Dickens As an Educator Part 1

d.i.c.kens As an Educator.

by James L. (James Laughlin) Hughes.

PREFACE.

This book has two purposes: to prove that d.i.c.kens was the great apostle of the "new education" to the English-speaking world, and to bring into connected form, under appropriate headings, the educational principles of one of the world's greatest educators, and one of its two most sympathetic friends of childhood.

d.i.c.kens was the most profound exponent of the kindergarten and the most comprehensive student of childhood that England has yet produced. He was one of the first great advocates of a national system of schools, and his revelations of the ignorance and the intellectual and spiritual dest.i.tution of the children of the poor led to the deep interest which ultimately brought about the establishment of free schools in England.

He was essentially a child trainer rather than a teacher. In the twenty-eight schools described in his writings, and in the training of his army of little children in inst.i.tutions and homes, he reveals nearly every form of bad training resulting from ignorance, selfishness, indifference, unwise zeal, unphilosophic philosophy, and un-Christian theology. No other writer has attacked so many phases of wrong training, unjust treatment, and ill usage of childhood.

He is the most distinctive champion of the rights of childhood. He struck the bravest blows against corporal punishment, and against all forms of coercive tyranny toward the child in homes, inst.i.tutions, and schools, even condemning the dogmatic will control of such a placid, Christian woman as Mrs. Crisparkle. He demanded a free, real, joyous childhood, rich in all a child's best experiences and interests, so that "childhood may ripen in childhood." He pleaded for the development of the individuality of each child. He taught the wisdom of giving a child proper food, and he showed the vital importance of real sympathy with the child, not mere consideration for him. He was the English father of true reverence for the child.

But d.i.c.kens studied the methods of cultivating the minds of children, as well as their character development. He exposed the evils of cramming more vigorously than any other writer. He taught the essential character of the imagination in intellectual and spiritual development. He showed the need of correlation of studies, and of apperceptive centres of feeling and thought in order to comprehend, and a.s.similate, and transform into definite power the knowledge and thought that is brought to our minds.

It is said by some, who see but the surface of the work of d.i.c.kens, that his work is done. Much of the good work for which he lived has been done, but much more remains to be done. Men are but beginning the work of child study and of rational education. The twentieth century will understand d.i.c.kens better than the nineteenth has understood him. His profound philosophy is only partially comprehended yet, even by the leaders in educational work. Teachers and all students of childhood will find in his true feeling and rich thought revelation and inspiration.

d.i.c.kENS AS AN EDUCATOR.

CHAPTER I.

THE PLACE OF d.i.c.kENS AMONG EDUCATORS.

d.i.c.kens was England's greatest educational reformer. His views were not given to the world in the form of ordinary didactic treatises, but in the form of object lessons in the most entertaining of all stories. Millions have read his books, whereas but hundreds would have read them if he had written his ideals in the form of direct, systematic exposition. He is certainly not less an educator because his books have been widely read.

The highest form of teaching is the informal, the indirect, the incidental. The fact that his educational principles are revealed chiefly by the evolution of the characters in his novels and stories, instead of by the direct philosophic statements of scientific pedagogy or psychology, gives d.i.c.kens higher rank as an educator, not only because it gives him much wider influence, but because it makes his teaching more effective by arousing deep, strong feeling to give permanency and propulsive force to his great thoughts.

Was d.i.c.kens consciously and intentionally an educator? The prefaces to his novels; the preface to his Household Words; the educational articles he wrote; the prominence given in his books to child training in homes, inst.i.tutions, and schools; the statements of the highest educational philosophy found in his writings; and especially the clearness of his insight and the profoundness of his educational thought, as shown by his condemnation of the wrong and his appreciation of the right in teaching and training the child, prove beyond question that he was not only broad and true in his sympathy with childhood, but that he was a careful and progressive student of the fundamental principles of education.

d.i.c.kens deals with twenty-eight schools in his writings, evidently with definite purposes in each case: "Minerva House," in Sketches by Boz; "Dotheboys Hall," in Nicholas Nickleby; Mr. Marton's two schools, Miss Monflather'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 school Uriah Heep attended, in David Copperfield; the school at which Esther was a day boarder and Miss Donney's school, in Bleak House; Mr.

