Dickens As an Educator Read online

  CHAPTER I.

  THE PLACE OF DICKENS AMONG EDUCATORS.

  Dickens was England's greatest educational reformer. His views were notgiven to the world in the form of ordinary didactic treatises, but in theform of object lessons in the most entertaining of all stories. Millionshave read his books, whereas but hundreds would have read them if he hadwritten his ideals in the form of direct, systematic exposition. He iscertainly not less an educator because his books have been widely read.

  The highest form of teaching is the informal, the indirect, theincidental. The fact that his educational principles are revealed chieflyby the evolution of the characters in his novels and stories, instead ofby the direct philosophic statements of scientific pedagogy or psychology,gives Dickens higher rank as an educator, not only because it gives himmuch wider influence, but because it makes his teaching more effective byarousing deep, strong feeling to give permanency and propulsive force tohis great thoughts.

  Was Dickens consciously and intentionally an educator? The prefaces to hisnovels; the preface to his Household Words; the educational articles hewrote; the prominence given in his books to child training in homes,institutions, and schools; the statements of the highest educationalphilosophy found in his writings; and especially the clearness of hisinsight and the profoundness of his educational thought, as shown by hiscondemnation of the wrong and his appreciation of the right in teachingand training the child, prove beyond question that he was not only broadand true in his sympathy with childhood, but that he was a careful andprogressive student of the fundamental principles of education.

  Dickens deals with twenty-eight schools in his writings, evidently withdefinite purposes in each case: "Minerva House," in Sketches by Boz;"Dotheboys Hall," in Nicholas Nickleby; Mr. Marton's two schools, MissMonflather's school, and Mrs. Wackles's school, in Old Curiosity Shop; Dr.Blimber's school and "The Grinders'" school, in Dombey and Son; Mr.Creakle's school, Dr. Strong's school, Agnes's school, and the schoolUriah Heep attended, in David Copperfield; the school at which Esther wasa day boarder and Miss Donney's school, in Bleak House; Mr.McChoakumchild's school, in Hard Times; Mr. Wopsle's great aunt's school,in Great Expectations; the evening school attended by Charley Hexam,Bradley Headstone's school, and Miss Peecher's school, in Our MutualFriend; Phoebe's school, in Barbox Brothers; Mrs. Lemon's school, inHoliday Romance; Jemmy Lirriper's school, in Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings;Miss Pupford's school, in Tom Tiddler's Ground; the school described inThe Haunted House; Miss Twinkleton's seminary, in Edwin Drood; the schoolsof the Stepney Union; The Schoolboy's Story; and Our School.

  In addition to these twenty-eight schools, he describes a real school inAmerican Notes, and makes brief references to The Misses Nettingall'sestablishment, Mr. Cripples's academy, Drowvey and Grimmer's school, theFoundation school attended by George Silverman, Scrooge's school,Pecksniff's school for architects, Fagin's school for training thieves,and three dancing schools, conducted by Mr. Baps, Signor Billsmethi, andMr. Turveydrop. He introduces Mr. Pocket, George Silverman, and CanonCrisparkle as tutors, and Mrs. General, Miss Lane, and Ruth Pinch asgovernesses. Mrs. Sapsea had been the proprietor of an academy inCloisterham. One of the first sketches by "Boz" was Our Schoolmaster, andhis books are full of illustrations of wrong training of children inhomes, in institutions, and by professional child trainers such as Mrs.Pipchin.

  Clearly Dickens intended to reveal the best educational ideals, and toexpose what he regarded as weak or wrong in school methods, and especiallyin child training.

  Dickens was the first great English student of the kindergarten. Hisarticle on Infant Gardens, published in Household Words in 1855, is one ofthe most comprehensive articles ever written on the kindergartenphilosophy. It shows a perfect appreciation of the physical, intellectual,and spiritual aims of Froebel, and a clear recognition of the value ofright early training and of the influence of free self-activity in thedevelopment of individual power and character.

