Dickens As an Educator Part 43

It was a lovely spot to which they repaired. Oliver, whose days had been spent among squalid crowds, and in the midst of noise and brawling, seemed to enter on a new existence there.

In the story of The Five Sisters of York Alice said to her sisters:

"Nature's own blessings are the proper goods of life, and we may share them sinlessly together. To die is our heavy portion, but, oh, let us die with life about us; when our cold hearts cease to beat, let warm hearts be beating near; let our last look be upon the bounds which G.o.d has set to his own bright skies, and not on stone walls and bars of iron! Dear sisters, let us live and die, if you list, in this green garden's compa.s.s."

d.i.c.kens had very advanced opinions in regard to the importance of physical training, especially of play, as an agent not only in physical culture, but in the development of the mind and character. Doctor Blimber's school is condemned because the boys were not allowed to play, and Doctor Strong's school is highly commended because the boys "had n.o.ble games out of doors" there.

What splendid runners and jumpers and divers and swimmers those grand boys were whom Mr. Marton had the good fortune to teach in his second school in The Old Curiosity Shop!

Mrs. Crupp recommended David Copperfield to take up some game as an antidote for his despondency during his early love experience.

"If you was to take to something, sir," said Mrs. Crupp, "if you was to take to skittles, now, which is healthy, you might find it divert your mind and do you good."

Mrs. Chick told Mr. Dombey that Paul was delicate. "Our darling is not altogether as stout as we could wish. The fact is that his mind is too much for him. His soul is a great deal too large for his frame." Yet his father paid no attention to the boy's food, and sent him, when but a little sickly child, to Doctor Blimber's to learn everything--not to play.

"They had nothing so vulgar as play at Doctor Blimber's."

One of the most vicious conventions is that which makes vigorous play vulgar and unladylike for girls.

He called attention in American notes to the advantages possessed by the students of Upper Canada College, Toronto, inasmuch as "the town is well adapted for wholesome exercise at all seasons." In the same book he gives his opinion that American girls "must go more wisely clad, and take more healthful exercise."

He praised the free life of the gipsy children in Nicholas Nickleby.

In Martin Chuzzlewit, when Tom Pinch and Martin had to walk to Salisbury instead of riding in Mr. Pecksniff's gig, d.i.c.kens says it was better for them that they were compelled to walk. What a breezy enthusiasm he throws into his advocacy of walking as an exercise:

Better! A rare strong, hearty, healthy walk--four statute miles an hour--preferable to that rumbling, tumbling, jolting, shaking, sc.r.a.ping, creaking, villainous old gig? Why, the two things will not admit of comparison. It is an insult to the walk to set them side by side. Where is an instance of a gig having ever circulated a man's blood, unless when, putting him in danger of his neck, it awakened in his veins and in his ears, and all along his spine, a tingling heat much more peculiar than agreeable? When did a gig ever sharpen anybody's wits and energies, unless it was when the horse bolted, and, crashing madly down a steep hill with a stone wall at the bottom, his desperate circ.u.mstances suggested to the only gentleman left inside some novel and unheard-of mode of dropping out behind? Better than the gig!

Better than the gig! When were travellers by wheels and hoofs seen with such red-hot cheeks as those? when were they so good-humouredly and merrily bloused? when did their laughter ring upon the air, as they turned them round, what time the stronger gusts came sweeping up; and, facing round again as they pa.s.sed by, dashed on, in such a glow of ruddy health as nothing could keep pace with, but the high spirits it engendered? Better than the gig! Why here _is_ a man in a gig coming the same way now. Look at him as he pa.s.ses his whip into his left hand, chafes his numbed right fingers on his granite leg, and beats those marble toes of his upon the footboard. Ha, ha, ha! Who would exchange this rapid hurry of the blood for yonder stagnant misery, though its pace were twenty miles for one?

Better than the gig! No man in a gig could have such interest in the milestones. No man in a gig could see, or feel, or think, like merry users of their legs.

d.i.c.kens taught comparatively little about the subjects of instruction or the methods of teaching them. He dealt cramming its most stunning blow in Doctor Blimber's school, and he criticised sharply the methods of teaching cla.s.sics and literature in the same school. He advocated the objective method of teaching number in Jemmy Lirriper's training at home by Major Jackman.

