Dickens As an Educator Part 40

When Mr. and Mrs. Orange were going home they pa.s.sed the establishment of Mrs. Lemon, and necessarily thought of their eight adult pupils who were there.

"I wonder, James, dear," said Mrs. Orange, looking up at the window, "whether the precious children are asleep!"

"I don't care much whether they are or not, myself," said Mr. Orange.

"James, dear!"

"You dote upon them, you know," said Mr. Orange. "That's another thing."

"I do," said Mrs. Orange rapturously. "Oh, I do!"

"I don't," said Mr. Orange.

"But, I was thinking, James, love," said Mrs. Orange, pressing his arm, "whether our dear, good, kind Mrs. Lemon would like them to stay the holidays with her."

"If she was paid for it, I dare say she would," said Mr. Orange.

"I adore them, James," said Mrs. Orange, "but _suppose_ we pay her, then."

This was what brought the country to such perfection, and made it such a delightful place to live in. The grown-up people (that would be in other countries) soon left off being allowed any holidays after Mr.

and Mrs. Orange tried the experiment; and the children (that would be in other countries) kept them at school as long as ever they lived, and made them do whatever they were told.

This story was written about two years before the death of d.i.c.kens, so it represents his maturest thought. Its great fundamental motive was Froebel's motto, "Come, let us live with our children." It was a trenchant, though humorous criticism of the methods of treating children practised by adults, at home and at school. Mrs. Orange's adoration for children, while at the same time she was proposing to keep them at school during the holidays, is very suggestive to those mothers who in society talk so much about their "precious darlings," but who keep them in the nursery so that they have no share in the family life. The practice of calling children bad and describing their supposed evil propensities in the presence of others is also condemned in this story.

One of the very best of the stories of d.i.c.kens to show his perfect sympathy with boyhood is the story told by Jemmy Jackman Lirriper about "the boy who went to school in Rutlandshire."

It reveals the feelings of boys to the "Tartars" who teach school, as the boys, when they got control, put the Tartar into confinement and "forced him to eat the boys' dinners and drink half a cask of their beer every day."

It reveals, too, the psychological condition of a healthy boy just entering the adolescent period, if he has been fortunate enough to have had a life of love and freedom at home; with his heart filled with love for the schoolmaster's daughter Seraphina, and his mind filled with hopeful dreams of success, and triumph, and fortune, and happiness ever afterward, not excluding those who had nurtured him, but sharing all with them, and finding his greatest joy in their affectionate pride at his success. Blessed is the boy who has such glorious experiences and such hopeful dreams in his later boyhood and onward, and thrice blessed is he who finds in parenthood hearts so reverently sympathetic that it is natural for the young heart to overflow into them.

"But such dreams can never come true." They are true. Nothing is ever more true for the stage of evolution in which they naturally fill the life of the child. To stop them is a crime; to shut them up in the heart of the boy or girl makes them a source of great danger instead of an essential element in the enn.o.blement of character.

Let the boy dream on, and help him to dream by sympathetically sharing his visions with him. His own visions and the most wonderful visions of heroism and adventure dreamed by the best authors should fill his life during the most important stage of his growth, adolescence, when the elements of his manhood are rushing into his life and require an outlet in the ideal life as a preparation for the real life of later days.

d.i.c.kens recognises, too, in this story the great truth so little used by educators, that the child's imagination is not restricted by any conditions of impossibility or by any laws of Nature or of man. The ideal transcends the real, the desired is accomplished. Development is rapid under such conditions.

"And was there no quarrelling," asked Mrs. Lirriper, "after the boy and his boy friend had gained high renown, and unlimited stores of gold, and had married Seraphina and her sister, and had come to live with Gran and G.o.dfather forever, and the story was ended?"

"No! n.o.body ever quarrelled."

"And did the money never melt away?"

"No! n.o.body could ever spend it all."

"And did none of them ever grow older?"

"No! n.o.body ever grew older after that."

