Saving Western civilization one student at a time.
Spring 2020
HOW to
TEACH How to Teach Phonics Mortimer Adler's "Three Pillars" Revised St. Augustine's Principles of Teaching
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
How to Ride a Bicycle by Martin Cothran
W
hen I was eight years old, my parents bought me a bicycle for Christmas. It wasn't anything like my old bicycle, which had only one gear; my new bicycle had five. I couldn't have told you then why five gears were better than one. To me it was like five pancakes being better than one or five toy trains or pet lizards being better than one. It was just the nature of reality that five of anything was better than only one. After I'd ridden my bike for a while, I realized that first gear was better for going slow and fifth gear was better for going fast—but only after I'd gotten up to speed. If I started in fifth gear it was hard to get going at all. And if I put it in first gear when going fast I had to pedal way too fast to keep going, which actually slowed me down. We tend to make two mistakes in education: One is like trying to go fast in first gear, and the other is like trying to start out in fifth gear. In order to better explain this, I'll start out slow. Some curricula are very good at teaching basic skills. They are very effective in teaching young students to read, write, and calculate. Up to about fifth grade, they work very well. But when students get older, the curriculum doesn't shift out of first gear. The literature programs never graduate from readers to real books, composition programs never graduate from basic mechanical issues, and math programs never get to the teaching of concepts. In this kind of curriculum students can never take ownership over what they know. Students never read deeply or develop the ability to think about and discuss great literature. This is the fallacy that traditional education is prone to make: starting out slow and never speeding up. Other curricula try to begin in fifth gear. There is an attempt to skip much of what is required in teaching the basics to younger students. The phonics program attempts to attain "understanding" too fast by trying to bypass the necessary work of learning 2
Letter from the Editor
letter-sound correspondences and the rules of spelling and pronunciation. The thinking is that casting off the shackles of formal grammar will allow students to be more "creative" and write more freely. The math program tries to circumvent the necessary step of memorizing multiplication tables and other arithmetical procedures so that students can concentrate on "concepts" earlier. Such a curriculum produces students who have trouble spelling and have a hard time pronouncing new words, students who are hampered in writing well because they have never learned how language works, and students who, because they never fully mastered basic math procedures, are dependent upon calculators to do even the simplest operations, making the advanced study of concepts cumbersome and unfulfilling. In this kind of curriculum "lower order skills" like drill and practice are shunned in the interest of "higher order skills" like application and analysis. Teacher-directed instruction in the lower grades is frequently forsaken in favor of an unguided "Socratic" discussion. This kind of curriculum utilizes techniques appropriate for older students with younger students, and in the process never grounds young students in a way that allows them to later fully benefit from more advanced instruction. This is the fallacy that progressive education makes: It tries to bypass the lower gears in an attempt to go fast faster, but ends up going so slow and with such difficulty that students are apt to fall off. As we point out in this issue's "How to Teach" (p. 40), classical education has something to say about how to avoid these two extremes. When I got my new bicycle, it didn't take long for me to figure out that I needed all the gears, but at different times—the lower gears at the start, and the higher gears later, once I had gotten underway. MemoriaPress.com
Spring 2020
FEATURED ARTICLES
Letter from the Editor by Martin Cothran...................................................... 2 The Wrong Way to Teach Latin by Martin Cothran ........................................ 4 How to Teach Logic by Martin Cothran ......................................................... 6 St. Augustine's Principles of Teaching by Paul Schaeffer ............................... 8 How to Teach: Mortimer Adler's "Three Pillars" Revised by Martin Cothran... 10 Book Review: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy ...................................... 13 Little by Little, We Teach by Cheryl Swope ................................................ 14 What Hath Shakespeare to Do with Socrates by David M. Wright ................ 16 When You Know the Notes to Sing
by Dr. Carol Reynolds
.......................... 18
How to Teach Phonics by Cheryl Lowe ...................................................... 20
© Copyright 2020 (all rights reserved) Publisher | Memoria Press Editor | Martin Cothran Assistant Editor | Dayna Grant
Managing Editor | Tanya Charlton Copy Editor | Ellen R. Hale Graphic Designers | Aileen Delgado & Jessica Osborne
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ONLINE ACADEMY MemoriaPressAcademy.com
LATIN
The Wrong Way to Teach Latin by Cheryl Lowe
M
odern languages are taught by the conversational method. If I understand this method correctly, it involves an emphasis on oral and written conversation in the classroom, supplemented with a secondary focus on grammar. This conversational instruction is most effectively augmented by travel and an immersion experience with native speakers. It could also be called the "natural method," in that students are learning the new language in a natural way, rather than the artificial grammar/translation textbook method. The idea is to simulate the way a child naturally learns to speak (or read) his own language, or the way a foreigner learns a new Cheryl Lowe was the founder of Memoria Press and the author of the Latin Forms Series, Classical Phonics, and many other books. She also founded Highlands Latin School in Louisville, Kentucky, where all Memoria Press materials are developed and tested.