He took more interest in reading and literature than in any other department of school study, so far as can be judged from his writings. He deplored the practice of allowing children to try to read before they could recognise the words readily, and understand their meaning in the training of Pip and Charley Hexam. At the great party at Mr. Merdle's,

the Bishop consulted the great Physician on the relaxation of the throat with which young curates were too frequently afflicted, and on the means of lessening the great prevalence of that disorder in the church. Physician, as a general rule, was of opinion that the best way to avoid it was to know how to read before you made a profession of reading. Bishop said, dubiously, did he really think so? And Physician said, decidedly, yes, he did.

He criticised, too, the reading in the school visited in an American city, because "the girls blundered through three or four dreary pa.s.sages, obviously without comprehending ten words," and said "he would have been much better pleased if they had been asked to read some simpler selections which they could understand."

Mr. Wegg, when reading for Mr. Boffin in Our Mutual Friend, "read on by rote, and attached as few ideas as possible to the text."

He discusses the advantages of reading suitable books in David Copperfield, giving to David his own real experience in early boyhood.

After describing the cruel treatment of the Murdstones, he says:

The natural result of this treatment, continued, I suppose, for some six months, was to make me sullen, dull, and dogged. I was not made the less so by my sense of being daily more and more shut out and alienated from my mother. I believe I should have been almost stupefied but for one circ.u.mstance.

It was this. My father had left a small collection of books in a little room upstairs, to which I had access (for it joined my own) and which n.o.body else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and time--they, and the Arabian Nights, and the tales of the Genii.

His faith in the influence of reading increased as he grew older. In Our Mutual Friend he says: "No one who can read ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who can not read."

d.i.c.kens taught a useful lesson in Martin Chuzzlewit regarding the way teachers used to be treated by society. Even yet there is need of a higher recognition of the teaching profession in its true dignity by a civilization that reverences wealth more than intellectual and spiritual character.

Tom Pinch's sister was engaged in the family of a wealthy bra.s.s founder.

She was treated contemptuously by him and his wife, yet they complained to Tom that his sister was unable to command the respect of her pupil. Tom was naturally indignant, and he spoke his mind very clearly to the bra.s.s founder.

"Sir!" cried Tom, after regarding him in silence for some time. "If you do not understand what I mean I will tell you. My meaning is that no man can expect his children to respect what he degrades."

"When you tell me," resumed Tom, who was not the less indignant for keeping himself quiet, "that my sister has no innate power of commanding the respect of your children, I must tell you it is not so; and that she has. She is as well bred, as well taught, as well qualified by Nature to command respect as any hirer of a governess you know. But when you place her at a disadvantage in reference to every servant in your house, how can you suppose, if you have the gift of common sense, that she is not in a tenfold worse position in reference to your daughters?"

"Pretty well! Upon my word," exclaimed the gentleman, "that is pretty well!"

"It is very ill, sir," said Tom. "It is very bad and mean and wrong and cruel. Respect! I believe young people are quick enough to observe and imitate; and why or how should they respect whom no one else respects, and everybody slights? And very partial they must grow--oh, very partial!--to their studies, when they see to what a pa.s.s proficiency in those same tasks has brought their governess! Respect!

Put anything the most deserving of respect before your daughters in the light in which you place her, and you will bring it down as low, no matter what it is!"

"You speak with extreme impertinence, young man," observed the gentleman.

"I speak without pa.s.sion, but with extreme indignation and contempt for such a course of treatment, and for all who practise it," said Tom. "Why, how can you, as an honest gentleman, profess displeasure or surprise at your daughter telling my sister she is something beggarly and humble when you are forever telling her the same thing yourself in fifty plain, outspeaking ways, though not in words; and when your very porter and footman make the same delicate announcement to all comers?"

d.i.c.kens described a great variety of weak, and mean, and selfish, and degraded people in order to expose weakness, and meanness, and selfishness, and baseness, so that humanity might learn to overcome them, but he reserved his supreme contempt for those who oppose the general education of "the ma.s.ses," because it fills their mind with ideas above their station, or disqualifies them for the work they were intended to do.

This being interpreted, means in plain language that certain human beings who, because they possess wealth, or belong to what they arrogantly call the "upper cla.s.ses," claim the right to dominate those who have not a sufficient amount of money to be independent of them; to fix what they selfishly call "the sphere of the lower cla.s.ses"; and to prescribe the limits beyond which the children of the poor must not be educated, lest they be lifted beyond tame subserviency to their natural lords and masters, and fail to abase themselves dutifully or to be sufficiently grateful to those above them for the pittance they grudgingly give them for labouring in the menial occupations a.s.signed them.

d.i.c.kens despised all Barnacles, and Dedlocks, and Podsnaps, and Dombeys, and Merdles; he ridiculed all who violate the sacred bond of human brotherhood; but the vials of his bitterest wrath were poured upon those who because a child was born in the home of poor parents would therefore restrict its education and dwarf its soul.

