ct mistakes in
the early stages of learning. A teacher should always be on the watch to
find the errors of the pupils and to correct them before they are fixed
by repetition.

A teacher should, also, consider it her duty to test the memory
capacities of the pupils and to give each the advice that the case
demands.

=Some Educational Inferences.=--There are certain consequences to
education that follow from the facts of memory above set forth that are
of considerable significance. Many things have been taught to children
on the assumption that they could learn them better in childhood than
later, because it was thought that memory and the learning capacity were
better in childhood. But both of these assumptions are false. As
children grow older their learning capacity increases and their memories
become better.

It has particularly been held that rote memory is better in childhood
and that therefore children should begin their foreign language study
early. It is true that as far as _speaking_ a foreign language is
concerned, the earlier a child begins it the better. But this is not
true of learning to read the language. The sounds of the foreign
language that we have not learned in childhood in speaking the mother
tongue are usually difficult for us to make. The organs of speech become
set in the way of their early exercise. In reading the foreign language,
correct pronunciation is not important. We are concerned with _getting_
the thought, and this is possible without pronouncing at all. Reference
to graphs on pages 190 and 191 will show that rote memory steadily
improves throughout childhood and youth. The author has performed
numerous experiments to test this very point. He has had adults work
side by side with children at building up new associations of the rote
memory type and found that always the adult could learn faster than the
child and retain better what was learned.

The experience of language teachers in college and university does not
give much comfort to those who claim that language study should be begun
early. These teachers claim that the students who have had previous
language study do no better than those who have had none. It seems,
however, that there certainly ought to be _some_ advantage in beginning
language study early and spreading the study out over the high school
period. But what is gained does not offset the tremendous loss that
follows from requiring _all_ high school students to stud