Dickens As an Educator Part 21

"I can not disguise from you, Jupe," said Mr. Gradgrind, knitting his brow, "that the result of your probation there has disappointed me--has greatly disappointed me. You have not acquired, under Mr. and Mrs. M'Choak.u.mchild, anything like that amount of exact knowledge which I look for. You are extremely deficient in your facts. Your acquaintance with figures is very limited. You are altogether backward, and below the mark."

"I am sorry, sir," she returned; "but I know it is quite true. Yet I have tried hard, sir."

"Yes," said Mr. Gradgrind, "yes, I believe you have tried hard; I have observed you, and I can find no fault in that respect."

"Thank you, sir. I have thought sometimes"--Sissy very timid here--"that perhaps I tried to learn too much, and that if I had asked to be allowed to try a little less, I might have----"

"No, Jupe, no," said Mr. Gradgrind, shaking his head in his profoundest and most eminently practical way. "No. The course you pursued, you pursued according to the system--the system--and there is no more to be said about it. I can only suppose that the circ.u.mstances of your early life were too unfavourable to the development of your reasoning powers, and that we began too late. Still, as I have said already, I am disappointed."

"I wish I could have made a better acknowledgment, sir, of your kindness to a poor forlorn girl who had no claim upon you, and of your protection of her."

"Don't shed tears," said Mr. Gradgrind. "Don't shed tears. I don't complain of you. You are an affectionate, earnest, good young woman, and--and we must make that do."

How blind a man must become when his faith in a system or a philosophy can make him estimate fact storing so much and character forming so little!

Sissy could not learn facts, therefore Mr. Gradgrind mourned. The fact that she was "affectionate, earnest, good," was only a trifling matter--a very poor subst.i.tute for brilliant acquirements in dates and facts and mental arithmetic.

Sissy became, however, the good angel of the Gradgrind household. She helped Louisa back to a partial hope and sweetness; she gave the younger children, with Mr. Gradgrind's permission, the real childhood of freedom and imagination, which the older children had lost forever; she brightened the lives even of Mrs. and Mr. Gradgrind, and she helped to save Tom from the disgrace of his crime.

The closing picture of the book, one of the most beautiful d.i.c.kens ever painted, tells the story of Sissy's future:

But happy Sissy's happy children loving her; all children loving her; she, grown learned in childish lore; thinking no innocent and pretty fancy ever to be despised; trying hard to know her humbler fellow-creatures, and to beautify their lives of machinery and reality with those imaginative graces and delights, without which the heart of infancy will wither up, the st.u.r.diest physical manhood will be morally stark death, and the plainest national prosperity figures can show will be the Writing on the Wall--she holding this course as part of no fantastic vow, or bond, or brotherhood, or sisterhood, or pledge, or covenant, or fancy dress, or fancy fair; but simply as a duty to be done. Did Louisa see these things of herself? These things were to be!

Dear reader! It rests with you and me whether, in our two fields of action, similar things shall be or not. Let them be! We shall sit with lighter bosoms on the hearth, to see the ashes of our fires turn gray and cold.

And the educational Gradgrinds of the present time sneer at d.i.c.kens because he puts the early training of a circus above the early training of a Christian home like Mr. Gradgrind's. "The logical consequence of such reasoning," they say, "would be that all children should be trained in circuses."

Oh, no! d.i.c.kens did not recommend a circus as a good place to train children. But he did believe that even a circus is a thousand times better than a so-called Christian home for the true and complete development of a child, if in the circus the child is free and happy, and is allowed full play for her imagination, and is not arrested in her development by rote storing of facts and too early drill in arithmetic, and has the rich productive love of even one parent, and has blessed opportunities for loving service for her pets and her friends; and if in the so-called Christian home she is robbed of these privileges even in the name of religion.

Sissy had a blessed, free childhood. She lived in her own imaginary world most of the time; she had the deep love of her kind-hearted father and of Merrylegs, the dog; she read poetry and fairy tales; she attended to her father's needs; she had many opportunities to show her love in loving service for Merrylegs and her father; and she was not dwarfed by fact cramming and formal drill. Her chances of reaching a true womanhood were excellent, and when she got the opportunity for the revelation of character, she had character to reveal, and her character developed in its revelation for the benefit and happiness of others. Hers was the true Christian training after all. Homes and schools with such training are centres of great power.