"And did none of them ever die?"

"O, no, no, no, Gran!" exclaimed our dear boy, laying his cheek upon her breast, and drawing her closer to him. "n.o.body ever died."

"Ah, Major, Major!" says Mrs. Lirriper, smiling benignly upon me, "this beats our stories. Let us end with the Boy's Story, Major, for the Boy's Story is the best that is ever told."

Miss Pupford's school in Tom Tiddler's Ground reveals the foolish conventional formalism of some teachers before their pupils; exposes the pretences of some teachers in private schools--"Miss Pupford's a.s.sistant with the Parisian accent, who never conversed with a Parisian and never was out of England"; and condemns the practice of sending mere children long distances from home to be trained and educated: "Kitty Kimmeens had to remain behind in Miss Pupford's school during the holidays, because her friends and relations were all in India, far away."

In Edwin Drood d.i.c.kens had begun a description of the school: "On the trim gate inclosing the courtyard of which is a resplendent bra.s.s plate flashing forth the legend: 'Seminary for Young Ladies. Miss Twinkleton.'"

The chief thing revealed by the brief description given of it is the formal conventionality of most teachers in such inst.i.tutions, the unreality of manner and tone and character shown by most teachers in the schoolroom.

How much greater Miss Twinkleton's power would have been to help in developing human hearts and heads, if she could have been more truly human during the day! She did not deceive the young ladies either by her formalism. They merely said, "What a pretending old thing Miss Twinkleton is!"

When the rumour of the quarrel between Neville Landless and Edwin Drood reached the seminary, and began to cause dangerous excitement among the young ladies, Miss Twinkleton deemed it her duty to quiet their minds.

It was reserved for Miss Twinkleton to tone down the public mind of the Nuns' House. That lady, therefore, entering in a stately manner what plebeians might have called the schoolroom, but what, in the patrician language of the head of the Nuns' House, was euphuistically, not to say roundaboutedly, denominated "the apartment allotted to study," and saying with a forensic air, "Ladies!" all rose. Mrs.

Tisher at the same time grouped herself behind her chief, as representing Queen Elizabeth's first historical female friend at Tilbury Fort. Miss Twinkleton then proceeded to remark that Rumour, ladies, had been represented by the Bard of Avon--needless were it to mention the immortal Shakespeare, also called the Swan of his native river, not improbably with some reference to the ancient superst.i.tion that that bird of graceful plumage (Miss Jennings will please stand upright) sung sweetly on the approach of death, for which we have no ornithological authority--Rumour, ladies, had been represented by that bard--hem!--

"Who drew The celebrated Jew,"

as painted full of tongues. Rumour in Cloisterham (Miss Ferdinand will honour me with her attention) was no exception to the great limner's portrait of Rumour elsewhere. A slight _fracas_ between two young gentlemen occurring last night within a hundred miles of these peaceful walls (Miss Ferdinand, being apparently incorrigible, will have the kindness to write out this evening, in the original language, the first four fables of our vivacious neighbour, Monsieur La Fontaine) had been very grossly exaggerated by Rumour's voice. In the first alarm and anxiety arising from our sympathy with a sweet young friend, not wholly to be dissociated from one of the gladiators in the bloodless arena in question (the impropriety of Miss Reynolds's appearing to stab herself in the hand with a pin is far too obvious, and too glaringly unladylike to be pointed out), we descended from our maiden elevation to discuss this uncongenial and this unfit theme.

Responsible inquiries having a.s.sured us that it was but one of those "airy nothings" pointed at by the poet (whose name and date of birth Miss Giggles will supply within half an hour), we would now discard the subject, and concentrate our minds upon the grateful labours of the day.

The unnatural formalism of her manner and her language are properly held up to ridicule by d.i.c.kens.

