23 DECEMBER 1876, Page 9

THE UTOPIA OF THE SPELLING-BOOK MAKERS.

TllE dream of the last School Board of London,—not un- shared, we presume, by a fair number of the existing School Board, since so many of the new Board were members of the old one,—at least does credit to the imaginative capacities of our municipal representatives. Finding that little boys and girls find it very hard to follow the windings of the some. times rather eccentric principles of English pronunciation, the late School Board boldly conceived the original idea that, instead of moulding the habits of little boys and girls so as to conform to the usages of the English language, we might instead mould the usages of the English language to the habits of little boys and girls ; and that by issuing a Royal Com- mission to consider " the best manner of reforming and sim- plifying" the laws of spelling, we might at once greatly improve the principles of orthography and hasten the progress of our children in an art which forms so important an element in two out of " the three R's." Admitting, however, the mingled boldness and originality of the conception, it is not possible to give the late School Board equal credit for the way in which they cast their bread upon the waters, in the faith that they should find it returned to them, after many days, both multiplied and improved by passing through the hands of a Royal Commission. To say the least, their mode of placing the matter before the public was extremely bald ; and we think we may safely add that it was not pushed to the full significance which, if it has any force at all, might well have been given to it. It was bald, because in asking the other School Boards of the country to aid in getting a Royal Commission appointed to consider the reform and simplifi- cation of our present methods of spelling, the Londoners did not even suggest in what sense they wished for such a reform and simplifi- cation. The greatest conceivable "simplification,"—and simplifica- tion seems to have been their main point,—would certainly be the so-called phonetic (or as it is, we suppose, written by the patrons of that horrible system, " fonettik ") spelling. Did they ask for that, or even for a consideration of its claims to a hearing? If they want that system, of course they would propose to intro- duce it into all documents printed by public authority,—into the Bible, the Prayer-Book, the Statutes at large, Royal Pro- clamations, Orders in Council, the documents of all the offices of Government, and to require its adoption by the Civil Service Examiners. It would clearly be most treacherous first to teach little boys and girls to spell on one system, and then leave them to discover that no one in authority could understand or would admit their mode of spelling, and that their time at school had been practically lost, so that they would have to begin all over again. But if the School Board did not intend to admit this radical suggestion for " simplifying " spelling, they should clearly have excluded it, and given their reasons for doing so, because these reasons would have been most important if only as suggesting the true limits of the inquiry they desire, and of the reforms at which they aim. If the new spelling is not to be phonetic, what kinds of simplification and reform did the last London School Board aim at? Would they be content with suggesting that all words pro- nounced in the same way should be spelt in the same way, and that all words spelt in the same way should be pronounced in the same way? Even that rule would make havoc with etymological princi- ples. If we were obliged to spell the last letters of " enough "and " stuff " in the same way because the termination is similarly pro- nounced, we should lose the separate history of the two words in the change, " enough " being identical with the German genug and connected with the verb geniigen (°' to satisfy''), while "stuff " is connected with the German Staff and French itoffe, and of a totally different kind of origin. In such cases as these, then, were the late School Board prepared to recommend that the proposed "reform" should extinguish all trace of the etymological history of similarly pronounced words, in order to make the spelling simpler? Or would they have altered the pronunciation and not the spelling, and obliged us to pronounce " enough " in some different manner, in order to indicate its different spelling? If so, their recommendation was certainly very oddly worded, as what they asked for was a simplification and reform of our method of " spelling," not of our method of " pronunciation." Then, again, if the last suggestion—the suggestion that we should pronounce differently for the future all words spelt differently, but now pro- nounced alike—were accepted, how could it be put in force ? So far as spelling goes, there are at least public documents and Government publications of all sorts to set the example, but how are we to legalise a pronunciation without any custom at the back of it? Again, there would be precisely the same objection to the other simplifying suggestion to which we suppose the London School Board to have referred,—that all words spelt in the same way should be pronounced in the same way ;—for first, that suggestion does not come within the terms of the School Board's proposal, which is a proposal as to spelling reform, not as to pro- nunciation reform; and next, there would be no possible means of putting the principle in force if it were adopted. Did the London School Board suppose for a moment that any Royal Commission in the world could.make the 'English people pronounce, dough' and cough' in the same fashion, whether the change were to make them pronounce dough' as if it meant not flour and water,

but the word doff," to take off ;' or whether it were to make them pronounce the word cough,' so that in speaking of a bad cold and cough the vowel-sound would be the same in the second word as in the first, and the "gh" in cough' silent? Altogether we fancy it is quite clear that any reform and simplification of spelling such as would meet the conception which must have been in the London School Board's mind, when they suggested the heroic remedy of a Royal Commission, would be indefinitely beyond the limitsof any conceivable authority in this country ; for you cannot make it

penal to pronounce after the fashion of your parents, and you have no way of even setting an official example as to how you ought to pronounce ; while public opinion would not bear that our literature should be spoiled by eccentric printings of public documents which would make us break with the past. But if no radical reform was intended, then, in the first place, the sugges- tion was not worth making; and next, the limitations of any such reform and simplification should clearly have been pointed-out at the beginning, since such limitation was of the very essence of any even imaginably practicable task.

Again, we cannot see why the School Board, when it rose to the grand conception it announced of moulding the English language to the capacities of little boys and girls, instead of moulding little boys and girls to the capacities of the English language, did not better work out the logic of the solu- tion, and show themselves still more aware of the mag- nificence of the dream which they were thus confiding to the popular mind of England to work out. Surely spelling is but the humblest of the regions in which it would be possible to make education easier for little boys and girls. Why not remodel geography,—English geography, at all events,—to make children's geography classes easier ? What can be more trouble- some than all the various complicated county, and town, and river, and mountain names, what more difficult to learn? Why not map out the country quite afresh,—as New York, for instance, is mapped out into avenues and streets, with numerals affixed to indicate the order in which they come,—and so make the various geographical divisions systematic and exhaustive ? The children would find that a much easier system to master, and if its adoption opened a great chasm in the continuity of English history, why, the same objection applies to any systematic change which would bring our system of spelling nearer to that of oar pronunciation; yet this is, we conclude, exactly what the London SchoolBoard proposed to do. Then, again, what a fruitful idea is that of the London School Board in relation to various practical employ- ments Instead of teaching girls to sew in the manner required by the wearers of modern dress, why not " simplify " the requisi- tions of the wearers of dress to suit the capacities of the children who learn to sew? Why not refer it to a Royal Commission to consider whether a great reform and simplification could not be carried out, so that hemming, sewing, running, felling, stitching, backstitching, herring-boning, overcasting, should be reduced to one or two simple varieties adapted to the capacities of little girls ? Why not reform our weights and measures, not in the interest of the objective pursuits for which those weights and measures are needed, but in the interests of the children who have to learn them? It is a great idea this of altering the world so as to be intelligible to the child, instead of altering the child so as to make him understand the world ; and if it be well carried through,we do not know what great reforms ' and 'simplifications' might not result from it. Only, the London School Board shbuld not have launched such an idea as that upon the world in the dry and jejune fashion which it actually adopted. It should have been heralded with something of a flourish of trumpets, expounded in a " discourse," and its immense results on the science of education duly explained. As it is, we think the late School Board of London may fairly be accused, either of not understanding the significance, audacity, and orginality of their own idea, or of dropping a hint under the disguise of a most modest and matter-of-fact suggestion, which was to be the thin end of the wedge for a mighty educational revolution. Either way, we think they did not tether their brilliant proposal into the world in a manner that would give it any fair chance of success.