  Dickens is beyond comparison the chief English apostle of childhood, andits leading champion in securing a just, intelligent, and consideraterecognition of its rights by adulthood, which till his time had beendeliberately coercive and almost universally tyrannical in dealing withchildren. He entered more fully than any other English author intosympathy with childhood from the standpoint of the child. Other educatorsand philanthropists have shown consideration for children, but Dickens hadthe perfect sympathy with childhood that sees and feels _with_ the child,not merely _for_ him.

  Dickens attacked all forms of coercion in child training. He discussedfourteen types of coercion, from the brutal corporal punishment of Squeersand Creakle in schools, of Bumble and the Christian philanthropist withthe white waistcoat in institutions, and of the Murdstones and Mrs.Gargery in homes, to the gentle but dwarfing firmness of the dominant willof placid Mrs. Crisparkle. He condemned all coercion because it preventsthe full development of selfhood, and makes men negative instead ofpositive.

  Among the many improvements made in child training none is more completethan the change in discipline. For this change the world is indebtedchiefly to Froebel and Dickens. Froebel revealed the true philosophy,Dickens gave it wings; Froebel gave the thought, Dickens made the thoughtclear and strong by arousing energetic feeling in harmony with it.

  Thought makes slow progress without a basis of feeling. Dickens opened thehearts of humanity in sympathy for suffering childhood, and thus gaveFroebel's philosophy definiteness and propulsive power. The darkest cloudshave been cleared away from child life during the past fifty years.Teachers, managers of institutions for the care of children, and parentsare now severely punished by the laws of civilized countries for offencesagainst children that were approved by the most enlightened Christianphilosophy at the time of Froebel and Dickens as necessary dutiesessential in the proper training of childhood.

  Dickens helped to break the bonds of the doctrine of child depravity. Thisdoctrine had a most depressing influence on educators. It was not possibleto reverence a child so long as he was regarded as a totally depravedthing. Froebel and Dickens did not teach that a child is totally divine,but they did believe that every child possesses certain elements ofdivinity which constitute selfhood or individuality, and that if thisselfhood is developed in conscious unity with the Divine Fatherhood thechild will attain to complete manhood. This thought gives the educator anew and a higher attitude toward childhood. The child is no longer a thingto be repressed, but a being to be developed. Men are not persistentlydwarfed now by deliberate efforts to define a blighting consciousness ofweakness; they are stimulated to broader effort and higher purpose by atrue self-consciousness of individual power. The philosophy that trainsmen to recognise responsibility for the good in their nature is infinitelymore productive educationally than that which teaches men responsibilityfor the evil in their nature.

  Dickens taught that loving sympathy is the highest qualification of a trueteacher. He showed this to be true by both positive and negativeillustrations. Mr. Marton, the old schoolmaster in Old Curiosity Shop, wasa perfect type of a sympathetic teacher. Dr. Strong was "the ideal of thewhole school, for he was the kindest of men." Phoebe's school was such agood place for the little ones, because she loved them. Like Mr. Marton,she had not studied the new systems of teaching, but loving sympathy gaveher power and made her school a place in which the good in human heartsgrew and blossomed naturally.

  "You are fond of children and learned in the new systems of teachingthem," said Mr. Jackson.

  "Very fond of them," replied Phoebe, "but I know nothing of teachingbeyond the pleasure I have in it, and the pleasure it gives me when theylearn. Perhaps your overhearing my little scholars sing some of theirlessons has led you so far astray as to think me a good teacher? Ah, Ithought so! No, I have only read and been told about that system. It seemsso pretty and pleasant, and to treat them so like the merry robins theyare, that I took up with it in my little way."

