Teaching Children to Read and Talk
The London Times very wisely says: "Young people ought to be taught to read with emphasis, and to talk with something like freedom and grace. Both these accomplishments are best acquired from parents and older friends—that is, if the said parents really are on true parental terms with their children, which is not always the case. There are parents who neither converse with their own children nor allow them to talk in their presence. They leave their children to the school-room teachers, or to teach one another, and so acquire a community of family failings. Or they think they have done their best when they set a child down to pore for days together over some foolish tale. Bad tricks of reading and talking are thus early learnt, and scarcely ever quite got rid of."