In England the phonic method best known is probably Miss Dale’s.  It is very ingenious, the analysis is thorough and the books are prettily got up, but to those who feel that reading, though a most valuable tool, still is but a tool and one not needed for children under seven, the method seems over-elaborate.  Much depends upon the teacher but to see fifty children sitting still while one child places the letters in their places on the board suggests a great deal of lost time.  The system is also so rigidly phonic that it is a long time before a child can pick up an ordinary book with any profit.

Stanley Hall holds that it is best to combine methods, and probably most of us do this.  “The growing agreement” is, he says, “that there is no one and only orthodox way of teaching and learning this greatest and hardest of all the arts, in which ear, mouth, eye and hand must each in turn train the others to automatic perfection, in ways hard and easy, by devices old and new, mechanically and consciously, actively and passively ... this is a great gain and seems now secure.  While a good pedagogic method is one of the most economic—­both of labour and of money—­of all inventions, we should never forget that the brightest children, and indeed most children, if taught individually or at home, need but very few refinements of method.  Idiots, as Mr. Seguin first showed, need and profit greatly by very elaborated methods in learning how to walk, feed and dress themselves, which would only retard a normal child.  Above all it should be borne in mind that the stated use of any method does not preclude the incidental use of any and perhaps of all others.”

An adaptation of phonic combined with the word method can be found in Education by Life.  It is simpler than Miss Dale’s, and being combined with the word method, children get much more quickly to real stories.  Stanley Hall advocates the individual teaching of reading, and since Dr. Montessori called every one’s attention to this we have used it much more freely, and have found that once the children know some sounds, there is a great advantage in a certain amount of individual learning, but class teaching has its own advantages and it seems best to have a combination.  Long since we taught a boy who was mentally deficient and incapable of intelligent analysis, by whole words and corresponding pictures.  Miss Payne has developed this to a great extent.  It is practically an appeal to the interest in solving puzzles.  The children choose their own pictures and are supplied with envelopes containing either single sounds, or whole words corresponding with the picture.  They lay h on the house, g on the girl, p on the pond, and later do the same with words.  They certainly enjoy it, and no one is ever kept waiting.  Sometimes the puzzle is to set in order the words of a nursery rhyme which they already know, sometimes it is to read and draw everything mentioned.