On this page

• Text (2)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    positions and conjunctions , and the aggregate of all the terms will hardly amount to ten thousand . Here , then , we discover the grossest imposture . Reduce the repetition of every word , and the variety of terminations under which each appears , to one , and the ten thousand dwindle down to a few hundreds . The Iliad and Odyssey of | Homer exceed siwty thousand verses ; each of these on an average contains six words . All the words in these poems then amount to three hundred and sixty thousand ; and at the rate of ten

    thousand in ten lessons , or one thousand in one lesson , a pupil of Mr . Hamilton will learn three hundred and sixty thousand words in three hundred and sixty lessons or three hundred and sixty hours ! " This immense volume of words must be learnt by mere dint of memory , without any aid from the understanding , unassisted by analogy or any general principle whatever : and yet ^ for the honour of his consistency , Mr . Hamilton asserts that nothing is learnt by rote in , his establishment ! I" .... " But after the pupil has made some progress in the knowledge of words , f a grammar , ' says Mr . Hamilton , containing the declensions and

    conjugations , and printed specially for my classes , is then put into the pupil ' s hands , ( not to be got by heart , —nothing is ever got by rote on this system , ) but that he may comprehend more readily his teacher onr grammar generally , but especially on the verbs / This paragraph , if it contain any truth , is a tacit acknowledgment that his own system turns out impracticable , and he is obliged , after abusing the confidence and misappl y ing the talents of his pupils , to return to the established method of learning the grammar , He finds his scholars sinking on one hand under the difficulty of retaining in their minds a mass of words half learnt and half barbarous , and incapable on the other of

    mastering the still greater mass that lies before them , and he slily retreats with the pupils in his train to teach that at last which he ought to have taught from the beginning , —the inflexions of nouns and verbs . These inflexions after all are not to be got by heart , —nothing is to be got b y rote on this system ; no , a knowledge of a comparatively few terminations which would reduce a million of words into a few thousands , and of thousands into a few hundreds , is not to be got by heart . This is said in the same breath where the pupils are said to have learnt ten thousand words , and that by the exertion of the memory .

    What drudgery can be more painful than this ? What abuse of time , what trouble on the part of well-disposed young men can be more gross and more fruitless ? And what more stupid , more wanton and inconsistent on the side of the master ? " A child in his fifth year learns the names , figures and powers of the letters , puts them together so as to form syllables , and is thus enabled to read . A person starts up and professes to have invented a system which supersedes all this trouble , and he teaches to read without the necessity of learning the

    alphabet . He takes a child for his pupil yet not knowing his letters , and he points his attention to some such sentence as the following : * The God who made me is great and good . ' The master puts his pencil on the first word , directing him to look at it , ^ wnd teaching him to utter the sound the . This he repeats in connexion with the figure , till the child can distinguish and enunciate it , wherever he discovers it in the page . He leads his pupil through the same process in regard to the succeeding words , till he acquires the whole sentence : in the course of a fortnight he extends , by continued attention , the acquisition of his little scholar over several pages . The master then takes the

    child to his parents ; and he fills them with surprise and delight . Unable to contain the important discovery , they tell their neighbours of a wonderful art invented by a certain clever man , of reading without the trouble of learning the alphabet . He again resumes his charge ; but , as he proceeds , he finas the task increasing in difficulty , till it becomes impracticable . He returns , therefore ,, to the first elements ; and his pupil , after much labour lost , and after being raised in his own conceit far above the letters , has now the mortification to find that he must after all learn them . The cheat is then discovered ,

    Untitled Article

    YOU I . I

    Untitled Article

    Review . —Hamiltonian System . \ 13

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1827, page 113, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1793/page/33/