Halifax School for the Blind.

WM. CROCKET, ESQ.,

Chief Superintendent of Education, Province of New Brunswick:

SIR: The Premier of New Brunswick is now a member of the Board of Managers of this Institution, and the parents of pupils from New Brunswick will have an additional assurance that the best interests of their blind children are being carefully looked after.

Miss Mabel Staten, of Torreston, Carleton Co., N. B., graduated from this Institution in June last, and carried off with her the first prize in the musical department, as well as a certificate as a first-class teacher of instrumental music.

Of the 31 pupils attending this school, 9 are from the Province of New Brunswick, 7 of whom are boys, and 2 girls.

A large and handsome addition to the main building of the school is now in course of construction, and when completed the Institution will be in a position to accommodate 55 pupils.

The parents of the blind are sometimes loath to have their children leave home, but education and training are more important to those who are deprived of sight than to any other class in the community. An uneducated blind person is truly an unfortunate being, as he is powerless to help himself, and he is obliged to live a life of enforced idleness and is a burden to his relatives and friends. An educated trained blind person is able to make his way in the world, to support himself, and oftentimes materially aids in supporting his relatives.

We look to the teachers of the Province of New Brunswick for aid in furthering this educational work, and they are in a position to render most valuable assistance. If each teacher in the public schools would enquire of the pupils in his or her classroom whether any of them had a brother or sister who is blind, or whether they know of any blind child in the community, and would send a post card to the Superintendent of the School, giving the result of this enquiry, we could then ascertain the whereabouts of many blind children of whom nothing is at present known.

Respectfully yours,

C. F. FRASER,

Supt. School for the Blind, Halifax.

The amount of Provincial grant to this Institution for 1890, was $1,200.-W. C.

PAPERS READ AT COUNTY INSTITUTES.

YORK COUNTY TEACHERS' INSTITUTE.

PAPER READ BY GEORGE A. INCH, A. B., FREDERICTON.

READING AND COMPOSITION.

The subjects which the Executive Committee of the Institute has asked me to present to your consideration, are Reading and Composition. Their reason for doing so will be apparent as I proceed; but my revenge is, that that very reason convicts them of violating a fundamental maxim of teaching-viz: "Do not teach by presenting bad models."

The question has presented itself to me— "Is there any necessity for the discussion of old-time topics like these in a body of trained teachers, and in the very shadow of a Normal School?" I cannot hope to present better methods than the Normal School has already presented you all, and probably not as good. The Committee would perhaps justify their request for this paper, by saying that Normal School methods are not always applied in actual work. Teachers sometimes say that they do not always have time for Normal School methods in the rush of work, perhaps with an examination threatening. To neglect them, however, is all wrong, and no rush of work, or threatening examination can justify or palliate a wrong. We as teachers must learn to follow principle and forget to cram. If Normal school principles and their out-growing methods are true, stick to them in spite of every fear.

Reading and Composition are perhaps too large subjects for one paper; but in school they ought to dove-tail into each other, as they are naturally co-relatives or complements; for while composition is interpreting thought into written language, reading is interpreting written language into thought. That being so, composition may be made, and I think ought to be made from the very beginning, to assist reading, and reading to assist composition. The thought controlling the teacher in the process being, "get the thought by reading so that you can write it in your own words."

Is reading not satisfactorily taught, or composition? Many say they are not, and composition less so than reading. If they are not, whose or where is the fault? If they are not, then I unhesitatingly say the fault mainly lies with the teacher's wrong idea, or dead idea, of what reading and composition are; or what his lessons in them ought to accomplish. For I hold that a teacher's methods will be good (at least for him) if his soul is possessed with the correct idea of the purpose to be effected. And now to come to reading, let me illustrate how different methods of teaching will follow, as the shadow the substance, different conceptions of what reading is.

Suppose I consider reading to be the fluent expression of certain sounds represented by the words. With that idea of reading as the goal of my efforts, I call up the class in reading. (Mr. Inch here illustrated orally, with an imaginary class, that to carry out this idea a reading lesson must be merely a drill upon expression—including distinctness of utterance, emphasis, inflection, modulation, pitch, tone, pauses, etc., etc.; or, in other words, he aimed to imitate the method too much followed in every day school work.) Some such must be the road to my ideal—this fluent expression of sounds.

