Early English Reading, Alphabet Trouble
With the invention of the printing press and the availability of more books, European people wanted to be able to read in their own languages, not just Latin. This was an admirable ambition and made information more accessible to the common man. Books were published in many languages.
Difficulty arose, however, when teutonic languages, such as English and German were expected to be spelled with the Latin Alphabet. Teutonic sounds were represented (and misrepresented) with scrambled irregularity, creating hazardous guess work for readers. To complicate English further, it adopted words from French, Latin and other languages. There were far more than 26 sounds to deal with.
The publication of the King James Bible helped to standardize English spelling, but it did not make reading English as straight forward as reading Latin. The alphabetic principle was enlarged to a more complex phonetic system where combinations of letters, letter patterns, and languages of origin altered sounds in words. Attempts to create a truly English alphabet in the 1500s were rejected and students laboured on. (Wilson, Early Modern Europe)
The image above shows a hornbook used to teach reading through a sample of the alphabet, vowels followed by consonants, consonants followed by vowels and the Lord's Prayer.
The tradition of practicing fluent reading of familiar passages, such as scripture and prayers would now be a great help in solving words. Uncertain words could be learned from contextual placement and familiarity. Teachers still followed the alphabetic system of teaching, but intelligent students could learn whole words in the reciting process.
In 1658, further support was suggested by John Amos Comenius. He believed that educators should work with nature by providing graded lessons, from most easy to most difficult (scaffolding support), and that they should appeal through the senses by including illustrations and experiences. The following quotes from Comenius's writing The Great Didactic are found cited on the Froebel Web resource.
Learning is Natural
Who is there that does not always desire to see, hear, or handle something new? To whom is it not a pleasure to go to some new place daily, to converse with someone, to narrate something, or have some fresh experience? In a word, the eyes, the ears, the sense of touch, the mind itself, are, in their search for food, ever carried beyond themselves; for to an active nature nothing is so intolerable as sloth.
The proper education of the young does not consist in stuffing their heads with a mass of words, sentences, and ideas dragged together out of various authors, but in opening up their understanding to the outer world, so that a living stream may flow from their own minds, just as leaves, flowers, and fruit spring from the bud on a tree.
Learning by Easy Stages
There is in the world no rock or tower of such a height that it cannot be scaled by any man (provided he lack not feet) if ladders are placed in the proper position or steps are cut in the rock, made in the right place, and furnished with railings against the danger of falling over.
If we examine ourselves, we see that our faculties grow in such a manner that what goes before paves the way for what comes after.(Quotes from John Amos Comenius)
Difficulty arose, however, when teutonic languages, such as English and German were expected to be spelled with the Latin Alphabet. Teutonic sounds were represented (and misrepresented) with scrambled irregularity, creating hazardous guess work for readers. To complicate English further, it adopted words from French, Latin and other languages. There were far more than 26 sounds to deal with.
The publication of the King James Bible helped to standardize English spelling, but it did not make reading English as straight forward as reading Latin. The alphabetic principle was enlarged to a more complex phonetic system where combinations of letters, letter patterns, and languages of origin altered sounds in words. Attempts to create a truly English alphabet in the 1500s were rejected and students laboured on. (Wilson, Early Modern Europe)
The image above shows a hornbook used to teach reading through a sample of the alphabet, vowels followed by consonants, consonants followed by vowels and the Lord's Prayer.
The tradition of practicing fluent reading of familiar passages, such as scripture and prayers would now be a great help in solving words. Uncertain words could be learned from contextual placement and familiarity. Teachers still followed the alphabetic system of teaching, but intelligent students could learn whole words in the reciting process.
In 1658, further support was suggested by John Amos Comenius. He believed that educators should work with nature by providing graded lessons, from most easy to most difficult (scaffolding support), and that they should appeal through the senses by including illustrations and experiences. The following quotes from Comenius's writing The Great Didactic are found cited on the Froebel Web resource.
Learning is Natural
Who is there that does not always desire to see, hear, or handle something new? To whom is it not a pleasure to go to some new place daily, to converse with someone, to narrate something, or have some fresh experience? In a word, the eyes, the ears, the sense of touch, the mind itself, are, in their search for food, ever carried beyond themselves; for to an active nature nothing is so intolerable as sloth.
The proper education of the young does not consist in stuffing their heads with a mass of words, sentences, and ideas dragged together out of various authors, but in opening up their understanding to the outer world, so that a living stream may flow from their own minds, just as leaves, flowers, and fruit spring from the bud on a tree.
Learning by Easy Stages
There is in the world no rock or tower of such a height that it cannot be scaled by any man (provided he lack not feet) if ladders are placed in the proper position or steps are cut in the rock, made in the right place, and furnished with railings against the danger of falling over.
If we examine ourselves, we see that our faculties grow in such a manner that what goes before paves the way for what comes after.(Quotes from John Amos Comenius)
Orbis Sensualium Pictus, by John Amos Comenius, 1658
Quotes from John Amos Comenius, The Great Didactic, 1649 (translated by M.W. Keatinge 1896). Presented on the Froebel Web at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/7905/web7005.html. Last quote found in Will and Ariel Durant's The Age of Reason Begins (1961), p. 582.
Wilson, RobertMcCole. Teaching Reading - a History.Web. 1997-2003
http://www.zona-pellucida.com/wilson10.html#r4