SHCOOL TOTS USE TYPEWRITER TO LEARN HOW TO SPELL.

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6815, 21 January 1929, Page 9

SHCOOL TOTS USE TYPEWRITER TO LEARN HOW TO SPELL.

METHOD PROVES POPULAR. NEW YORK, Dee. 13. To be five or six years old and tohave for one’s 1 very own personal use a shining black machine with little bobbing steel fingers impressed with tiny a’s and b’s and c’s that marvellously print these when you tentatively tap something, and-a-shrill littlo bell, w'hcn you reach the end of the line, to make it a very game, seems too delightful to come under the heavy hoading of a pedagogical experiment.’’ But such is the pleasant fortune of tho children of the elementary classes at the Horace Mann School at-Teachers College, Columbia University, who have just been provided with 80 typewriters on wdiich to learn that c-a-t spells “cat” and that d-o-g is “dog.”

Whether it is the- fascination that comes of producing enough staccato sounds to make the bell ring, the experiment is already proving a success, according to Dr. Rollo G. Reynolds, principal of the school. The children have adopted the' new method with alacrity, he said, and holds that tho mechanical process will prove a shortcut to their mastery of the “3 R’s. ”

In accordance with tho Horace Mann theories of pedagogy, no definite system of using tho keyboard .is insisted upon. However, the touch method is encouraged by the teacher, and by large charts that show correct finger position and by the regular attendance of a stenographer to teach the easiest and fastest method.

It is the belief of Dr Reynolds that the children will develop their own touch system and perhaps invent an entirely new type of facility in tho old-fashioned rudiments.