One of the strongest pleas ever made for the cultivation of the imagination, "the fancies and affections," and for the teaching of literature, art, and music in the schools was given in Hard Times, which is an industrial as well as an educational story. Indeed, d.i.c.kens saw that the true solution of industrial questions was the proper training of the race. No attack on the meanness of utilitarianism and no exposition of its terrible dangers could be more incisive and philosophical than the following wonderful sentences:

Utilitarian economists, skeletons of schoolmasters, commissioners of fact, genteel and used-up infidels, gabblers of many little dog's-eared creeds, the poor you will have always with you. Cultivate in them, while there is yet time, the utmost graces of the fancies and affections, to adorn their lives so much in need of ornament; or, in the moment of your triumph, when romance is utterly driven out of their souls, and they and a bare existence stand face to face, Reality will take a wolfish turn, and make an end of you!

Altogether Hard Times is one of the most remarkable educational books ever written.

d.i.c.kens made a plea for mental refreshment and recreation for the working cla.s.ses in n.o.body's Story, similar to that made in Hard Times:

The workingman appealed to the Bigwig family, and said: "We are a labouring people, and I have a glimmering suspicion in me that labouring people of whatever condition were made--by a higher intelligence than yours, as I poorly understand it--to be in need of mental refreshment and recreation. See what we fall into, when we rest without it. Come! Amuse me harmlessly, show me something, give me an escape!"

Beautiful Lizzie Hexam, one of the latest and highest creations of d.i.c.kens, longed to read, but she did not learn to do so because her father objected so bitterly, and she wished to avoid everything that would weaken the bond of love between them, lest she might lose her influence for good over him.

Her brother Charley said to her:

"You said you couldn't read a book, Lizzie. Your library of books is the hollow down by the flare, I think."

"I should be very glad to be able to read real books. I feel my want of learning very much, Charley. But I should feel it much more, if I didn't know it to be a tie between me and father."

d.i.c.kens was revealing the strange fact that at first many poor and ignorant parents strenuously objected to their children being educated; and he was at the same time showing that great character growth could take place even without the power to read. Lizzie's self-sacrifice for her father and Charley was a true revelation of the divinity in her nature.

Though she had not read books, she had read a great deal by her imagination from "the hollow down by the flare."

As d.i.c.kens grew older he saw more clearly the value of the dreaming of childhood while awake, of the deep reveries into which young people often fall, and ought to fall, so that they become oblivious to their environment, and sweep through the universe in strange imaginings, that after all are very real. He was fond of drawing pictures of young people giving free rein to their imaginations, unchecked by intermeddling adulthood, while they watched the glowing fire, or the ashes falling away from the dying coals. Lizzie's library from which she got her culture was in "the hollow down by the flare."

Crippled little Jenny Wren, the doll's dressmaker, said to Lizzie Hexam one day, when Eugene Wrayburn was visiting them:

"I wonder how it happens that when I am work, work, working here, all alone in the summer time, I smell flowers."

"As a commonplace individual, I should say," Eugene suggested languidly--for he was growing weary of the person of the house--"that you smell flowers because you _do_ smell flowers."

"No, I don't," said the little creature, resting one arm upon the elbow of her chair, resting her chin upon that hand, and looking vacantly before her; "this is not a flowery neighbourhood. It's anything but that. And yet, as I sit at work, I smell miles of flowers. I smell roses till I think I see the rose leaves lying in heaps, bushels, on the floor. I smell fallen leaves till I put down my hand--so--and expect to make them rustle. I smell the white and the pink May in the hedges, and all sorts of flowers that I never was among. For I have seen very few flowers indeed in my life."

"Pleasant fancies to have, Jennie dear!" said her friend, with a glance toward Eugene as if she would have asked him whether they were given the child in compensation for her losses.

"So I think, Lizzie, when they come to me. And the birds I hear! Oh!"

cried the little creature, holding out her hand and looking upward, "how they sing!"

How life in any stage might be filled with richness and joy, if imaginations were stored with apperceptive elements and allowed to reconstruct the universe in our fancies! How truly real our fancies might become!

