Perhaps some may ask what harm it will do to simplify language when talking to children.  “It certainly can do no injury,” they may say, “and it diminishes all possibility of being misunderstood.”  It does injury in at least three ways: 

(1.) It disgusts the young persons to whom it is addressed, and prevents their being interested in what is said.  I once met two children, twelve years of age, who had just returned from hearing a very able discourse, delivered before a number of Sabbath-schools assembled on some public occasion.  “How did you like the discourse?” said I.

“Very well indeed,” they replied; “only,” said one of them, smiling, “he talked to us as if we were all little children.”

Girls and boys, however young, never consider themselves little children, for they can always look down upon some younger than themselves.  They are mortified when treated as though they could not understand what is really within the reach of their faculties.  They do not like to have their powers underrated, and they are right in this feeling.  It is common to all, old and young.

(2.) Children are kept back in learning language if their teacher makes effort to come down, as it is called, to their comprehension in the use of words.  Notice that I say in the use of words; for, as I shall show presently, it is absolutely necessary to come down to the comprehension of children in some other respects.  If, however, in the use of words, those who address children confine themselves to such words as children already understand, how are they to make progress in that most important of all studies, the knowledge of language?  Many a mother keeps back her child, in this way, to a degree that is hardly conceivable, thus doing all in her power to perpetuate in the child an ignorance of its mother tongue.

Teachers ought to make constant efforts to increase their scholars’ stock of words by using new ones from time to time, taking care to explain them when the connection does not do it for them; so that, instead of coming down to the language of childhood, they ought rather to go as far away from it as they can, without leaving their pupils behind them.

(3.) But perhaps the greatest evil of this practice is, it satisfies the teacher.  He thinks he addresses his pupils in the right manner, and overlooks altogether the real peculiarities in which the power to interest the young depends.  He talks to them in simple language, and wonders why they are not interested.  He certainly is plain enough.  He is vexed with them for not attending to what he says, attributing it to their dullness or regardlessness of all that is useful or good, instead of perceiving that the great difficulty is his own want of skill.  These three evils are sufficient to deter the teacher from the practice.

2.  Present your subject, not in its general views, but in its minute details.  This is the great secret of interesting the young.  Present it in its details and in its practical exemplifications; do this with any subject whatever, and children will always be interested.