  She had heard of the kindergarten and had caught some of its s
pirit ofsympathy with the child, but she did not understand its methods. JemmyLirriper received perfectly sympathetic treatment from Mrs. Lirriper andthe Major; Agnes loved her little scholars; Esther, who sympathized witheverybody, loved her pupils, and was beloved by them; and the Bachelor,who introduced Mr. Marton to his second school, was a genuine boy in hiscomprehensive sympathy with real, boyish boyhood.

  So throughout all his books Dickens pleads for kindly treatment for thechild, and for complete sympathy with him in his childish feelings andinterests. He gave the child the place of honour in literature for thefirst time, and he aroused the heart of the Christian world to the factthat it was treating the child in a very un-Christlike way. He pleaded fora better education for the child, for a free childhood, for greaterliberty in the home and in the school, for fuller sympathy especially atthe time when childhood merges into youth and when the mysteries of lifehave begun to make themselves conscious to the young mind and heart. Thepoorer the child the greater the need he revealed.

  Canon Crisparkle, Esther Summerson, Mr. Jarndyce, Joe Gargery, RoseMaylie, Allan Woodcourt, Betty Higden, Mr. Sangsby, the Old Schoolmaster,the Bachelor, Mrs. Lirriper, Major Jackmann, Doctor Marigold, AgnesWickfield, Mr. George, and Mr. Brownlow are types of the people with whomDickens would fill the world--men and women whose hearts were overflowingwith true sympathy. Esther Summerson is the best type of perfect sympathyto be met with in literature. She expressed the central principle ofDickens's philosophy regarding sympathy when she said: "When I love aperson very tenderly indeed my understanding seems to brighten; mycomprehension is quickened when my affection is."

  The need of sympathy with childhood was revealed by Dickens most stronglyby the cruelty, the coercion, and the harshness of such characters asSqueers, Creakle, Bumble, the Murdstones, Mrs. Gargery, John Willet, Mrs.Pipchin, Mrs. Clennam, and the teachers in The Grinders' school.

  Dickens's description of Dr. Blimber's school is the most profoundcriticism of the cramming system of teaching that was ever written. Hetreats the same subject also in Hard Times, Christmas Stories, and AHoliday Romance.

  The vital importance of a free, rich childhood, the value of theimagination as the basis of intellectual and spiritual development, thefolly of the Herbartian psychology relating to the soul, the error ofregarding fact-storing as the chief aim of education, and the terribleevils resulting from the tyranny of adulthood in dealing with childhoodare all treated very ably in Hard Times, the most advanced and mostprofound of Dickens's works from the standpoint of the educator.

  The need of a real childhood, so well expressed in Froebel's maxim, "Letchildhood ripen in childhood," is shown also in Nicholas Nickleby, OldCuriosity Shop, Martin Chuzzlewit, Barnaby Rudge, Dombey and Son, GreatExpectations, and Edwin Drood.

  The true reverence for individual selfhood is shown in Dombey and Son,David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, Our MutualFriend, and Edwin Drood.

  The wisdom of studying the subject of nutrition as one of the mostimportant subjects connected with the development of children physically,intellectually, and morally, and the meanness or carelessness toofrequently shown in feeding children, were taught in Oliver Twist, OldCuriosity Shop, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield,Bleak House, Great Expectations, Edwin Drood, Christmas Stories, andAmerican Notes.

  Play as an essential factor in education is treated in Martin Chuzzlewit,Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, and American Notes.

  The folly of the old practice of attempting to educate by polishing thesurface of the character, of training from without instead of from within,is revealed in Bleak House and Little Dorrit.

  Bleak House discusses the contents of children's minds and the need ofearly experiences to form apperceptive centres of feeling and thought in acomprehensive and suggestive manner.

  The need of practising the fundamental law of co-operation and the sharingof responsibilities and duties, as the foundation for the truecomprehension of the law of community, is shown in Barnaby Rudge, DavidCopperfield, Dombey and Son, and Little Dorrit.

  The need of child study is suggested in David Copperfield and Bleak House.

