ) we pass on to others which are exalted above it in the work before us , as far as italics and large Roman type may be taken as indications of pre-eminence . The truth on which the Professor insists much and successfully , that it is not necessary to explain in order to teack , is clearly involved m what we have announced as the fundamental principle of the sys-
Untitled Article
Ejcpoitlion of Professor JacotoV's System of Education . 261
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1831, page 261, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2596/page/45/
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