Show L LECTURE E kleforn TIIE THE territa territorial iks irs association BY professor ORSON pratt sen t IN tue TUB C council y cit cil blouse salt sall zake lake city oty FRIDAY OCTOBER aud CUD RD 1873 mr praden president and ladles and gentleman of 0 the Teachers 9 association one of tile objects of this association L fco 0 o far us as I 1 tanti is t to 0 determine what ought to be taught in tiie tile common oll schools of our territory it id is admitted by all nil civilized nations is that the first tiling thing in iii a it school education to be acquired by a I 1 pupil I 1 isa id i knowledge of letters the lle ile lie second 1 is 4 how to combine letters s into syllables hyll ables aules and syllables into liitt words word liow ilov to properly accent syllables li libles ili in a word this thid process is ij called caled spelling i tile third thing is how to artie artic ua sate late te clearly ald aid and pronounce with proper emali emphasis asis t tones ones and inflections ii of voice written or printed wor ds arranged in sentences how to regulate or modify the voice in accordance with the laws jaws of punctuation lua ua tion how to modify the loudness or intensity of the voice according to the magnitude or condition of the audience the tile nature of tile the building or other circumstances A practical knowledge of these things is the art of reading when a pupil has learned to read lle lie he holds a deyto key to the immense treasury of human knowledge which has hay been accumulating for awny in ny long ages il 11 it ift the tile d difficulties i M cult es to be encountered in ill lva Iva ruing to read according I 1 ng to the present system of orthography nail rill h v are aln ain almost lost innumerable indol flig an immense amount oi of patience and a reckless waste of ti time and means dorthi for tilo tile common english alphabet is so extremely imperfect that it has effectually put it beyond the power of any human being 0 to remember liow how to spell the tile one tenth part of the words cords of our language 0 no N 0 human memory however power powerful rui fui is adequate aate to the hopeless task our dictionaries it is true inform us how to spell a hundred thousand words but in the great majority of or these tile the student is left led wholly in the dark in regard to any ally law ale alc dictating tating how they shall be spelled there is little or no resemblance between the sound of the syllables and the sounds of the elementary letters entering into their composition the same letter has lim frequently from two to half a dozen bifi different erent sounds the same combination of letters is often pronounced in three or four different ways tile the sime in different syllables and words Is not represented first by one letter then by another and so stem and law are completely annihilated and inextricable confusion supremely reigns where no law jaw exists system is ignored an all arbitrary custom becomes the standard memory is overtaxed years of youthful vigor anre re wasted in vainly striving to grasp all an impossibility after many years of severe mental labor a few among the many outrun their fellows surfeit their memories with a knowledge how to spell a few thousand words while the overwhelming balance yet towers up like mountains bidding defiance to the tile most giant intellects to scale its giddy heights such is modern orthography such sueh the absurdities ties perpetuated in n learned institutions under the name of education shall shail we in this enlightened territory follow in tilo the same old beaten track of error shall we rivet the chains of mental slaver slavery y upon our children shall we perpetuate te without check or limit an all orthography so utterly to the high state of civilization to which we so ardently aspire shall we take bike no initial steps to 9 gradually ra dually arrest and finally remove tills this widespread wide spread curse from our common monsell schools shall we suffer this association to be adjourned without inquiring what call can be done to remedy in ili some measure this long standing evil foisted upon us through the apathy and sanction of past ages T an alphabet containing about forty characters would be amply am ply su sufficient f fi nici fici ent to clearly and distinctly spell in accordance with an invariable law every word in the english language this law is simple natural natural easily understood difficult to be erased from the memory exhibiting hi with unerring precision how every syllable every word whose pronunciation is known must be spelled and this too without the ald aid of dictionaries any child from four to six years of age of ordinary ability and dil dit Ilg elit application will easily learn such an alphabet in tell ten days and in tell ten days more lie will thoroughly learn the tiie law of or spelling HO zas as to beable be able abie with a little practise to s spell pell correctly every word in ili our language 0 thus in less than one month a child can easily accomplish il 1 sh more inore than any human being could C atta tc common orthography ili in a thousand years til the years wasted in ili acquiring an elementary branch so glaringly in imperfect could be ile 0 occupied cc 1 ed oil on other useful branches brandies of or education du cation catlon reading with