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The Wrong Way to Teach Latin
language by immersion. I have used four terms here (modern, natural, immersion, conversational), but I think they all describe approximately the same thing. I will just use the term "natural method" for the rest of this commentary. There are several reasons why Latin should not be taught by the natural method like modern languages often are. The first is that Latin is not a modern language; it is an ancient language. It is a classical language. Ancient and classical languages are very different from modern languages. Modern languages like French and English have a similar structure and grammar, making it much easier to transition from one language to another. R. W. Livingstone once compared learning a modern language to getting up and moving from one easy chair to another. In contrast, learning a classical language, he said, is like running a marathon. A second and even more obvious reason is that the goal of Latin instruction is to be able to read MemoriaPress.com
the great classics of antiquity, not to speak Latin with the natives. But there is a third reason that Latin should not be taught like modern languages, and that is that modern languages should not be taught like modern languages. The natural method doesn't actually work for modern languages, much less for Latin. There was a tried-and-true method for teaching modern languages before the advent of the natural method: the grammar/translation method. The natural method was introduced in the 1960s, about the same t ime as all of the other moder n educat ional experiments, like "new math," "discovery learning," etc. None of them worked then, and they don't work now. I know. I was taught by the old methods a nd bega n teac h i ng u nder all of t he new met hods. And I survived to tell the story. Both the goals and the methodology of foreign language i n st r uc t ion c ha nged w it h t he i nt roduc t ion of t he nat u ra l m e t h o d . P r i o r t o t h e 19 6 0 s , t he goa l of moder n la ng uage instruction was to learn to read a modern language, not to speak a modern language. The educational goal was that all educated people would have a passable reading proficiency in some modern language, primarily French, German, or Spanish, and could, if necessary, communicate in writing with their academic or business peers in other countries. Nothing demonstrates the lowering of academic standards today more than foreign language study. Several years ago, I interviewed a teacher applicant with a degree in French. I asked her exactly what courses were required for her degree, and she said things like French culture, history, literature, conversation, and grammar. I asked her if she had actually read any French literature, and she responded that she had one course in French literature! A degree in French used to mean four years of French literature; no credit was even given for French grammar. The goal was never to learn to speak a foreign language—which was considered an unrealistic goal in a one-hour-a-day instructional setting—because the natural experience of the child who learns to speak his own language without instruction cannot be duplicated in that limited time. However, by giving the student reading proficiency and the
grammar basics of a foreign language, the teacher prepares him to develop speaking proficiency should the opportunity arise. It works beautifully. But with the natural method, we abandoned the difficult but doable goal of learning to read a modern language for the even more difficult and unrealistic goal of learning to speak a foreign language, with the result that most students today learn to do neither well. My oldest son had two years of German in a very good private high school, and learned very little by the natural method. His private liberal arts college required a year of foreign language, and so he was excited about finally really learning German, but it was more of the same—the only compensation being that his pretty teacher played the guitar to accompany her German drinking songs. Had he learned the grammar basics in school, he would have had the tools he needed to learn to speak German later, when he traveled abroad as a graduate. The argument for the natural method is built upon two false premises. The first is that you can duplicate the natural way a child learns to speak his own language in a classroom setting. You can't. There isn't enough time. The second false premise is that natural is always better than artificial. It is better with regard to some things, such as food, but is the natural man better than the civilized one? The natural method is not only contrary to common sense but to the whole premise of formal education, which is to teach by systematic, logical instruction. This is the very opposite of the natural, random, untutored way we learn to speak our own language. The natural method is the same as teaching reading without phonics; it's the same as so-called "inquiry-based" learning. It is that siren song of progressive education applied to learning languages. The appropriate way to teach anything is to give systematic, explicit instruction, enabling the student to learn more in less time. Would you take your child to a tennis or golf coach who used the natural method? The natural method has been a failure with modern languages, so why would we expect it to succeed with Latin?
You cannot duplicate the natural way a child learns to speak his own language in a classroom setting.
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The Wrong Way to Teach Latin
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LOGIC
How to Teach Logic by Martin Cothran
E
very subject that is systematic has a certain inherent order to it that dictates how it should be approached. In some subjects this order is more explicit than others. In mathematics, for example, there is a widely acknowledged sequence in terms of what should be learned and when it should be taught. In other subjects, however, such as history, there is much less agreement on how and when certain things should be taught. Mathematics is a systematic subject in a way that history is not. The subject of logic is, in large part, about order, and so we should not be surprised to find that there is a fairly explicit and well-defined approach that classical Christian educators can take to the subject.
When to Begin the Study of Logic One of the most common questions parents and teachers interested in classical education ask Martin Cothran is the editor of The Classical Teacher and author of Traditional Logic Books I & II, Material Logic, and Classical Rhetoric.
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How to Teach Logic
about logic is: "When should I start teaching logic to my student?" The answer, of course, is: "When he or she is ready." This usually happens between seventh grade and ninth grade. It is at this age that many children begin to seriously investigate the reasons for things. They are no longer satisfied with the concrete, but are beginning to understand and appreciate abstract ideas. Children are not totally unfamiliar with abstract ideas even at this time; they have already encountered them in mathematics. But whereas mathematics deals with abstraction in the realm of quantitative relationships, logic deals with abstraction in the realm of qualitative relationships. Both math and logic deal with abstraction, but math does it with quantities; logic (at least in its traditional form) does it with language. I should point out that most modern logicians disagree with this view of logic as a language art. They view math as an extension of logic, MemoriaPress.com
and because of this the system of modern logic is very mathematical. But here we are discussing traditional logic, which is very different from modern mathematical or symbolic logic.
The Different Branches of Traditional Logic Let's point out first that there are two main divisions in logic: formal logic and material logic. Formal logic studies the form of reasoning, whereas material logic deals with the content of reasoning. Formal logic is divided, in turn, between deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. Deduct ive log ic reasons from universal truths to particular conclusions. This is the kind of logic the student encounters when he studies arguments such as: All men are mortal Socrates is a man Therefore, Socrates is mortal
The argument begins with a universal truth, "All men are mortal," and ends up with a particular truth: "Socrates is mortal." Inductive logic reasons from pa r t ic u la r fac t s to u n iver s a l conclusions. Here is an example:
Rule #2: Study deduction before induction. This is a fairly common procedure in most logic texts, and for good reason. Deduction is not only simpler and more straightforward than induction, but deduction is a more fundamental thinking skill than induction. When asked why we believe something, we are much more likely to resort to deduction (usually an incomplete deduction) than induction. The reason is very simple: Induction, by its nature, seeks a laboratory—or maybe the assistance of a magnifying glass and a deerstalker cap. Deduction requires only a comfortable chair—and a little concentration. Induction is more the province of the expert; deduction is the right of the amateur. And, let's face it, most of us are amateurs in most things.
Teach correct reasoning first, and incorrect reasoning only after correct reasoning is understood.
Every mammal that has ever been examined has hair Therefore, all mammals have hair
Here, specific instances of mammals being found with hair are said to justify the general conclusion that all mammals have hair. The missing premise in all inductive reasoning is that the future will always be like the past, a premise that has been the subject of much debate in the philosophy of science. So, given this breakdown, let's set forth several rules governing the sequence of logic study.
Rule #1: Study good reasoning first–fallacies later. What this rule says is this: Teach correct reasoning first, and incorrect reasoning only after correct reasoning is understood. An understanding of correct reasoning will enable students, in most cases, to spot bad reasoning even if they have never formally learned to identify bad reasoning. Note that we cannot say the opposite, that students will learn how to spot good reasoning by having studied examples of bad reasoning. In other words, by learning the rules of good reasoning, a student learns to spot bad reasoning as well, but learning about bad reasoning does not enable him to spot good reasoning. This rule flies in the face of the way logic is often taught. In fact, it is not uncommon for only 1-877-862-1097
fallacies to be taught in some "logic" programs— to the exclusion of all else. Of course, we would not tolerate this way of doing things in any other subject. Can you imagine teaching students a list of the things that did not happen in history, expecting them to learn what actually did happen from these falsities? Or exposing them to examples of bad writing as a preparation for writing well? If a science teacher spent a whole year having his students examine great experiments that failed, we might suggest he find another line of work.