  The value of joyousness in the development of true, strong character isdiscussed in Nicholas Nickleby, Barnaby Rudge, Old Curiosity Shop, MartinChuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Hard Times, Little Dorrit,Great Expectations, and Edwin Drood.

  Dickens was one of the first Englishmen to see the need of normal schoolsto train teachers, and to advocate the abolition of uninspected privateschools and the establishment of national schools. He taught these idealsin the preface to Nicholas Nickleby, issued in 1839, so that he very earlycaught the spirit of Mann and Barnard in America, and saw the wisdom oftheir efforts to establish schools supported, controlled, and directed bythe state.

  He says, in his preface to Nicholas Nickleby:

  Of the monstrous neglect of education in England, and the disregard of it by the state as a means of forming good or bad citizens, and miserable or happy men, this class of schools long afforded a notable example. Although any man who had proved his unfitness for any other occupation in life, was free, without examination or qualification, to open a school anywhere; although preparation for the functions he undertook was required in the surgeon who assisted to bring a boy into the world, or might one day assist, perhaps, to send him out of it; in the chemist, the attorney, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker; the whole round of crafts and trades, the schoolmaster excepted; and although schoolmasters, as a race, were the blockheads and impostors who might naturally be expected to spring from such a state of things, and to flourish in it, these Yorkshire schoolmasters were the lowest and most rotten round in the whole ladder. Traders in the avarice, indifference, or imbecility of parents, and the helplessness of children; ignorant, sordid, brutal men, to whom few considerate persons would have intrusted the board and lodging of a horse or a dog; they formed the worthy corner-stone of a structure which, for absurdity and magnificent high-handed _laissez-aller_ neglect, has rarely been exceeded in the world.

  We hear sometimes of an action for damages against the unqualified medical practitioner, who has deformed a broken limb in pretending to heal it. But what about the hundreds of thousands of minds that have been deformed forever by the incapable pettifoggers who have pretended to form them?

  I make mention of the race, as of the Yorkshire schoolmasters, in the past tense. Though it has not yet finally disappeared, it is dwindling daily. A long day's work remains to be done about us in the way of education, Heaven knows; but great improvements and facilities toward the attainment of a good one have been furnished of late years.

  This leaves no doubt in regard to the conscious purpose of Dickens inwriting with definite educational plans.

  Incidentally he discusses every phase of what is called the "neweducation." He was the first and the greatest English student of Froebel,and his writings gave wings to the profound thought of the greatestphilosopher of childhood. Froebel revealed the truth that feeling is thebasis of thought. In harmony with this great psychological principle, itmay fairly be claimed that the works of Dickens so fully aroused the heartof the civilized world to the wrongs inflicted on childhood, and thegrievous errors committed in training children, as to prepare the minds ofall who read his books for the conscious revelation of the imperfectionsof educational systems and methods, and the imperative need of radicaleducational reforms.

  The intense feeling caused by the writings of Dickens prepared the way forthe thought of Froebel. Dickens studied Froebel with great care. He wasnot merely a student of theoretical principles, but he was a very frequentvisitor to the first kindergarten opened in England. Madame Kraus-Boelte,who assisted Madame Ronge in the first kindergarten opened in London, saysin a recent letter: "I remember very distinctly the frequent visits madeby Mr. Dickens to Madame Ronge's kindergarten. He always appeared to bed
eeply interested, and would sometimes stay during the whole session."

  The description of the schools of the Stepney Union in the UncommercialTraveller shows how keenly appreciative Dickens was of all true new idealsin educational work. These were charity schools conducted on an excellentsystem. The pupils worked at industrial occupations half of their schoolhours, and studied the other half. They were taught music, and the boyshad military drill and naval training. They had no corporal punishment inthese schools.