the tile ald aid of a perfect alphabet would become many fo nold fold 1 I 1 more simple and progression in an lin art bo fco all important would be rapidly accelerated thus years of toilsome labor might be liall happily liy dispensed with future generations be rescued from the galling yoke of mental slavery so wearisome to the youthful mind and so detrimental to its proper development this ia is emphatically a day of progression mind ia Is struggling it with almost superhuman enn eff effort ort to free itself from the darkness of past ages king craft priest craft and every other craft opposed to true progress are trembling under the consciousness ofa ora of a speedy dissolution the rusty ironbound iron bound shackles of powerful monarchies must be burst as lis sunder before a superior arlor light from the eternal heavens ens religious systems invented by human agency or revealed by powers from beneath must be exploded and vanish away the very foundations of popular education need remodeling for education founded merely upon something without system without law something to be committed to memory without the aid of laws to a assist tile the memory is unworthy of its name and though handed down from flom remote ages IL of df antiquity ty and cherished by learned institutions it is 19 to be received with distrust if not entirely discarded and as soon as is circumstances will admit it should be wholly removed frai fral from our educational system vague speculations wild hypotheses romance fiction action and edery emery every evers other kindred curse handed down from froni the fathers ought no longer to be considered a part of education the memories of youthful students ought no longer to be overburdened burdi burZi ened with isolated facts in a science when laws comprehending such facts are accessible facts may be useful in ili illustrating laws but laws show why the facts exist he therefore is truly educated in a it science who has understandingly acquired a knowledge of the laws on which the individual facts depend A reformation in the right direction has already commenced A new now alphabet has been devised by pitman and others founded upon the laws jaws of or sound its capabilities are fully adequate to the grand object lie he had in view namely a perfect system of orthography by ha happily ally retaining the letters of the olt ole old oid alphabet and adding thereto the tiie requisite number of new char acter she has made it comparatively easy for good readers in tile the old method to understand without much effort how to read in the new the advantages of tills this cannot be overestimated over estimated Fori for if fall fail all ali the books in the english language langua e were suddenly transformed ili iii into to the of pitman the millions of reit readers ders of the oll old old oid orthography would scarcely perceive trie uhe the happy change A few hours effort at most would enable them to read with the same fluency as before it is not contended that pitmans ditmans Pit mans I 1 system in all respects is perfect the form of the characters may perhaps need remodeling so as to have as far aa possible a resemblance between the written and printed character without altogether destroying the gradual or easy transition from thu old system of reading to the new the deseret alphabet has its advantages vanta es over pitmans ditmans Pit mans in ili the principle lat that one set of characters can easily be used in both the written and printed form with the addition of four or five giorc characters the orthography would he be greatly improved to read in ili the deseret character requires study the reader receiving no benefit as in pitmans ditmans Pit mans from theold the oid old alphabet alphabel the forms and sounds of thirty eight entirely new letters must be learned and impressed on the memory while white in reading according to pitman the forms and sounds of twenty six letters are generally already known and the sounds of the few fuw remaining new letters are in ili most cases eases easily determined by the position they occupy among the old the tha length lenoth of the tile deseret ellaray characters character is unY uniform forin there are no letters projecting abo above aboe e or betow below their fellows this renders eacil each word an exact parallelogram A sentence ner ncr con sits of it succession of 3 varying of in ili their outlines only in ill length I 1 this uniformity i is i beautiful indeed in ili lre ire the lie abstract if w we e glance lanee lance at a line ora or a page palle without reading we greatly greally adil adli admire lire tile tiie unvarying geometrical dometri C al form pervading the whole but this very uniformity 11 is destructive of simplicity ili in reading for forthie tile tiie expert reader does not nt stop to t spell each syllable in ili a wor word d before lie pronounces it lie ile becomes so familiar with the exterior t x outlines and shapes of or words that lie he discerns in ili a moment tile tiie pronunciation without taxing his liis mind with their orthography it is the external shape of a word then which enables a good reader to instantly grasp it aud proceed oil on to the next nest without delay it is the tile pees and the cues the tile tea teas 8 and the dees the els and the efa ac which