He incidentally shows the great blunder of interrupting a lesson to censure a pupil, the weakness of having to demand attention, and the error of punishing by impositions to be memorized or written. What a terrible misuse it is of the literature that should always be attractive and inspiring to have it a.s.sociated with punishment! He exposes the greater crime of making children commit to memory selections from the Bible as a punishment in Dombey and Son, and the a.s.sociation of the Bible with tasks in Our Mutual Friend.

The Schoolboy's Story deals with the problems of nutrition, coercion, robbing a boy of his holidays, the declaration of perpetual warfare between pupils and teachers in the olden days, and the surprise of the boys when they found that one of their teachers had a true and tender heart (what a commentary on teachers that boys should be surprised at their being true and good!), and how to treat children as Old Cheeseman did, when he inherited his fortune and married Jane, and took the disconsolate boys home to his own house, when they were condemned to spend their holidays at school.

In Our School the chief pedagogical lessons are: the man's remembrance of the pug dog in the entry at the first school he attended, and his utter forgetfulness of the mistress of the establishment; the folly of external polishing or memory polishing on which "the rust has long since acc.u.mulated"; the gross wrong of allowing an ignorant and brutal man to be a teacher--"The only branches of education with which the master showed the least acquaintance were ruling and corporally punishing"; the deadening injustice of showing partiality, whether on account of a boy's parentage or for any other reason; sympathy for "holiday stoppers"; the interest all children should take in keeping and training pet animals; the advantages to boys of having to construct "houses and instruments of performance" for these pets--"some of those who made houses and invented appliances for their performing mice in school have since made railroads, engines, and telegraphs, the chairman has erected mills and bridges in Australia"; the fact that "we all liked Maxby the tutor, for he had a good knowledge of boys"; and that teachers should be very particular about their personal neatness, because children note so accurately every detail of dress and manner. This is shown by the reminiscences about Maxby, the Latin master, and the dancing master. The ungenerous rivalry often existing between schools, and schools of thought, too, was pointed out: "There was another school not far off, and of course our school could have nothing to say to that school. It is mostly the way with schools, whether of boys or men."

"The world had little reason to be proud of Our School, and has done much better since in that way, and will do far better yet." This closing sentence of the sketch is very suggestive.

d.i.c.kens described one school that he visited in America in his American Notes, evidently in order to show the need of more care than was then taken in the choice of matter for the pupils to read.

I was only present in one of these establishments during the hours of instruction. In the boys' department, which was full of little urchins (varying in their ages, I should say, from six years old to ten or twelve), the master offered to inst.i.tute an extemporary examination of the pupils in algebra, a proposal which, as I was by no means confident of my ability to detect mistakes in that science, I declined with some alarm. In the girls' school reading was proposed, and as I felt tolerably equal to that art I expressed my willingness to hear a cla.s.s. Books were distributed accordingly, and some half dozen girls relieved each other in reading paragraphs from English history. But it seemed to be a dry compilation, infinitely above their powers; and when they had blundered through three or four dreary pa.s.sages concerning the treaty of Amiens, and other thrilling topics of the same nature (obviously without comprehending ten words), I expressed myself quite satisfied. It is very possible that they only mounted to this exalted stave in the ladder of learning for the astonishment of a visitor, and that at other times they keep upon its lower rounds; but I should have been much better pleased and satisfied if I had heard them exercised in simpler lessons, which they understood.

"The world has done better since, and will do far better yet" in the choice of reading matter for children.

The school recalled by memory in connection with the other ghosts of his childhood in The Haunted House was described briefly, but the description is full of suggestiveness.

Then I was sent to a great cold, bare school of big boys; where everything to eat and wear was thick and clumpy, without being enough; where everybody, large and small, was cruel; where the boys knew all about the sale before I got there [his father's furniture had been sold for debt], and asked me what I had fetched, and who had bought me, and hooted at me, "Going, going, gone."

The inartistic bareness of the school, the tasteless clothing, the unattractive, unsatisfying food, the pervading atmosphere of cruelty, and the heartlessness of the boys in tearing open the wounds of the sensitive new boy--are all condemned.

CHAPTER XVI.