Rule #3: Study formal logic before material logic. One reason we study formal logic before material logic has to do with the structure of these two parts of logic. Formal logic is extremely systematic in its structure, whereas material logic is more topical. In formal logic, every piece is related to some other piece in the total system. It is systematic, like arithmetic or geometry. Material logic has more abstract, pre-philosophy concepts that are appropriate for older students. While, as we have already observed, logic is not the same thing as math, it does share one important characteristic with mathematical disciplines: It is systematic and orderly. If a subject should be studied according to its inherent nature, and the inherent nature of logic is orderly, then it doesn't take a great logician to conclude that that's the way it should be studied. How to Teach Logic
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St. Augustine’s Principles by
of T eaching
Paul Schaeffer
A
round 400 A.D., a deacon from Carthage named Deogratias asked St. Augustine, then Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, for his advice on how to teach the faith to those who came seeking to become Christians. Other Christians often sent catechumens (new Christians learning about the faith) to this particular deacon because he was known to be well-versed in the faith and had the gift of eloquence. However, deacon Deogratias had doubts as to his own knowledge and manner of teaching. As was typical for those who wrote Augustine for advice, Deogratias received an entire book in response to his questions. It is not a long book, but it is a discerning one. It is called De Catechizandis Rudibus (Concerning the Instruction of the Unlearned). It remains to this day a classic text on the subject of teaching.
F oundation
All the advice Augustine gives on teaching rests on one bedrock precept: There must be a relationship between the student and the teacher. He says, "The soul which before was torpid is excited so soon as it feels itself to be loved‌ With what might of love the inferior kindles so soon as he learns he is beloved by his superior." The application of this advice in a homeschool setting might seem obvious—of course you love your child! But the key for both the homeschooler and the classroom teacher is that the soul is "excited so soon as it feels itself to be loved." Does the student know that his parent or teacher wants what is best for him? Is that expressed? Is it lived out? Love is more than a feeling; it is also an act. Students are highly motivated by knowing that their teacher is seeking to truly prepare them for the real world even though they are being asked to do some very difficult things. Paul Schaeffer is the director of the Memoria Press Online Academy. He has taught middle and high school classes in Latin, classical studies, and philosophy.
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St. Augustine's Principles of Teaching
This foundational idea supports all Augustine's principles. If we do not truly care about our students, the rest of his ideas are nothing more than rhetorical tricks.
P rinciples
1.
Augustine first discusses a problem that can cause weariness in the student: Teachers sometimes experience disappointment or frustration in having to stoop to the student's level. This attitude can easily seep into the teacher's tone when speaking to a class, revealing to the students an irritation that they are having trouble mastering the basics. This will not go unnoticed by students. To treat this problem, Augustine implores Deogratias (and us) to remember the vision of the mother of a young child who feeds her child small morsels in place of larger adult-sized portions, or the father who babbles with his child in "shortened and broken words." It is love that motivates them, and it should be love that motivates us to meet the child where he is. A teacher must know his students and adapt his teaching to their level of learning and maturity. From a practical perspective, we can apply this encouragement by fully embracing the level of our students' abilities, and by doing small acts such as taking the time to know about their lives, giving graded or ungraded assessments to make sure our teaching is clear and thoroughly understood, and gearing our teaching toward different ways of learning (auditory, visual, tactile, etc.). We can also make sure we are giving them age-appropriate texts, and not pushing them to the heights of learning before they are ready.
2.
A second problem Augustine addresses is the boredom that can come upon the teacher from constantly teaching the same things over and over again. The first few years of teaching a new subject or level are intriguing and challenging. But by year four, seven, or fifteen, a natural apathy starts to occur. In his eloquent style, Augustine says, "We often feel it very wearisome to go over repeatedly matters which are thoroughly familiar, and adapted to children." MemoriaPress.com
But Augustine offers this solution: Find joy in making the old things new again. He says, Is it not a common occurrence with us, that when we show to persons, who have never seen them, certain spacious and beautiful tracts, either in cities or in fields, which we have been in the habit of passing by without any sense of pleasure, simply because we have become so accustomed to the sight of them, we find our own enjoyment renewed in their enjoyment of the novelty of the scene?
By contemplating the response of our students to learning new things we can be renewed. When a student's eyes grow large and he exclaims with wonder at finally understanding a challenging concept, we should ourselves be moved by his wondrous joy.
3.
While we might lament the number of students with attention difficulties today, it is clear from reading Augustine that this was a problem in his day as well. He speaks of the listener who initially is excited to learn and then "gapes and yawns, and even unwillingly exhibits a disposition to depart." Augustine's answer is this: The teacher must refocus the attention of the distracted student. He gives two ways this might be done. First, he exhorts the teacher to use the listener's emotions to make him attentive once again. Explicitly he instructs the teacher to stay on topic, but to use "an honest cheerfulness" or an explanation or illustration that is awe-inspiring or even sad. By evoking those emotions, the student will be distracted from his tiredness and directed to listen once again to the lesson. In upper level classrooms, I like to also play the devil's advocate and take a position that is shocking to the students in order to force them to defend their position—it always gets their attention. Second, Augustine amusingly says students should be offered a seat! (In his day, many lectures were listened to while standing.) But in that same vein, we should not hesitate to ask our students to stand up and stretch to help reinvigorate them. 1-877-862-1097
St. Augustine has many more ideas for teaching in De Catechizandis Rudibus that ought to be examined, since students have not really changed throughout the centuries. The struggles Deogratias and Augustine both shared we share too. Rather than attempt to come up with new ideas, let's drink at the well of the old.
