Dickens As an Educator Part 28

"Berry's very fond of you, ain't she?" Paul once asked Mrs. Pipchin when they were sitting by the fire with the cat.

"Yes," said Mrs. Pipchin.

"Why?" asked Paul.

"Why?" returned the disconcerted old lady. "How can you ask such things, sir? Why are you fond of your sister Florence?"

"Because she's very good," said Paul. "There's n.o.body like Florence."

"Well!" retorted Mrs. Pipchin shortly, "and there's n.o.body like me, I suppose."

"Ain't there really, though?" asked Paul, leaning forward in his chair, and looking at her very hard.

"No," said the old lady.

"I am glad of that," observed Paul, rubbing his hands thoughtfully.

"That's a very good thing."

To which every one would say "Amen," if they could believe Mrs. Pipchin's statement to be actually true.

Mrs. Pipchin combined in her "system" many of the evils of child training.

She was not good-looking, and those who train children should be decidedly good-looking. They need not be handsome; they ought to be winsome. Her "mottled face like bad marble, and hard grey eye" meant danger to childhood.

She was gloomy in appearance, in manner, and in dress, all disqualifications for any position connected with child development.

She was "a bitter old lady," and children should be surrounded with an atmosphere of sweetness and joyousness.

Her one diabolical rule was "to give children everything they didn't like and nothing they did like." This rule is the logical limit of the doctrine of child depravity.

She was generally spoken of as a "great manager," simply because she compelled children to do her bidding by fear of punishment in the "dungeon," or of being sent to bed, or robbed of their meals, or by some other mean form of contemptible coercion. These processes were praised as excellent till d.i.c.kens destroyed their respectability. His t.i.tle "child-queller" is admirable, and full of philosophy. Many a man has been able to form a truer conception regarding child freedom through the influence of the word "child-queller." Every teacher should ask himself every day, "Am I a child-queller?" It will be a blessed thing for the children when there shall be no more Pipchinny teachers.

The environment of the ogress was not attractive. The gardens grew only marigolds, snails were on the doors, and bad odours in the house. "In the winter time the air couldn't be got out of the castle, and in the summer time it couldn't be got in." d.i.c.kens knew that the environment of children has a direct influence on their characters, and that ventilation is essential to good health. These lessons were needed fifty years ago.

Mrs. Pipchin made children dishonest by putting on collars for parade.

"The farinaceous and vegetable" diet, the "regaled with rice" criticisms show that d.i.c.kens antic.i.p.ated by half a century the present interest in the study of nutrition as one of the most important educational subjects.

The combination of coercion and religion is ridiculed in the theological constraint of Mrs. Pipchin, when she told little Miss Pankey "that n.o.body who sniffed before visitors ever went to heaven."

The outrageous selfishness of adulthood was exposed by the description of Mrs. Pipchin's anger at the play of the children in the back room when it was raining and they could not go out.

The injustice of the "child-queller" was shown because she filliped Master Bitherstone on the nose for nodding in the evening, whenever she woke up from her own nodding.

The sacrilege of having prayers between two processes of cruelty is worthy of note. Religion should never be a.s.sociated in the mind of a child with injustice, cruelty, or any meanness.

The dreadful practice of driving timid children to sleep in the dark was another of Mrs. Pipchin's accomplishments. The retiring hour of childhood should be made the happiest and most nerve soothing of the day. Wise and sympathetic adulthood, especially motherhood, can then reach the central nature of the child most successfully.

The formal reading of a meaningless selection from the Bible by Bitherstone tended to prevent the development of a true interest in that most interesting of all books.

The Early Readings, with the bad boy in the story "being finished off generally by a lion or a bear," were a fit accompaniment to a system in which no child's mind was encouraged to expand like a flower naturally, but to be opened by force like an oyster.

d.i.c.kens began with Mrs. Pipchin his revelation of the great blunder of checking the questions of children. "Remember the story of the little boy that was gored to death by a mad bull for asking questions," she said to Paul. The same evil is pointed out in the training of Pip in Great Expectations.

Another common error is revealed by Mrs. Pipchin, when she called Paul "a little infidel," because he did not accept her statement about the mad bull, although she knew it to be false herself. Even when children doubt the truth they should not be called "infidels," unless, indeed, it is desired to make them definitely and consciously sceptical.

The Puritan Sabbath was a part of Mrs. Pipchin's quelling system too.

It was little wonder, therefore, that the wild children went home tame enough after a few months in her awful inst.i.tution.

Few men who have ever lived have studied the child and his training so thoroughly as to be able to condense into such brief s.p.a.ce so many of the evils of bad training.

Mrs. Pipchin and Mr. Squeers have been made to do good work for childhood.

Biler was so badly treated at the grinders' school that he played hookey, but that was not the worst feature of his education. They did not feel any responsibility for character development in the school of the Charitable Grinders.