  Dickens approved most heartily of everything he saw in his frequent visitsto the schools of the Stepney Union except the work of one of the youngerteachers, who would, in his opinion, have been better "if she had shownmore geniality." He commended the industrial work, the military training,the naval training, the music, the discipline without corporal punishment,and the intellectual brightness of the children. He pointed out at somelength the difference in interest shown by the pupils in these schoolsand by the pupils in the school he himself attended when a boy, and drewthe conclusion very definitely that shorter hours of study, with a varietyof interesting operations, were much better for the physical andintellectual development of children than long hours spent in monotonouswork.

  The folly and wrong of trying to make children study beyond the fatiguepoint was never more clearly pointed out than by Dickens in thedescription of the school he attended when a boy, given as a contrast tothe life and brightness and interest shown in the schools of the StepneyUnion:

  When I was at school, one of seventy boys, I wonder by what secret understanding our attention began to wander when we had pored over our books for some hours. I wonder by what ingenuity we brought on that confused state of mind when sense became nonsense, when figures wouldn't work, when dead languages wouldn't construe, when live languages wouldn't be spoken, when memory wouldn't come, when dulness and vacancy wouldn't go. I can not remember that we ever conspired to be sleepy after dinner, or that we ever particularly wanted to be stupid, and to have flushed faces and hot, beating heads, or to find blank hopelessness and obscurity this afternoon in what would become perfectly clear and bright in the freshness of to-morrow morning. We suffered for these things, and they made us miserable enough. Neither do I remember that we ever bound ourselves, by any secret oath or other solemn obligation to find the seats getting too hard to be sat upon after a certain time; or to have intolerable twitches in our legs, rendering us aggressive and malicious with those members; or to be troubled with a similar uneasiness in our elbows, attended with fistic consequences to our neighbours; or to carry two pounds of lead in the chest, four pounds in the head, and several active bluebottles in each ear. Yet, for certain, we suffered under those distresses, and were always charged at for labouring under them, as if we had brought them on of our own deliberate act and deed.

  It was therefore out of a full heart and an enriched mind that Dickenswrought the wonderful plots into which he wove the most advancededucational ideals of his time and of our time relating to the blightinginfluence of coercion, the divinity in the child, the recognition offreedom as the truest process and highest aim of education, the value ofreal sympathy, the importance of self-activity, the true reverence for thechild leading to faith in it, the need of child study, the effect ofjoyousness on the child's development, the benefits of play, the influenceof nutrition, the ideal of community, the importance of the imagination asa basis for the best intellectual growth, the narrowness ofutilitarianism, the absolute need of apperceptive centres to which shallbe related the progressive enlargement and enrichment of feeling andthought throughout the life of the individual, the arrest of developmentand the sacrifice of power and life due to cramming, and the weakness ofall educational systems and methods that regard fact-storing as thehighest work of the teacher.

  It has been said by critics of Dickens that he exaggerated the defects anderrors in the characters of those whom he described. Two things should bekept in mind, however. Dickens usually described the worst, not the besttypes, and he was justified in revealing a wrong principle or practice inthe strongest possible light, in order to make it more easily recognisableand more completely repugnant to the aroused feeling and startled thoughtof humanity. He was writing with the definite purpose of making the worldso thoroughly hate the wrong in education and child training as to lead todefinite practical reforms.

  Dickens himself did not admit the justness of the charge of exaggeration.His coarsest, most ignorant, and most brutal teacher is Squeers, yet hesays "Mr. Squeers and his school are faint and feeble pictures of anexisting reality, purposely subdued and kept down lest they should bedeemed impossible. There are upon record trials at law in which damageshave been sought as a poor recompense for lasting agonies anddisfigurements inflicted upon children by the treatment of the master inthese places, involving such offensive and foul details of neglect,cruelty, and disease as no writer of fiction would have the boldness toimagine. Since the author has been engaged upon these Adventures he hasreceived, from private quarters far beyond the reach of suspicion ordistrust, accounts of atrocities, in the perpetration of which uponneglected or repudiated children these schools have been the maininstruments, very far exceeding any that appear in these pages."