But suppose I consider reading to be the getting at the writer's thought. Ah! that's very different. Getting at the writer's thought! I call up the class to read, desiring to carry out that idea. (Then, by his imaginary class, he illustrated how this idea of reading must make his methods bear upon developing in the children the power to appreciate the meaning.)

But again, suppose I believe that reading is the getting and giving of the writer's thought. Then would I not proceed as I last did, and also follow it with some attention to the expression--the vocalizing of the thought?

Now, as our methods of teaching reading will depend on our conception of what reading is, let us consider what that conception ought to be. No one would say that reading is merely the fluent expression of certain sounds represented by words, and yet how much teaching of reading is methods hatched by that old-hen idea. I was taught by its methods; and, if you will believe me, I fear I have taught by its methods (I have taught a long time, you know); and I can quote opinion upon opinion from educational writers that its methods are the chief methods to-day. (Read opinions.)

But as a source of action for the teacher, how infinitely better is this idea of reading, viz.: Reading is getting at the writer's thought. Is this the right idea of reading? Let us reflect. Most of reading done in life is, and necessarily must be, silent reading, which is simply and solely getting at the thought. Then, too, all oral reading (except, perhaps, that in school) is getting at the thought first, and expressing it afterwards. That being so, that reading is ever and always the getting at the written thought, it follows, as the night the day, that my methods, as a teacher of reading, must aim at developing in my pupils the power of getting at the writer's thought-getting at it quickly, easily, pleasantly; getting at it without being conscious of the intervening veil of words.

But getting the writer's thought is, of course, not all of reading. There is another phase of it-in life's experience a lesser phase; viz., the communicating to others the writer's thought, or oral reading. And as these two elements seem to be all of reading, I conclude that reading is always the getting, and sometimes the giving, the writer's thought. From this it follows that my teachership makes me see to it that my pupils be able also to give to others this thought they get from perusal.

I have then two powers to develop the getting and the giving of thought from the printed page. Which one demands more attention from me? Plainly the getting, for my pupils cannot express the thought until they get it. True, they can be trained to express sentences without being conscious of the thought they represent-so can parrots. Pupils can be trained to express these thoughtless sentences fluently, and are so trained (so these men I have quoted say). Oh! the sin of it! There is no way of geting out of it. My methods must aim principally at developing power to get at the

thought. The power to express is secondary in time and value to the power to get at the thought. If there is to be failure anywhere, let it not be in the last. Think how handicapped a child is in the race for knowledge who struggles along the page, gaining but a stray idea here and there, compared with one who skips from thought to thought and reaches the goal rich with winnings of the way! Secure, I say to pupils, the power to get at the thought in reading. And until they can do that, am I not better employed in securing it, than in drilling on inflection and pure tone? And I invite you to consider the advantage to us as teachers in this power in our pupils as long as so much study is from books. It saves time to us; it is the avenue to speed; because then the pupil finds the getting knowledge comparatively easy, and hence pleasant and inspiring. Compare the struggle and torture and time wasted to a pupil who reads words and not ideas, with the ease and pleasure and speed of one who knows how to read, in such a subject as History, or Geography, or anything.