M
ortimer Adler was one of the great contemporary classical thinkers. He was best known for his involvement in the Great Books movement, and more particularly for his editorship of Encyclopedia Britannica's Great Books of the Western World series in the 1950s and 1960s. He became the chairman of the board of editors of Encyclopedia Britannica in 1974, and in 1982 released the Paideia Proposal, one of the greatest of the early twentieth-century restatements of classical education. But he did not only write about the great ideas of older thinkers, he also generated many great ideas of his own based on these older ideas. He wrote books and articles about what the great thinkers thought, a nd r efa sh ioned a nd reformulated their ideas into thoughts from which we, a s contempora r y people, could benefit. Adler devoted himself to thinking about how t he g reat ideas a nd the liberal arts should be taught. One of his greatest contributions to educational thinking is his "Three Pillars," an educational taxonomy of teaching and learning. It can be found in its original form in Adler's Pa i d e i a P r o p o s a l, b ut here we have made it our own by modifying BY MARTIN different aspects of it to make it useful to classical educators, a lt houg h our own version is still subst a nt ia l ly Ad ler's creation. It has informed t he development of Memoria Press' Classical Core Curriculum. Adler's taxonomy of the Three Pillars—the three modes of teaching and learning—identifies the three basic emphases of education: the acquisition of knowledge, the cultivation of skills, and the understanding of ideas and values. It then explains how each of these modes of teaching and learning work themselves out in the actions of the teacher and the learner, in the goals and objectives of education itself, and in the various components of the curriculum.
Adler's basic insight is this: What we teach will dictate how we teach. This is as relevant to a homeschool mother as to a classroom teacher, although the way it is done will obviously vary. Education involves three emphases: knowing what, knowing how, and knowing why. Because of the influence of Dorothy Sayers' essay "The Lost Tools of Learning" among modern classical educators, we are conditioned to think of education in terms of "stages of learning." But Adler is doing something very different. Although there are certainly developmental considerations relevant to Adler's Three Pillars (as we will see in a moment), he is focused primarily on what is being taught and how it can be learned. Sayers' taxonomy of learning is developmental; Adler's is more purely pedagogical.
TEACHING KNOWLEDGE When the goal for our students is the acquisition of organized knowledge (the what), the pedagogical method of the teacher will be primarily didactic. This will often take the form of a lecture, but can also take other forms that involve the direct instruction of the teacher. An instructional text of some kind can play a role in this process too, but the teacher will COTHRAN still play the major role, even if it is only to help the child take what he should from the text. And this process will not merely be passive on the part of the student; the student's part in this will involve various mnemonic activities (activities whose purpose is to utilize the memory), such as listening, answering, and memorizing. Although all subjects will involve knowledge acquisition—even the more advanced subjects for older students—a reliance on the first pillar will be most pronounced in the teaching of younger children. All of us, even the oldest of students, are still faced with the learning of new knowledge, and the way this must be done will remain the same: We will need a teacher (sometimes in the form of a book) to teach it to us, and there will be certain activities in which we must be engaged in order to learn well.
HOW TO TEACH Mortimer Adler’s “Three Pillars” Revised
Martin Cothran is the editor of The Classical Teacher and author of Traditional Logic Books I & II, Material Logic, and Classical Rhetoric.
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How to Teach: Mortimer Adler's "Three Pillars" Revised
MemoriaPress.com
ACQUISITION OF ORGANIZED KNOWLEDGE
CULTIVATION OF INTELLECTUAL SKILLS
UNDERSTANDING OF IDEAS AND VALUES
Cultural Literacy
Functional Literacy
(Aquiring of Knowledge)
(Development of Abilities)
Moral and Intellectual Literacy
INSTRUCTIONAL METHODOLOGY
Didactic Instruction
Intellectual Coaching
Socratic Questioning
OBJECT OF LEARNING
Knowing What
Knowing How
Knowing Why
MODES OF LEARNING
Listening, Answering, Memorizing
Practicing, Reviewing, Application
Inquiring, Reflecting, Synthesizing
GOAL OF INSTRUCTION
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(Cultivation of Affections)
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Subjects that are sciences (in the old sense of being "organized bodies of knowledge") will lend themselves to this approach. Christian studies, the natural sciences, and the human sciences of history, literature, and philosophy all involve the acquisition of organized information.
TEACHING SKILLS When the goal for our students is the cultivation of intellectual skills (the how), then the pedagogical emphasis of the teacher will be on coaching the student, meaning that the teacher will serve in a role that more effectively assists the student in mastering certain operations. The teacher's role is still directive, but will involve coming alongside the student: pointing out errors in the formation of letters and how to fix them, identifying problems in the student's mathematical steps that must be corrected, and helping him see how his work may be done better. In the cultivation of skills, the student's activities will involve practicing, reviewing, and application, leading to mastery. Again, all subjects will involve the mastery of certain procedures, but t hose taught i n t he early grades are the most important and fundamental; they are the foundation of any later skills the student will be required to learn. Subjects that are arts (in the old sense of "skills") will lend themselves to this approach. Read i ng , p e n m a n sh ip, calculation, formal grammar, and, later, logic and rhetoric, a re t he basic a r t s, a long w it h arithmetic, geometry, algebra, and calculus. This approach will also apply to the fine arts of music, painting, and drama.
TEACHING IDEAS When the goal for our students is the understanding of ideas and values (the why), then the pedagogical emphasis of the teacher will be on questioning and discussion. The teacher will still be in charge, but will elicit from students their own reactions to the ideas and values the teacher has helped them encounter, and will assist students in learning how to better perceive, judge, and evaluate the ideas discussed by great thinkers. If judged to be good, the teacher must then help students to articulate why the ideas are good, and, if bad, what is wrong with them. If judged to be true, the teacher must then help students to articulate why they are true, and, if false, why they 12
How to Teach: Mortimer Adler's "Three Pillars" Revised
fail. Again, the teacher's role is still essential, but will involve more of the give and take of questioning, challenging, and re-articulating. In the understanding of ideas and values, students will learn, not only how to derive ideas and values from what they read, but to determine which ones should be accepted, and how to make them their own. The understanding of ideas is mostly the province of literature, history, and philosophy. We know through other disciplines, but through these we see. Through these disciplines—the humanities—we gain an understanding of ideas and values through the eye of the mind (the concepts of philosophy) and the eye of imagination (the concrete examples of literature and history).
