[25]
Such a practice makes them slow
to recognise the letters, since they do not pay
attention to their actual shape, preferring to be
guided by what they have already learned by
rote. It is for this reason that teachers, when
they think they have sufficiently familiarised their
young pupils with the letters written in their
usual order, reverse that order or rearrange it in
every kind of combination, until they learn to know
the letters from their appearance and not from
the order in which they occur. It will be best
therefore for children to begin by learning their
appearance and names just as they do with men.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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