McChoak.u.mchild'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 Mutual Friend; Phoebe's school, in Barbox Brothers; Mrs. Lemon's school, in Holiday Romance; Jemmy Lirriper's school, in Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings; Miss Pupford's school, in Tom Tiddler's Ground; the school described in The Haunted House; Miss Twinkleton's seminary, in Edwin Drood; the schools of the Stepney Union; The Schoolboy's Story; and Our School.

In addition to these twenty-eight schools, he describes a real school in American Notes, and makes brief references to The Misses Nettingall's establishment, Mr. Cripples's academy, Drowvey and Grimmer's school, the Foundation school attended by George Silverman, Scrooge's school, Pecksniff's school for architects, f.a.gin's school for training thieves, and three dancing schools, conducted by Mr. Baps, Signor Billsmethi, and Mr. Turveydrop. He introduces Mr. Pocket, George Silverman, and Canon Crisparkle as tutors, and Mrs. General, Miss Lane, and Ruth Pinch as governesses. Mrs. Sapsea had been the proprietor of an academy in Cloisterham. One of the first sketches by "Boz" was Our Schoolmaster, and his books are full of ill.u.s.trations of wrong training of children in homes, in inst.i.tutions, and by professional child trainers such as Mrs.

Pipchin.

Clearly d.i.c.kens intended to reveal the best educational ideals, and to expose what he regarded as weak or wrong in school methods, and especially in child training.

d.i.c.kens was the first great English student of the kindergarten. His article on Infant Gardens, published in Household Words in 1855, is one of the most comprehensive articles ever written on the kindergarten philosophy. It shows a perfect appreciation of the physical, intellectual, and spiritual aims of Froebel, and a clear recognition of the value of right early training and of the influence of free self-activity in the development of individual power and character.

d.i.c.kens is beyond comparison the chief English apostle of childhood, and its leading champion in securing a just, intelligent, and considerate recognition of its rights by adulthood, which till his time had been deliberately coercive and almost universally tyrannical in dealing with children. He entered more fully than any other English author into sympathy with childhood from the standpoint of the child. Other educators and philanthropists have shown consideration for children, but d.i.c.kens had the perfect sympathy with childhood that sees and feels _with_ the child, not merely _for_ him.

d.i.c.kens attacked all forms of coercion in child training. He discussed fourteen types of coercion, from the brutal corporal punishment of Squeers and Creakle in schools, of b.u.mble and the Christian philanthropist with the white waistcoat in inst.i.tutions, and of the Murdstones and Mrs.

Gargery in homes, to the gentle but dwarfing firmness of the dominant will of placid Mrs. Crisparkle. He condemned all coercion because it prevents the full development of selfhood, and makes men negative instead of positive.

Among the many improvements made in child training none is more complete than the change in discipline. For this change the world is indebted chiefly to Froebel and d.i.c.kens. Froebel revealed the true philosophy, d.i.c.kens gave it wings; Froebel gave the thought, d.i.c.kens made the thought clear and strong by arousing energetic feeling in harmony with it.

Thought makes slow progress without a basis of feeling. d.i.c.kens opened the hearts of humanity in sympathy for suffering childhood, and thus gave Froebel's philosophy definiteness and propulsive power. The darkest clouds have been cleared away from child life during the past fifty years.