STUDENT DEVELOPMENT As we hinted previously, although Adler is not focused on psychological development, the relative importance of these three modes does change at different stages of student development. In general, there is a sliding ratio of priority that shifts as the student gets older and becomes more intellectually mature. In other words, generally speaking, the younger the student the more focus he will have on the acquisition of knowledge, and the more mature he is the more focus he will have on the deeper understanding of ideas and values. That being said, however, the relative focus on each pillar of learning will be dictated as much by the subject being studied as by the age of the student. Also, although individual subjects will naturally lend themselves to a prioritization of one or another of these modes, all of these emphases will be present in all subjects to some degree, no matter the age at which they are taught. In other words, lecture will never lose its place in the teaching of great literature, and, conversely, there are Socratic elements involved even in the process of acquiring basic knowledge. There is memorization and drill in knowledge acquisition; there is review and mastery in didactic teaching. Still, the distinctions employed in the Three Pillars provide classical educators with an excellent paradigm within which to think about how to teach. MemoriaPress.com
BOOK REVIEW
by Martin Cothran I am Andrew Pudewa's book coach. Andrew is, of course, the director of the Institute for Excellence in Writing and a good friend. A few years ago, after finishing a book I had recommended to him, he asked me, "What should I read next?" I told him he needed to read Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy next. At this point my normally cooperative friend became recalcitrant. The book was too long, he claimed. He didn't have that kind of time. There were other things he needed to focus on. I stood my ground. "Read the book," I said, firmly. He finally relented. I didn't hear from him for a few weeks, and then one day I received a text message: "I just finished the last page of Anna Karenina and went back to the beginning and started it again." So much for not having enough time to read a long book. Anna Karenina is the greatest book by the greatest novelist who ever lived. It contains the greatest scene in literature of a man and a woman professing love to one another, and the most depressing scene of a woman alienated from her child. It contains beauty beyond telling and selfishness beyond conception. It is a book about perfect marriage—and its counterfeit. It is the story of Levin and Kitty, who, because they constantly give to each other, establish a relationship any married couple would envy. And it is the story of Anna and Vronsky, who, because they constantly take from one another, destroy their
relationship and themselves. Levin and Kitty show us true love; Anna and Vronsky show us the tragedy of mutual idolatry. It is a book about a man going to heaven, and a woman on her way to hell. While the beautiful Anna slowly yields to selfishness and moral corruption, the homely Levin struggles through self-doubt and, at first, unrequited love, and finds God in the faithful devotion of his wife. It is the saddest of stories—and the happiest. Anna's near-death experience in the middle of the book is one of the more frightening things you will ever read, and the depiction of Levin's conversion to Christianity is the most convincing in Western literature. In contrast to the 2012 movie that demotes the story of Levin and Kitty to a minor plot element, the book itself is more about Levin than it is about Anna. There is evil in the book, but it is completely subsumed by good. It is implied that even Anna, in the end, is saved. When Andrew told me he had finished the book and was starting it over again, he added, "I want to go and live with Levin." Tolstoy wrote three great epic novels: War and Peace, Resurrection, and Anna Karenina, and Anna is the greatest of them all (War and Peace is second, Resurrection third). Oh, and it is not too long. When you finish it, you will realize that, really, it is much too short.
Join us at our 2020 Memoria Press conference in Louisville, KY, for a full-day Literature Seminar on Anna Karenina.
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Book Review
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SIMPLY CLASSICAL
LITTLE BY LITTLE, WE TEACH by Cheryl Swope
"Above all things one should train and exercise a child's memory. Whether children are naturally gifted with a good memory or, on the contrary, are naturally forgetful, the memory should be trained. The natural advantage will be strengthened, or the natural shortcoming made up. The former class will excel others, the latter will excel themselves."
A
re these words from the latest webinar on attention disorders? A new podcast on executive function or working memory? An ad for expensive brain exercises? No, this admonition appears in the first-century essay "On Bringing Up a Boy," which is often attributed to Plutarch, as we shall do here. Within the essay Plutarch references Hesiod, the c. 700 B.C. Greek poet: If to the thing that is little you further add but a little, And to the same oft and, again, full soon it becomes a great thing.
In classical Christian education we train and exercise the memory through translating simple reminders for life: ora et labora (pray and work) or semper fidelis ( a l wa y s f a i t h f u l ) f r o m L a t i n t o English and back again. We strengthen attention and concentration through repetition, recitation, mastery of moral lessons, phonics and grammar rules, arithmetic facts, and a strong general fund of knowledge. We fortify a student's mind and soul with the eternal comfort of Scripture passages like "The Lord is my shepherd" and "He leadeth me beside the still waters." Teachers of students with varying needs may need to be more creative than other teachers, or spend more time on a single lesson, but we need not compromise on giving our students a real education. Plutarch gives us this comparison: Cheryl Swope is the author of Simply Classical: A Beautiful Education for Any Child and Memoria Press' Simply Classical Curriculum, as well as editor of the Simply Classical Journal.
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Little by Little, We Teach
As farmers put stakes beside their plants, so the right kind of teacher provides firm support for the young in the shape of lessons and admonitions carefully chosen so as to produce an upright growth of character.
For any child, whether small or mighty, poor or wealthy, slow or quick, Plutarch writes, …the one and essential thing, the first, middle, and last, is a sound upbringing and a right education. Not only should the education of our children be treated as of the very first importance, but we should insist upon its being of the sound and genuine kind.
Some people wonder whether the workforce of today demands an entirely different education. Alternatives to memorystrengthening and characterforming education often appear in the form of utilitarian, instrumental programs and hands-on, practical training. Our ancient writer has an answer for this as well: To put it shortly, it is surely absurd to train little children to receive their food with the right hand and yet to take no precautions that they shall be taught moral lessons of a sound and proper kind.
Petit à petit, l’oiseau fait son nid "Little by little, the bird builds its nest," one of my daughter's favorite French phrases, encourages us to teach step by step and with sensitivity to the student. Will he thrive in a traditional classroom? Does he require a smaller group of companions? Will he need private tutoring? Does he need visual aids, adaptive equipment, more practice? As a matter of human mercy, Christian compassion, and vocational duty, we can make modifications for the various needs of our MemoriaPress.com
students by placing strong stakes of support beside our young plants, whether in a large field, a raised bed, or a small greenhouse. Nearly two thousand years after Plutarch, Helen Keller showed her first understanding of the word "w-a-t-e-r," finger-spelled into her hand by her teacher Annie Sullivan. She had soon learned 625 words, and Annie began to work on "words indicative of place relations." Miss Sullivan wrote the following diary entry when Helen was six years old: Her dress was put in a trunk, and then on it, and these prepositions were spelled for her. Very soon she learned the difference between on and in, though it was some time before she could use these words in sentences of her own. Whenever it was possible she was made an actor in the lesson, and was delighted to stand on the chair, and to be put into the wardrobe. In connection with this lesson she learned the names of the members of the family and the word "is." '"Helen is in wardrobe." "Mildred is in crib." "Box is on table." "Papa is on bed" are specimens of sentences she constructed.
