STUDY THE SPELLING BOOK MORE
Last week we gave the word of the Chicago Tribune on the great necessity of the teaching of spelling, revealed by the test made by Columbia University. The following from the New York Tribune, April 25, is instructive on the same subject:— The Columbia University freshmen and sophomores who were put through spelling exercises the other day, probably found the proceedings as much of a strain on their dignity as on their knowledge of orthography. The spelling book is not commonly thought of as one of the instruments of higher education. The college student is himself thoroughly convinced that he is a man, and not infrequently his teachers and others accept his view of the case, and assume with him the propriety of putting away childish studies, even if he can not always be persuaded to put away childish sports and habits within the college precincts. Such treatment, however, is founded on the presumption that before entering college he has really mastered the childish subjects, that he can spell and punctuate correctly, and write a reasonably good English sentence. As a matter of fact, however, he is frequently quite unable to do this, but enters college with a woefully defective primary training, goes on with higher studies without making up his preparatory shortcomings, is graduated perhaps with honors, and presents himself at a law office, bank, counting house, or editorial room, with all the pretensions of an educated man, but without the ability to write a presentable letter or a readable paragraph. Critics of American college education have long recognized this. The Columbia students are probably not one whit behind the average of their student contemporaries, even if they are put back for a moment to grammar-school work. The others ought to be, and one of the best things that our colleges could do would be to follow Columbia’s example, force their students to a thorough knowledge of primary branches, and then for the future force the preparatory schools to send up candidates for admission, whose writing and spelling will in truth warrant their putting aside those studies for more advanced work. The blame for this state of affairs is generally laid upon the preparatory schools. But do they deserve it all? Have they done anything but supply the demand, and send out boys equipped to meet the requirements which the colleges make? If the colleges call for another oration of Cicero or a new book of geometry, the boys on due notice appear, prepared to pass examinations according to schedule. The colleges themselves have generally acted on Dogberry’s theory that “to write and read comes by nature,” and, though prescribing strict examinations in Greek, Latin, and mathematics, have taken it as a matter of course that those who could pass such tests must be proficient in subjects supposed—but only supposed—to have been mastered long before. Recently more attention has been given to foundation studies, but the habits engendered by a long experience of perfunctory examination or no examinations at all in English for college entrance, still persist in preparatory schools, and still foster the idea in pupils and parents that English branches do not demand serious attention after the primary school grades have been passed. Doubtless the schools and academies ought to maintain a higher standard as a duty to themselves and their pupils. But even if they do not do this on their own motion, the colleges can and should force them to it by applying even more rigid tests in English writing and spelling than in the more advanced courses. Shortcomings in classics or mathematics can be made up, for those studies are continued in college; but there is little opportunity in college to supply fundamentals of common-school training as an incident to the little teaching in advanced English commonly given. If the student does not learn to spell and to write grammatical sentences before he goes to college, the chances are that he will never acquire such knowledge. Thousands of college graduates are without it. They go through life with the stamp of higher education upon them, at every turn finding themselves ignorant concerning the simplest matters, which nobody ever taught them, merely because all their teachers assumed those things to be, as a matter of course, thoroughly understood, or at any rate to be beneath their attention. If Columbia University, even at the cost of sending its freshmen and sophomores to spelling school, can set the fashion of compelling all college graduates to be thorough masters of primary English studies, it will have made one of the most needed advances in American education. College graduates would not be the sole beneficiaries, but the pupils in all our schools would share with them the advantages of better English training enforced as a preliminary to college matriculation.