Closely connected with this, and perhaps psychologically worse, is the
substitution of the pen and the scribbling fingers for the mouth and
tongue. Speech is directly to and from the soul. Writing, the
deliberation of which fits age better than youth, slows down its
impetuosity many fold, and is in every way farther removed from vocal
utterance than is the eye from the ear. Never have there been so many
pounds of paper, so many pencils, and such excessive scribbling as in
the calamopapyrus [Pen-paper] pedagogy of to-day and in this country.
Not only has the daily theme spread as infection, but the daily lesson
is now extracted through the point of a pencil instead of from the
mouth. The tongue rests and the curve of writer's cramp takes a sharp
turn upward, as if we were making scribes, reporters, and
proof-readers. In some schools, teachers seem to be conducting
correspondence classes with their own pupils. It all makes excellent
busy work, keeps the pupils quiet and orderly, and allows the school
output to be quantified, and some of it gives time for more care in
the choice of words. But is it a gain to substitute a letter for a
visit, to try to give written precedence over spoken forms? Here again
we violate the great law that the child repeats the history of the
race, and that, from the larger historic standpoint, writing as a mode
of utterance is only the latest fashion.
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