Miss Sullivan demonstrated sensitivity while not wavering from the determination to give her student an education. She wrote on September 26, 1888: Owing to the nervousness of Helen's temperament, every precaution has been taken to avoid unduly exciting her already very active brain. In teaching her the use of language … I have tried to add to her general information and intelligence, to enlarge her acquaintance with things around her, and to bring her into easy and natural relations with people.
Little by little, we teach. We do not push too hard or attempt to rush the process. Plutarch tells us:
Being in too great haste for their children … they impose extravagant tasks, which prove too great for their strength and end in failure, besides causing them such weariness and distress that they refuse to submit patiently to instructions… Water in moderation will make a plant grow, while a flood of water will choke it. In the same way the mind will thrive under reasonably hard work, but will drown if the work is excessive.
Pearls of Thought Teaching any student requires observation, sensitivity, and dedication. We can remind ourselves of simple tips for the student with special needs: • • • • •
•
• • •
Secure the student's attention before you teach. Be concise and clear. Provide breaks after intense mental tasks. Establish a code of conduct and create predictable routines. Teach with visual or physical aids to assist understanding, but take care that such additions are not in themselves distracting. If any lesson contains too much content, use a mental magnifying glass to enlarge each component. Then divide into smaller parts and teach those. Stir the heart while tending to the mind. Assess for understanding and mastery. Practice to keep memory sharp and well-exercised.
If this sounds to you like advice that would be profitable for teaching not only a child with special needs but any child, you would be right.
Simply Classical: A Beautiful Education for Any Child by Cheryl Swope | $24.95
REVISED EDITION
Ready to be encouraged? We are now offering this second edition of Simply Classical: A Beautiful Education for Any Child with revised content, updated resources, and new information for classical schools and cottage schools. You will find more tips for teaching all children classically, more stories of real children, and more inspiration for your own journey.
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LITER ATURE
What Hath Shakespeare to Do with Socrates? by David M. Wright
IN
his play Hamlet, Shakespeare has his protagonist attempt to determine whether the king, his uncle, is guilty of killing his father by organizing a play in which the events of his father's murder are cast in another setting so that he may observe his uncle's reaction. This "play within a play" (titled "The Mouse-trap") will allow Hamlet to observe his uncle's reaction, to see if, indeed, he is the murderer. It is an attempt, using the dramatic arts, to "catch the conscience of the King." This scene offers readers a chance for personal reflection on not only the function and role of the dramatic arts, but on the larger question of what literature has to do with knowledge, with ways of knowing, and the aptitude of literature for engaging in philosophical pursuits. Hamlet says that the purpose David M. Wright is the director and author of the upper-school literature curriculum at Memoria Press.
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What Hath Shakespeare to Do with Socrates?
of the theatre (or literature) is "to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to [human] nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." Shakespeare tells us that one of the main functions of literature is to hold a mirror up to human nature and to reveal the inner truths, impulses, and realities of human beings, as well as the "form and pressure" of any given age and culture, and so it is complimentary to and in partnership with philosophy, which shares the same goal. Each of these disciplines—literature and philosophy— achieves something titanic in its quest for knowledge and truth, though neither ever fully attains it. Both pursue the same ancient, eternal goal, albeit through a different medium. If all of us, as Aristotle said, desire by nature to know, then it stands to reason that at some point we would wish to know what it is that we know, MemoriaPress.com
how we know what we know, or even whether we can know anything with certainty at all. Thus, the question of how literature functions philosophically, or how it treats philosophical ideas—and by contrast, how philosophy treats its own ideas, distinct from the operations of literature—hinges in large part upon the question of knowledge: upon each discipline's contribution to ways of knowing and the fullness of knowledge.
PLATO VS. LITERATURE But like all relationships, which mysteriously and fearfully tread along a harrowing cliff of harmony and discord, literature and philosophy share a long history of drama and beauty, passion and friction. It began with Plato, who notoriously banned the poets from his ideal state in his Republic, and took aim at the Rhapsodes and the poets in the Ion. His views might seem intemperate, but Plato was neither a skeptic nor a fool. So what did the great philosopher have against literature? First, Plato felt that the Rhapsodes (those who publicly recited Homer's works from memory) were imitating Homer, who himself was imitating nature. For Plato, the physical world ("the world of becoming") was an imitation of the perfect world of true reality, the forms ("the world of being"). Thus, when a poet through his art imitates objects of the physical world, he is imitating what is already an imitation, thus drawing his audience away from true reality. Second, Plato felt that poetry appealed to the weaker part of our soul—the irrational, passionate, and emotional part of our tripart soul. For Plato, the soul is comprised of a rational element, a mediating element, and an irrational element. Disciplines like philosophy and mathematics are negotiated by our reason (the Apollonian/masculine), while poetry is negotiated by our irrationality (the Dionysian/ feminine). In other words, we access the world of the forms through our rational component, whereas our irrational component takes us away from them. So the conflict between literature and philosophy can be seen to be between literature and emotion on one side, and philosophy and rationality on the other. Since Plato's preferred discourse was rational argumentation, it is fairly obvious which side he was on.
RESPONSES TO PLATO Proponents of literature through the ages have responded to Plato in three primary ways. The first is a kind of passive agreement with or extension of Plato's views. This skeptical perspective holds that literary works treat philosophical ideas as objects 1-877-862-1097
of aesthetic concern presented rhetorically, while philosophical works treat such ideas as objects of cognitive concern presented argumentatively. In this view a literary work leads to a dramatic or poetic (aesthetic) destination, and a philosophical work leads to an epistemic (truth/knowledge) destination. Each discipline has its own domain and purpose, and they are mutually exclusive. The second response has been to point out that Plato himself was a literary craftsman par excellence. His dialogues, highly creative and rich in poetic and dramatic effect, remain a unique form of literature. His philosophy incorporated an imaginative dialectic, replete with metaphors and analogies, symbols and myths. The Republic itself is an extended metaphor or parable. This view sees Plato the philosopher as the most elevated poet, and his poetry as the most elevated form of philosophy. The third response comes from Plato's star pupil, Aristotle. In his formal treatise, the Poetics, Aristotle argues that the "world of becoming" is the real world, and the ideal forms exist within each created thing. Aristotle re-imagines the idea of mimesis (imitation) as something natural and good: All humans desire to know; we delight in imitation because that is how we learn. This is the view echoed by Shakespeare. What is the instinctive desire behind our delight in imitation? Harmony. We respond with natural delight to balance, order, and unity. According to Aristotle, the best place to find this harmony is in poetry and drama—and in particular, tragedy. In tragedy, the poet selects the vital, crucial essences (the inner realities of human nature, as Hamlet said) from the daily, repetitive, stream-of-conscious events that make up a life, and transforms them into a tight, unified plot. Mimesis is a distillation of the dross of everyday life into the vital principles of who we really are—or, for example, who Orestes really is in Aeschylus' Eumenides—the man who suffers through a trial and receives the blessing of the new democratic rule of law which ends the curse of the House of Atreus. These various critiques of Plato remind us that the domains of literature and philosophy have never been truly or effectively sundered. In Plato's Theaetetus, Socrates says that the "feeling of wonder is the touchstone of the philosopher, and all philosophy has its origins in wonder." Since literature, too, begins in wonder as it seeks to represent the beauty and complexity of man and nature, it is helpful to understand how literature yields knowledge, how it expands our ways of knowing toward a fuller kind of knowledge. What Hath Shakespeare to Do with Socrates?