project above and below the shorter letters and produce a pleasing c ng variety of Eli ell shapes apes and jagged agge oll outlines 11 lines iines sufficiently pro prominent 1131 iiii to instantly catch the eye of t the e rea reader et that render the words in a sentence so quickly distinguished from each other the tile deseret alphabet therefore is not adapted to quick reading without an all overexertion of igind far greater than is required in reading by other alphabets not so uniform in con st ruction in ili the tile invention of a new alphabet the tile great danger to be avoided Is is too few letters every simple sound should have its characteristic sign or letter E livery very shade of variation ar lation however small smail ili in simple sounds requires a distinct letter every diphthongal sound should also be represented by a letter if errors there must be it is far better to have too many letters than too few with too few letters the simplicity of tile the law of spelling is violated with too many letters the law is not nob afi aff affected acted but the compound sound or syllable is merely represented S by a single C character cliar cilar acter instead of being si spelled the tile latter error is comparatively harmless in ili contrast with the great and pernicious evils resul resulting tim 1 from the former if eight or ten or even more surplus characters not really needed were judiciously introduced into a phonetic alphabet there would be no law of sound in the least vi violated 10 the advantages gained would be a very great reduction in the size of our written and printed words and hence much more could L be condensed within tile the same space without impairing or weakening the simplicity of the orthographical construction it is is certainly much easier to commit to memory a i few surplus characters than to be under tile the continual necessity of using two or more letters in spelling or writing certain sounds but slightly compound in their heir nature one of the 0 greatest objections urged against 1 I the reconstruction construction re of our orthography is that all school readers grammars geographies maps histories works on mathematics chemistry philosophy botany civil law mechanics and every other branch of useful science and literature in our language are written and printed only in the common orthography and that tile the student who acquires the phonetic orthography only is effectually excluded from every other branch of education cut oil off from all libraries of useful knowledge de barred by ills his ignorance from all newspapers news papers and other instructive periodicals prevented entea teu from all written correspondence with relatives or any one else abroad As a missionary he could not publish a pamphlet oran or an article for a newspaper news paper or even an advertisement ti for a ine lne meeting eting and ili in short that he be would stand as all an ignorant untutored barbarian as a comparative idiot in the midst of an intelligent educated generation certainly these objections are well founded and would necessarily prove fatal to all till reconstructed alphabets unless the student should also make himself thoroughly acquainted with the old system as its well as is the new he should learn all that he now learns and ili in nd ad should learn the phonetic method also but it may be asked what use is tile tiie knowledge of phonetics without books looks tile the anaw answer ris is no use at all there must be a well selected series of or educational books republished published re in ill the form there must bo be a sufficient clent elent number of copies of or each book to amply supply tile tiie schools of our territory it if we have twenty thousand school children then we require an all equal nul nui number liber tiber of cop eop coples copies ies les of each volume ili in tile series I 1 if r ten tell vol voi volumes unies were sufficient to ini lui impart part a good common school education then this territory y would now require two hundred thousand c oples copies ili in the print to su c begin the grand andert undertaking ach g chil chii children d ren thus educated aou would 1 I consider their knowledge I 1 of but little value unless they tiley could extend their researches after useful information far beyond their educational series A library ofa of n thousand vol voi volumes unies for fur reading trill ami for general reference would be he considered extremely meagre and limited yet it might a answer ris lis fora begin ing but would impart but all an ext exi tre rely lely small smail moiety of the vast fund of knowledge contained ill in the tiie great libraries abroad A sunn lelent quantity of copies copied of each of the thousand volumes might probably be published in the form forn and suitably bound for about five millions of dollars this would satisfy in hi abille measure the tile present wants of our people anything much short of this tills would greatly weaken the interest of both parents and children they would consider it tun unwise wise to engage in a reformation so limited in its access to the vast storehouse store house aliouse of knowledge printed in ili the old orthography tho graphy A successful revolution in the very e y foundations of science and aud edu education cation catlon can only be |