Mr. Dombey, after the christening of Paul, called Mrs. Toodle before his guests, and in a very condescending but rigidly majestic manner told her he had graciously decided to send her son to the school of the Charitable Grinders. He prefaced his announcement by a brief statement of his views regarding education:

"I am far from being friendly," pursued Mr. Dombey, "to what is called by persons of levelling sentiments, general education. But it is necessary that the inferior cla.s.ses should continue to be taught to know their position, and to conduct themselves properly. So far I approve of schools."

In Mr. Dombey's eyes, as in some others that occasionally see the light, they only achieved that mighty piece of knowledge, the understanding of their own position, who showed a fitting reverence for his. It was not so much their merit that they knew themselves, as that they knew him, and bowed low before him.

There are thousands of Dombeys still. Two Canadian judges recently said in speaking of education precisely what Mr. Dombey and his cla.s.s said in the time of d.i.c.kens. One objected to educating the common people because it unfitted them for positions as house servants, and made them so outrageously independent that they would not bow (bend their bodies properly, bow their heads, and look reverently at the floor) when in the presence of their mistresses. The other said that the very derivation of the word "education" meant to lead out, and it was therefore clear that "education should be used to develop a few, 'lead them out,' beyond the ma.s.ses in order that they might be qualified for leadership." The necessary development to be imposed upon all but the favoured few in his system of government is willingness to follow leaders, and ignorance is the only condition that can make this possible. The glory of education is the awakening of the consciousness of freedom in the soul of the race and the revelation of the perfect law of liberty--individual right, social duty. The shackles, physical, intellectual, and spiritual, have fallen from humanity, as education has done its true work of emanc.i.p.ating the individual soul and revealing its own value and its responsibility for its brother souls.

The most brutal of all the characters described by d.i.c.kens is Bill Sikes.

The most degraded and despicable of his characters is Dennis the hangman in Barnaby Rudge. d.i.c.kens makes Bill Sikes and Dennis use the very same arguments, from their standpoint, that the so-called upper cla.s.ses have used and still do use against the education of the ma.s.ses.

Bill Sikes, referring to the need of small boys in the trade of burglary, said:

"I want a boy, and he mustn't be a big 'un. Lord!" said Mr. Sikes, reflectively, "if I'd only got that young boy of Ned, the chimbley sweeper's! He kept him small on purpose, and let him out by the job.

But the father gets lagged; and then the Juvenile Delinquent Society comes and takes the boy away from a trade where he was arning money, teaches him to read and write, and in time makes a 'prentice of him.

And so they go on," said Mr. Sikes, his wrath rising with the recollection of his wrongs, "so they go on; and, if they'd got money enough (which it's a Providence they haven't), we shouldn't have half a dozen boys left in the whole trade in a year or two."

And f.a.gin agreed with Bill Sikes.

When Hugh was formally admitted as a member of Lord Gordon's mob Dennis the hangman was much delighted at the addition of such a strong young man to the ranks, and d.i.c.kens adds:

If anything could have exceeded Mr. Dennis's joy on the happy conclusion of this ceremony it would have been the rapture with which he received the announcement that the new member could neither read nor write: those two arts being (as Mr. Dennis swore) the greatest possible curse a civilized community could know, and militating more against the professional emoluments and usefulness of the great const.i.tutional office he had the honour to hold than any adverse circ.u.mstances that could present themselves to his imagination.

Bill Sikes objected to education because it spoiled the boys for the trade for which he required them; Dennis the hangman objected to education because "it reduced the professional emoluments of his great const.i.tutional office," or, in other words, reduced the number who had to be hanged; and their reasons are just as respectable as the reason given by any man in any position who objects to free education because it unfits boys for certain trades, or girls for "service," or because "it fills their minds with ideas above their station," or because they have to pay their just share of its cost, or for any other narrow and selfish reason.

Selfishness is selfishness, and it is as utterly loathsome in a bishop as in Bill Sikes, in a judge as in Dennis the hangman.