But they never taught honour at the grinders' school, where the system that prevailed was particularly strong in the engendering of hypocrisy; insomuch that many of the friends and masters of past grinders said, if this were what came of education for the common people, let us have none. Some more rational said, Let us have a better one; but the governing powers of the grinders' company were always ready for _them_, by picking out a few boys who had turned out well in spite of the system, and roundly a.s.serting that they could have only turned out well because of it. Which settled the business of those objectors out of hand, and established the glory of the grinders' inst.i.tution.

In David Copperfield, Uriah Heep, utterly detestable in character, is the natural product of the system of training under which both he and his father were brought up. Uriah said:

"Father and me was both brought up at a foundation school for boys; and mother, she was likewise brought up at a public, sort of charitable, establishment. They taught us all a deal of umbleness--not much else that I know of--from morning to night. We was to be umble to this person, and umble to that; and to pull off our caps here, and to make bows there; and always to know our place, and abase ourselves before our betters. And we had such a lot of betters! Father got the monitor medal by being umble. So did I. Father got made a s.e.xton by being umble. He had the character, among the gentlefolks, of being such a well-behaved man that they were determined to bring him on. 'Be umble, Uriah,' says father, 'and you'll get on. It was what was always being dinned into you and me at school; it's what goes down best. Be umble,' says father, 'and you'll do!' And really it ain't done bad!"

It was the first time it had ever occurred to me that this detestable cant of false humility might have originated out of the Heep family. I had seen the harvest, but had never thought of the seed. I had never doubted his meanness, his craft and malice; but I fully comprehended now, for the first time, what a base, unrelenting, and revengeful spirit must have been engendered by this early, and this long, suppression.

David himself tells how he suffered after the death of his mother from the cold neglect of Mr. Murdstone and Jane Murdstone. No child can be so dest.i.tute as the child who is neglected through dislike.

And now I fell into a state of neglect, which I can not look back upon without compa.s.sion. I fell at once into a solitary condition--apart from all friendly notice, apart from the society of all other boys of my own age, apart from all companionship but my own spiritless thoughts--which seems to cast its gloom upon this paper as I write.

What would I have given to have been sent to the hardest school that ever was kept! to have been taught something, anyhow, anywhere! No such hope dawned upon me. They disliked me, and they sullenly, sternly, steadily overlooked me. I think Mr. Murdstone's means were straitened at about this time; but it is little to the purpose. He could not bear me; and in putting me from him he tried, as I believe, to put away the notion that I had any claim upon him--and succeeded.

I was not actively ill used. I was not beaten or starved; but the wrong that was done to me had no intervals of relenting, and was done in a systematic, pa.s.sionless manner. Day after day, week after week, month after month, I was coldly neglected. I wonder sometimes, when I think of it, what they would have done if I had been taken with an illness--whether I should have lain down in my lonely room and languished through it in my usual solitary way, or whether anybody would have helped me out.

But the greatest lesson in wrong training given in David Copperfield is the character development of Steerforth. He was ruined by the misdirected love of his mother, and his life is a fine psychological study.

He was a boy of unusually good ability and great attractiveness. He possessed by nature every element of power and grace required to make him a strong, true, and very successful man; but the love of his mother degenerated to pride and admiration, indulgence was subst.i.tuted for guidance, and the strong woman became weak at the vital point of training her boy. She allowed him to become selfish and vain by yielding to his caprices. She thought she was making his character strong by allowing no restraint to be put upon it. She failed to distinguish between license and liberty. She had conceived the ideal of the need of freedom, but she knew naught of the true harmony between control and spontaneity. She allowed the spontaneity, and gloried in his resistance to control. She was blind to the balancing element in "the perfect law of liberty." She made her boy a powerful engine without a governor valve. So his selfhood became selfishness, and his character was wrecked. Among other immoral opinions that he gained from his mother's training was the idea that he belonged to a select cla.s.s superior to common humanity. How d.i.c.kens hated this thought! Rosa Dartle asked Steerforth about

"That sort of people--are they really animals and clods, and beings of another order? I want to know so much."

"Why, there's a pretty wide separation between them and us," said Steerforth, with indifference. "They are not to be expected to be as sensitive as we are. Their delicacy is not to be shocked or hurt very easily. They are wonderfully virtuous, I dare say--some people contend for that, at least, and I am sure I don't want to contradict them; but they have not very fine natures, and they may be thankful that, like their coa.r.s.e, rough skins, they are not easily wounded."

He was trained to despise work, which is a good start toward the utter loss of character. A boy who despises his fellow-beings whom he a.s.sumes to rank below him, and who also despises work, instead of recognising the duty of every man to be a producer or a distributor of power, may easily fall into moral degeneracy.

"Help yourself, Copperfield!" said Steerforth. "We'll drink the daisies of the field, in compliment to you; and the lilies of the valley that toil not, neither do they spin, in compliment to me--the more shame for me!"