Teachers, managers of inst.i.tutions for the care of children, and parents are now severely punished by the laws of civilized countries for offences against children that were approved by the most enlightened Christian philosophy at the time of Froebel and d.i.c.kens as necessary duties essential in the proper training of childhood.

d.i.c.kens helped to break the bonds of the doctrine of child depravity. This doctrine had a most depressing influence on educators. It was not possible to reverence a child so long as he was regarded as a totally depraved thing. Froebel and d.i.c.kens did not teach that a child is totally divine, but they did believe that every child possesses certain elements of divinity which const.i.tute selfhood or individuality, and that if this selfhood is developed in conscious unity with the Divine Fatherhood the child will attain to complete manhood. This thought gives the educator a new and a higher att.i.tude toward childhood. The child is no longer a thing to be repressed, but a being to be developed. Men are not persistently dwarfed now by deliberate efforts to define a blighting consciousness of weakness; they are stimulated to broader effort and higher purpose by a true self-consciousness of individual power. The philosophy that trains men to recognise responsibility for the good in their nature is infinitely more productive educationally than that which teaches men responsibility for the evil in their nature.

d.i.c.kens taught that loving sympathy is the highest qualification of a true teacher. He showed this to be true by both positive and negative ill.u.s.trations. Mr. Marton, the old schoolmaster in Old Curiosity Shop, was a perfect type of a sympathetic teacher. Dr. Strong was "the ideal of the whole school, for he was the kindest of men." Phoebe's school was such a good place for the little ones, because she loved them. Like Mr. Marton, she had not studied the new systems of teaching, but loving sympathy gave her power and made her school a place in which the good in human hearts grew and blossomed naturally.

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

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

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

So throughout all his books d.i.c.kens pleads for kindly treatment for the child, and for complete sympathy with him in his childish feelings and interests. He gave the child the place of honour in literature for the first time, and he aroused the heart of the Christian world to the fact that it was treating the child in a very un-Christlike way. He pleaded for a better education for the child, for a free childhood, for greater liberty in the home and in the school, for fuller sympathy especially at the time when childhood merges into youth and when the mysteries of life have begun to make themselves conscious to the young mind and heart. The poorer the child the greater the need he revealed.

Canon Crisparkle, Esther Summerson, Mr. Jarndyce, Joe Gargery, Rose Maylie, Allan Woodcourt, Betty Higden, Mr. Sangsby, the Old Schoolmaster, the Bachelor, Mrs. Lirriper, Major Jackmann, Doctor Marigold, Agnes Wickfield, Mr. George, and Mr. Brownlow are types of the people with whom d.i.c.kens would fill the world--men and women whose hearts were overflowing with true sympathy. Esther Summerson is the best type of perfect sympathy to be met with in literature. She expressed the central principle of d.i.c.kens's philosophy regarding sympathy when she said: "When I love a person very tenderly indeed my understanding seems to brighten; my comprehension is quickened when my affection is."

The need of sympathy with childhood was revealed by d.i.c.kens most strongly by the cruelty, the coercion, and the harshness of such characters as Squeers, Creakle, b.u.mble, the Murdstones, Mrs. Gargery, John Willet, Mrs.

Pipchin, Mrs. Clennam, and the teachers in The Grinders' school.

d.i.c.kens's description of Dr. Blimber's school is the most profound criticism of the cramming system of teaching that was ever written. He treats the same subject also in Hard Times, Christmas Stories, and A Holiday Romance.

The vital importance of a free, rich childhood, the value of the imagination as the basis of intellectual and spiritual development, the folly of the Herbartian psychology relating to the soul, the error of regarding fact-storing as the chief aim of education, and the terrible evils resulting from the tyranny of adulthood in dealing with childhood are all treated very ably in Hard Times, the most advanced and most profound of d.i.c.kens's works from the standpoint of the educator.

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

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

The wisdom of studying the subject of nutrition as one of the most important subjects connected with the development of children physically, intellectually, and morally, and the meanness or carelessness too frequently shown in feeding children, were taught in Oliver Twist, Old Curiosity Shop, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Great Expectations, Edwin Drood, Christmas Stories, and American 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 the surface 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 of early experiences to form apperceptive centres of feeling and thought in a comprehensive and suggestive manner.

The need of practising the fundamental law of co-operation and the sharing of responsibilities and duties, as the foundation for the true comprehension of the law of community, is shown in Barnaby Rudge, David Copperfield, Dombey and Son, and Little Dorrit.

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