  Dickens discusses the charge of exaggeration in the preface to MartinChuzzlewit. He says:

  What is exaggeration to one class of minds and perceptions, is plain truth to another. That which is commonly called a long-sight, perceives in a prospect innumerable features and bearings nonexistent to a shortsighted person. I sometimes ask myself whether there may occasionally be a difference of this kind between some writers and some readers; whether it is _always_ the writer who colours highly, or whether it is now and then the reader whose eye for colour is a little dull?

  On this head of exaggeration I have a positive experience more curious than the speculation I have just set down. It is this: I have never touched a character precisely from the life, but some counterpart of that character has incredulously asked me: "Now really, did I ever really see one like it?"

  All the Pecksniff family upon earth are quite agreed, I believe, that Mr. Pecksniff is an exaggeration, and that no such character ever existed.

  It is worth remembering, too, that it is impossible to exaggerate thedescription of the effects of the evils Dickens attacked. Coercion in anyform blights and dwarfs the true selfhood of the child. The coercion ofMrs. Crisparkle's placid but unbending will, which she kept rigid from adeep conviction of Christian duty, is as clearly at variance with theelemental laws of individual freedom and growth by self-activity as themore dreadful forms of coercion practised by Squeers, Creakle, Bumble, orMurdstone.

  Doctor Blimber's cramming is not exaggerated. It would be quite possibleto find in England or the United States or Canada not only private butpublic institutions in which similar processes of illogical cramming arestill practised. Words are still given before the thought, and as asubstitute for thought. "Mathematical gooseberries" are yet produced "frommere sprouts of bushes," the "words and grammar" of literature are stillgiven instead of the life and glory of the author's revelations, childrenyet are "made to bear to pattern somehow or other."

  Whether Dickens exaggerated or not in regard to other spheres of work orof existence without work, he certainly did not exaggerate in regard toschool conditions. He studied them faithfully, and described them truly.He saw wrongs more clearly than other men, and he made them stand out intheir natural hideousness.

  It is frequently asserted that Dickens portrayed wrong training more thanright, that he was destructive rather than constructive. In a sense, thisis correct. His mission was to startle men, so that they would be madeconscious of the awful crimes that were being committed by teachers andparents in the name of duty, as conceived by the highest Christiancivilization of his time. He knew that a basis of strong feeling must bearoused against a wrong before it can be overthrown a
nd right practicessubstituted for it. The only sure foundation for any reform is anenergetic feeling of dislike for present conditions. The chief work ofDickens was to lay bare the injustice, the meanness, and the blightingcoercion practised on helpless children not only by "ignorant, sordid,brutal men called schoolmasters," but in a less degree by the bestteachers and parents of his time. His was a noble work, and it was welldone.

  The grandest movement of the nineteenth century was the development of aprofound reverence for the child, so deep and wide that his rights arebeginning to be clearly recognised by individuals and by national laws,and that intelligent adulthood is studying him as the central element ofpower in the representation of God in the accomplishment of theprogressive evolution of the race. Christ put "the child in the midst ofhis disciples"; men are learning to follow his example, and study thechild as the surest way to secure industrial, social, and moral reforms.Froebel and Dickens were the men who revealed the child. They were thetrue apostles of childhood. It must not be supposed that Dickens was notconscious of the positive good while describing the evils. The expressions"child queller," "gospel of monotony," "bear to pattern," "taught asparrots are," etc., and the name "McChoakumchild," reveal the possessionof the highest consciousness of child freedom, of individuality, and ofchild reverence yet given to humanity. So in all his wonderful pictures itwould have been impossible for him to have so vividly described the wrongif he had not clearly understood the right. He had perfect sympathy withchildhood, he was a great student of the child and of the existing methodsof training and educating him, and his insights and judgment were so clearand true that, as Ruskin says, "in the last analysis he was always right."

  If he had never written anything but his article on the kindergarten,published July, 1855, he would have proved himself to be an educationalphilosopher.