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FINE ARTS
When You Know the Notes to Sing by Dr. Carol Reynolds
When you know the notes to sing, You can sing most anything.
DO
you recall these lines from the song "DoRe-Mi"? In the course of this beloved song from The Sound of Music, the von Trapp children are taught to sing. Of course, actual children could not spring from musical ineptitude to artistic mastery in one afternoon, even if Julie Andrews was their coach. But the principles and process espoused in this scene apply to teaching all music within the Western tradition. So let's take a closer look. First, recall that the children were eager to learn to sing. Desire is a critical ingredient in learning, regardless Dr. Carol Reynolds is a speaker and educator, and the widely acclaimed author of Discovering Music and other programs. She regularly leads arts tours throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, recently in partnership with the Smithsonian Institute.
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When You Know the Notes to Sing
of the subject or skill. Desire may express itself easily, or it may need to be coaxed out from the layers of a child's reticence. But children are naturally attracted to music. They gravitate to it from their earliest period of life. Second, the von Trapp children wanted to acquire, not just the musical skills of their governess, but a closer relationship to the woman herself. Her joy in music attracted them as much as the music she made. So a teacher's projection of energy and excitement can be as important as pedagogical skill. In fact, in the introductory stages of learning music, enthusiasm is more important than technical knowledge. Third, Maria taught the children music by teaching them to sing. She did not give them instructions in playing the guitar or the piano. Singing provides the primal step in making music, after which every aspect of learning music gets easier. A child who has difficulty singing on pitch needs assistance, not rejection. The rejection of a child's MemoriaPress.com
singing voice because of an adult's intention to mold a "better" sound for an ensemble is a cruel thing. Would that same adult brand a child who is slow to read as a person unable to read? Far too frequently I meet older adults who recall the devastation of being judged "not fit to sing" as a child. These unhappy events tend to happen around third or fourth grade—the very time when children are seeking endorsements of their abilities and crafting their grown-up identities. Singing is a natural human ability. The fact that a child produces an extensive range of pitches long before forming a first word is not insignificant. Babies in their cradles spend hours experimenting with the acoustics of pitch while also expressing preverbal emotions. Toddlers quickly acquire a repertoire of actual songs. They want to sing them over and over. Adults hear t his as mi ndless repetition when, in fact, a child is practicing a complex set of skills that require progressive development. Do not hush children when they sing; allow them to sing to (or past) the point of annoyance. As they practice little songs, children are tackling the five basic elements of Western music: melody (pitch), rhythm, harmony, timbre, and texture, as well as a sixth element applicable to vocal music: text (lyrics). These elements regulate every aspect of music in our Western tradition, from Gregorian chants to Beethoven's symphonies to popular music of our own day. In the Western system of music, melody is the prime element. Melody can be defined as a series of pitches linked in a meaningful way. Hearing melody and producing melody come easily for most children. Greater control is required to produce and sustain the next element: rhythm. Yet rhythm is the first aspect of music that every child learns—in utero! We spend the first nine months of our lives in an acoustical environment ruled by the regular beat of our mother's heart. Consequently, a child's excitement about rhythm, expressed by clapping, tapping, jumping, and dancing, is hardly a frivolous instinct. Harmony is one of the glories of Western music. While Maria was teaching the von Trapp children the pitches of the scale (do, re, mi, etc.) she was teaching them not just melody, but the ingredients of the musical alphabet used to create harmony.
In Western music, melodies outline and reflect harmony. Think of the ubiquitous children's song "The Wheels on the Bus." The first nine pitches ("The wheels on the bus go round and round") outline the song's primary harmony, called by musicians the tonic chord. The next three notes ("round and round") outline a new chord and second level of harmony called the dominant. Then the melody returns to the opening tonic chord ("The wheels on the bus go round and round"), with a brief bounce back to the dominant ("all through the"), and a landing ("town") on the opening tonic chord. Does a child realize this harmonic progression, intellectually? Of course not. But the child does respond to the shifting of harmonies outlined by the melody. Later in life that child can learn the official names and see how these chords fit within the acoustical system we call music theory. The final two elements of Western music, also demonstrated in "Do-Re-Mi," have the names timbre and texture. Timbre refers to the sounds produced by different instruments or voices. Maria had three types of timbre available as she taught "Do-Re-Mi": first, the individual voices of the children; second, the division between the high voices of the little boy and the girls, and the more mature voice of the older boy. Plus, she had her own adult woman's voice, more powerful and richer than any of the children's voices. But the strongest musical moment of the scene comes from her clever use of texture. Texture involves the way composers simultaneously combine linear elements (such as melody). Try to remember the first time you experienced the singing of a round, especially within a large group, be it "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" or another round. Probably your ears were surprised to hear how lush a single melody becomes when sounded against staggered versions of itself. But Maria went a step further when she ended the song by singing a slower melody (counter-melody) to the words "When you know the notes to sing," placed above the children's voices ("do-mi-mi, mi-sol-sol, re-fafa, la-ti-ti"), giving us one of the finest moments of the whole musical. Few things light up a child's eyes more than singing. Let singing start your days, whether as a spontaneous "tra-la-lah"—off pitch or not—or in a gradually implemented program of singing songs together. Set aside your own doubts and fears. Open up your heart to the joy that only singing can bring.
Singing is a natural human ability. Children produce an extensive range of pitches long before forming their first word.