In A Child's Dream of a Star d.i.c.kens gives an exquisite picture of the influence of imagination in spiritual evolution.

There was once a child, and he strolled about a good deal, and thought of a number of things. He had a sister, who was a child too, and his constant companion. These two used to wonder all day long. They wondered at the beauty of the flowers; they wondered at the height and blueness of the sky; they wondered at the depth of the bright water; they wondered at the goodness and the power of G.o.d who made the lovely world.

They used to say to one another, sometimes, Supposing all the children upon earth were to die, would the flowers, and the water, and the sky be sorry? They believed they would be sorry. For, said they, the buds are the children of the flowers, and the little playful streams that gambol down the hillsides are the children of the water; and the smallest bright specks playing at hide and seek in the sky all night, must surely be the children of the stars; and they would all be grieved to see their playmates, the children of men, no more.

There was one clear shining star that used to come out in the sky before the rest, near the church spire, above the graves. It was larger and more beautiful, they thought, than all the others, and every night they watched for it, standing hand in hand at a window.

Whoever saw it first cried out, "I see the star!" And often they cried out both together, knowing so well when it would rise, and where. So they grew to be such friends with it, that, before lying down in their beds, they always looked out once again to bid it good night; and when they were turning round to sleep they used to say, "G.o.d bless the star!"

But while she was still very young, oh very, very young, the sister drooped, and came to be so very weak that she could no longer stand in the window at night; and then the child looked sadly out by himself, and when he saw the star, turned round and said to the patient pale face on the bed, "I see the star!" and then a smile would come upon the face, and a little weak voice used to say, "G.o.d bless my brother and the star!"

d.i.c.kens had shown his recognition of the inestimable value of the imagination, and the importance of giving it free play and of doing everything possible to stimulate its activity by freedom, and story, and play, and literature, music, and art, but his description of Jemmy Jackman Lirriper's training shows a keener appreciation than any of his other writings of the value of the child's games in which personation is the leading characteristic; in which spools, or spoons, or blocks, or sticks are people or animals, with regular names and distinct characteristics and responsible duties, and in which chairs and tables and boxes are coaches, or steamboats, or railway trains. No friends are ever more real than those of the child's creative imagination, with things to represent them; no rides ever give greater delight than those rides in trains that move only in the imaginations of the children, who construct them by placing the chairs in a row, and who act as engineers, conductors, and brakemen. Such games form the best elements out of which the child's life power can be made, especially if the adulthood of his home sympathizes with him in his enterprises. They afford an outlet for his imaginative plans. In them he forms new worlds of his own, which are adapted to his stage of development, and in which he can be the creator and the centre of executive influence.

Jemmy Jackman Lirriper's training was ideal in most of his home life, though he had no father or mother to love and guide him.

The miles and miles that me and the Major have travelled with Jemmy in the dusk between the lights are not to be calculated, Jemmy driving on the coach box, which is the Major's bra.s.s-bound writing desk on the table, me inside in the easy-chair, and the Major Guard up behind with a brown-paper horn doing it really wonderful. I do a.s.sure you, my dear, that sometimes when I have taken a few winks in my place inside the coach and have come half awake by the flashing light of the fire and have heard that precious pet driving and the Major blowing up behind to have the change of horses ready when we got to the Inn, I have believed we were on the old North Road that my poor Lirriper knew so well. Then to see that child and the Major both wrapped up getting down to warm their feet and going stamping about and having gla.s.ses of ale out of the paper match boxes on the chimney piece, is to see the Major enjoying it fully as much as the child I am very sure, and it's equal to any play when Coachee opens the coach door to look in at me inside and say "Wery 'past that 'tage.--'Prightened old lady?"

Such plays as d.i.c.kens here describes make one of the greatest differences between a real childhood and a barren childhood. The lack of opportunities for such perfect plays and such complete sympathy in their plays gives to the faces of orphan children brought up in inst.i.tutions the distinctive look which marks them everywhere, so that they can be easily recognised by experienced students of happy childhood.

But Jemmy's make believe was not ruthlessly cut short with his early childhood. He continued his imaginative operations, or it might make it clearer to say his operative imaginations, after he went to school; and those beautiful old people, Mrs. Lirriper and Major Jackman, continued their interest, their real, perfectly sympathetic interest in his plans.