Don't understand me to say that we should not aim to secure expressive reading. We should secure it much more than we do, and could, if we did not invert the process by trying to get the sense through the expression, rather than the expression through the sense. I do not undervalue expressive reading. It is very admirable. Within it are almost limitless possibilities, ranging at least from a child's reading its primer to Irving's rendering of Hamlet; or Mrs. Siddons' Lady Macbeth. Reading in this sense becomes a fine art, whose name is elocution, but whose home is scarcely the common school. The teacher's motto should be " expression after the thought; expression through the thought." I mean that expression is secondary to thought, and ought not to usurp its place; that, as thought in the universe of God always precedes expression, it must in reading, and that no time should be lost on inflection, emphasis, modulation, tone, pitch, etc., until the thought of the passage is in the child's mind in all its fullness. And even then, I have an heretic idea, that the child's own consciousness will evolve from that fullness, the most beautiful inflection, emphasis, modulation, tone, and pitch, which the Common school need hope to secure. Is not a child's way of saying what interests it usually expressive and beautiful? Its thought is clear to it, and the words go with the thought in its variation. Why ought it not be the same in reading if the thought is equally clear to the child? Its talking to me ought to be its reading tones; and to little ones, reading ought to be the book talking. But instead, unnatural tones are soon imparted — school tones, reading tones, altogether different from the child's natural tones before entering school. Wrong methods did it, largely the thinking of words in reading instead of the things or actions they represent. The school creates these unnatural tones by these wrong methods; and by the same methods proceeds to undo its own creation. Drawling or unnatural tones are products of word-reading, not sense-reading; and can be best cured by sense-reading, not word-reading.

Another lode-star to the teacher of reading must be the developing a wanting-to-read in pupils. Lack that, lack all, nearly. And not a wanting-to-read merely, but a wanting-to-read worthy reading. This idea also makes us draw close to the thought to seek after it. Worthy reading is that in which thought is; unworthy, that which neither requires nor imparts thought. Why do so many prefer the reading of trash to the reading of thought? Because school reading has been too much of words. They have not been trained to follow the thought, and love the doing it. In other words, because they cannot read. Books are dull because they are dead words to them, not living thought.

There is more need of developing thinking than reading; i. e., of getting the thinking from things than from books; but under present conditions we had better get it from books than not at all.

Is it advisable that I say anything regarding methods in reading? That methods best for me are best for any one else is conditional-the conditions being that the "any one" adopts them, not from my suggestion, but from his own thinking them out from principle. Any method not blossoming from principle nurtured in the teacher's consciousness must be of doubtful good. I cannot rid me of the idea that the teacher whose mental grasp clutches the clear purpose, is a genius sufficient unto the method of effecting the purpose in the best way for him. Though the principle, expression after thought, expression through thought, applies to all grades, I have less to say regarding primary grades, for the very good reason that I know less about them. It is not for me to discuss the comparative advantages of the "Look and Say," the "Phonic," or any other method, if either alone has any; or to say whether forms of letters first presented to pupils should be print or script. That I leave to the primary teachers. But I do say that in the reading here as everywhere else, the words must represent what the child knows, and in actual practice I think they do. I may be pardoned for saying that our methods in teaching reading in primary grades keep nearer to nature than in the grades above. Theory would lead me to say that little ones pointing to the words as they read would induce drawling and prevent natural grouping of words. And in primary grades oral language development should precede the attempt to read at all, and then should accompany it here and all along the grades. The earlier years at school should be years of language development. Every intellectual exercise should be made tributary to it. Language development-the power to express thought in language--should be the golden thread running through all the subjects in lower grades. Any subject is good for language development, and every subject should, I repeat, be utilized for that purpose; i. e., the teacher should see to it that the pupil has the power to correctly represent the thought of the subject in his own oral and written language-this last being composition. This training, too, should be had as much as possible by having recourse to things-by bringing the pupil's senses and sensibilities to bear on things not words, and by remembering that clear expression means clear thinking. This is peculiarly the work of the earlier grades, I say, because these are the thirsty years of the language faculty; and because this language equipment arms the pupil for easy after conquests. In later grades, the advantage of the power of getting the meaning quickly by reading will be apparent when we think of the amount of book work they have.

I think our schools have no reason to boast of their success in this matter of language development. I have compared our pupils with specimens from Massachusetts schools to the advantage of the stranger. This may arise from aiming to develop thought and neglecting its expression (an error on virtue's side); but it unfortunately too often springs from developing expression and neglecting thought. (e. g.) I am developing thought and neglecting expression when, in teaching geometry, my pupils think out the method or proof-get a mental picture of the truth-and then hurry on to other truths without waiting to write in their own language, logically and grammatically, the process acquired. And I am developing expression to the neglect of thought-in other words, wasting my time and my pupils'-when reading is dealing with words and not thoughts; i. e., when I do not unfailingly and searchingly test them