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When You Know the Notes to Sing
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P
honics instruction nearly disappeared in the 1930s, and only started making a comeback in the 1970s. Now, there are so many phonics programs to choose from it's enough to make your head spin. How do we know which one to choose? A systematic, logical approach to phonics is the best way to teach students to read and to spell, but how exactly is that accomplished? Traditional phonics begins with teaching the alphabet and one sound for each letter. These sounds are then blended together to sound out words. Traditional phonics teaches these phonograms (letters or letter teams that represent sounds) in a logical order, proceeding from the most common and most regular patterns to those that are less common and less regular. Each pattern is immediately applied in word families. This order has been worked out over time by teachers and linguists, and though it may vary in some details, it is a thing of beauty. Traditional phonics is incremental; each new skill is taught after the previous one has been thoroughly practiced. For instance, after the short vowels, the student learns the long vowel sounds and silent e rule. Next he may practice consonant blends, and then learn some of the long vowel teams, such as ai, ea, ay, one or two at a time, all of which he practices not in isolation, but in word families. No frontloading, just step-by-step learning.
Principles of Traditional Phonics
1.
The first principle of traditional phonics is learning to identify letters and the sounds each letter represents. Traditional phonics is synthetic phonics: It starts with letters, not with words. Students first learn one sound for each consonant and the short sound of each vowel in order to build (synthesize) words. The sounds are taught in isolation before blending and reading begin.
Cheryl Lowe was the founder of Memoria Press and the author of the Latin Forms Series, Classical Phonics, and many other books. She also founded Highlands Latin School in Louisville, Kentucky, where all Memoria Press materials are developed and tested.
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2.
The second principle of traditional phonics is extensive practice with "consonant-short vowel-consonant" (CVC) words as the foundation of reading. It is with CVC words that students learn to blend letter sounds into words from left to right. Memoria Press' phonics program, First Start Reading, begins by teaching students the letter m (consonant), and then the sound of short a (vowel), and then the letter s (consonant). Almost immediately students learn to blend letters into words and words into sentences: I am Sam. The letters and sounds are practiced in isolation, but then the phonograms are practiced in the context of words. It is with CVC words that students continue to practice and master the most common sound of each of the 26 letters. It is with CVC words that students practice discriminating between those all-important, but very nuanced, short vowel sounds (bag, beg, big, bog, bug). In addition, the CVC pattern is the building block of many multi-syllable words. The third principle of traditional phonics is the systematic presentation of English spelling patterns in a logical and time-tested sequence, from the simpler to the more complex. Although the order is somewhat flexible after CVC words, a typical sequence of the basic spelling (phonics) patterns covered in beginning phonics would be:
3.
• CVC words: consonant-short vowelconsonant words (pat, pet, pit, pot, put) • initial/final consonant blends (s/l/r-blends: sc, sl, sm, bl, cl, fl, dr, gr, pr, etc.) • the four h digraphs (ch, sh, th, wh) • long vowels with silent e (at-ate, mat-mate, etc.) • long vowel teams (ay, ai, oa, ee, etc.) • three sounds of y • soft and hard c and g While the exact order and selection of phonics patterns can vary, the important point is that each one is practiced in a word family that illustrates that pattern. An example of a word family is the 45 common words that spell long a with the ai vowel team: maid, claim, brain, etc. Through this systematic study of spelling patterns and word families, students learn thousands of words and the decoding skills to read thousands more. The traditional phonics sequence is effective because it is systematic, not random. It reveals the underlying order of the great variety of English spelling patterns, one pattern at a time. This orderly presentation is an aid to memory and is the very heart of phonics. Without it, many students are unable to recognize, master, How to Teach Phonics
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and read English words fluently, for the English language has the most irregular spelling of any of the modern languages. In addition, students develop the visual memory needed to spell English words that have multiple ways to spell the same sound (there are seven common ways to spell the long o sound). If you can spell the word boat with oa instead of bote, it is not because you have memorized a rule, but because you learned it in a word family and have seen it spelled correctly a thousand times. There are very few useful rules to help you decide among the possible spelling patterns in English.
Sight Words
from phonetic readers to books with a richer, more natural vocabulary. At some point in first or second grade, reading starts to click and most students begin to read far in advance of their phonics instruction. At this point phonics lessons start to transition into spelling lessons, which continue to reinforce reading and spelling throughout the grammar school years. In traditional phonics, however, spelling is secondary to reading. Students are able to read ahead of their spelling ability. While spelling is important, it should not slow down or impede reading fluency. The spelling patterns are taught first for the purpose of decoding (reading), and secondarily for the purpose of encoding (spelling).
Some parents are afraid of "sight words," which have been Our Peculiar Language The irregularity so discredited by the "look-say" Here is the real truth: method of reading instruction of English is English is the most irregular that any appearance of a sight of all of the modern word is a sign of compromising not an argument languages. It is, in fact, in with the devil of "look-say." But a class by itself. Not only in traditional phonics, they are against phonics; does English have many a necessity. phonograms with multiple In order to compose simple it is an argument sounds, it has many sounds sentences with phonetic words, that are spelled by multiple it is necessary to teach sight for phonics. phonograms. There is an words along the way. The reason average of eight different is because many of our most ways to spell each of the long common words are irregular, and vowels in English, and there therefore do not occur early in are few, if any, rules that the phonics sequence. govern these variations. This Many of these common excerpt from Lord Cromer's poem illustrates the words, such as the, as, she, and go, are not actually difficulties of the English language: irregular but are often taught out of sequence, before their phonics pattern is covered. Learning Won't you tell me why it's true individual words that are not part of the spelling We say sew, but also few? pattern of a particular lesson is not difficult And the maker of a verse for students or distracting from the systematic Cannot rhyme his horse with worse? Beard is not the same as heard, presentation of phonics. Cord is different from word, Other words, such as come, some, and said, break Cow is cow, low is low, the rules but still have phonetic elements that can Shoe is never rhymed with foe. be sounded out. Only a few words, such as of, eye, But the irregularity of English is not an are, and one, are so unphonetic it is best to just learn argument against phonics; it is an argument for them by sight. phonics. Most languages don't teach phonics Phonics & Spelling because their alphabets are regular and phonetic. In most other languages the alphabet is the only While students are learning basic phonics, phonics needed. For English-speaking children, they will practice their new phonics skills by the alphabet is only the beginning. For Englishreading stories with a high percentage of easy speaking children, systematic, incremental, and phonetic words, such as "The cat is on the mat." common sense phonics is the classical way to teach After sufficient practice and mastery with the them how to read and spell. most common patterns, students will transition 22
How to Teach Phonics
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