Neither should I tell you any news, my dear, in telling you that the Major is still a fixture in the Parlours quite as much so as the roof of the house, and that Jemmy is of boys the best and brightest, and has ever had kept from him the cruel story of his poor pretty young mother, Mrs. Edson, being deserted in the second floor and dying in my arms, fully believing that I am his born Gran and him an orphan; though what with engineering since he took a taste for it, and him and the Major making Locomotives out of parasols, broken iron pots, and cotton reels, and them absolutely a-getting off the line and falling over the table and injuring the pa.s.sengers almost equal to the originals, it really is quite wonderful. And when I says to the Major, "Major, can't you by _any_ means give us a communication with the guard?" the Major says, quite huffy, "No, madam, it's not to be done"; and when I says, "Why not?" the Major says, "That is between us who are in the Railway Interest, madam, and our friend, the Right Honourable Vice-President of the Board of Trade"; and if you'll believe me, my dear, the Major wrote to Jemmy at School to consult him on the answer I should have before I could get even that amount of unsatisfactoriness out of the man, the reason being that when we first began with the little model and the working signals beautiful and perfect (being in general as wrong as the real), and when I says, laughing, "What appointment am I to hold in this undertaking, gentlemen?" Jemmy hugs me round the neck and tells me, dancing, "You shall be the Public, Gran," and consequently they put upon me just as much as ever they like, and I sit a-growling in my easy-chair.

My dear, whether it is that a grown man as clever as the Major can not give half his heart and mind to anything--even a plaything--but must get into right down earnest with it, whether it is so or whether it is not so, I do not undertake to say; but Jemmy is far outdone by the serious and believing ways of the Major in the management of the United Grand Junction Lirriper and Jackman Great Norfolk Parlour Line, "for," says my Jemmy with the sparkling eyes when it was christened, "we must have a whole mouthful of name, Gran, or our dear old Public"--and there the young rogue kissed me--"won't stump up." So the Public took the shares--ten at ninepence, and immediately when that was spent twelve Preference at one and sixpence--and they were all signed by Jemmy and countersigned by the Major, and between ourselves much better worth the money than some shares I have paid for in my time. In the same holidays the line was made and worked and opened and ran excursions and collisions and had burst its boilers and all sorts of accidents and offences all most regular, correct, and pretty. The sense of responsibility entertained by the Major as a military style of station master, my dear, starting the down train behind time and ringing one of those little bells that you buy with the little coal scuttles off the tray round the man's neck in the street, did him honour; but noticing the Major of a night when he is writing out his monthly report to Jemmy at school of the state of the Rolling Stock and the Permanent Way, and all the rest of it (the whole kept upon the Major's sideboard and dusted with his own hands every morning before varnishing his boots), I notice him as full of thought and care, as full can be, and frowning in a fearful manner; but, indeed, the Major does nothing by halves, as witness his great delight in going out surveying with Jemmy when he has Jemmy to go with, carrying a chain and a measuring tape, and driving I don't know what improvements right through Westminster Abbey, and fully believed in the streets to be knocking everything upside down by Act of Parliament. As please Heaven will come to pa.s.s when Jemmy takes to that as a profession!

The Major's partic.i.p.ation in the plans of Jemmy is a good ill.u.s.tration of the sympathy that Froebel and d.i.c.kens felt for childhood, a sympathy _with_, not _for_, the child. It meant more than approval--it meant co-operation, partnership.

Some educators would criticise d.i.c.kens for allowing the Major to make the locomotives with parasols, broken pots, and cotton reels. They teach that Jemmy should have made these himself. d.i.c.kens was away beyond such a narrow view as this. The child at first has much more power to plan than to execute. To leave him to himself means the failure of his plans and the irritation of his temper. It is a terrible experience for a child to get the habit of failure. The wise adult will enter into partnership with the child to aid in carrying out the child's plans. He will not even make suggestions of changes in plans when he sees how they might be improved.

The plans and the leadership should be absolutely the child's own. The adult should be an a.s.sistant, and that only, when skill is required beyond that possessed by the child--either when the mechanical work is too difficult for the child or when more than one person is needed to execute his plan.