Dickens As an Educator Part 39

The first school attended by Esther in Bleak House is apparently introduced to point out four evils in the social training of little children. The other children were all older than Esther; her G.o.dmother refused to allow her to accept invitations to go to the homes of the other girls; she was never allowed out to play; and while holidays were given on the birthdays of other girls, none were ever given on hers. The cruelty of two of these evils was made still more bitter by the revelation of the fact that she was not treated like other girls because of some wrong her mother was supposed to have done.

Miss Donny's school at Greenleaf was a charming place, conducted in a "precise, exact, and orderly way." Esther was taught well, and trained well. She was to be a governess, and so she taught as she learned. Her barren childhood made her sympathize with the girls whom she taught, especially the new girls, and she naturally won their love, and was therefore happy. Esther possessed every essential characteristic of a good teacher and a true woman. Miss Donny's school is one of the schools in which d.i.c.kens was approving, not condemning.

Mr. Cripple's academy is merely mentioned in Little Dorrit to complain about the habit of scribbling over buildings and on desks and walls in which boys used to indulge, and of which many evidences may yet be found on the fences and walls of the present day.

"The pupils of Mr. Cripple's appeared to have been making a copy book of the street door, it was so extensively scribbled over in pencil."

Pip's early education, in Great Expectations, was received in Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's school.

Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt kept an evening school in the village; that is to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means and unlimited infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to seven every evening, in the society of youth, who paid twopence per week each, for the improving opportunity of seeing her do it. She rented a small cottage, and Mr. Wopsle had the room upstairs, where we students used to overhear him reading aloud in a most dignified and terrific manner, and occasionally b.u.mping on the ceiling. There was a fiction that Mr.

Wopsle "examined" the scholars once a quarter. What he did on those occasions was to turn up his cuffs, stick up his hair, and give us Mark Antony's oration over the body of Caesar.

Much of my una.s.sisted self, and more by the help of Biddy than of Mr.

Wopsle's great-aunt, I struggled through the alphabet as if it had been a bramble bush; getting considerably worried and scratched by every letter. After that I fell among those thieves, the nine figures, who seemed every evening to do something new to disguise themselves and baffle recognition. But at last I began, in a purblind groping way, to read, write, and cipher on the very smallest scale.

Biddy was Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's granddaughter; I confessed myself quite unequal to the working out of the problem, what relation she was to Mr. Wopsle.

The educational scheme or course established by Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt may be resolved into the following synopsis: The pupils ate apples and put straws down one another's backs, until Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt collected her energies, and made an indiscriminate totter at them with a birch rod. After receiving the charge with every mark of derision, the pupils formed in line and buzzingly pa.s.sed a ragged book from hand to hand. The book had an alphabet in it, some figures and tables, and a little spelling--that is to say, it had had once. As soon as this volume began to circulate, Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt fell into a state of coma, arising either from sleep or a rheumatic paroxysm. The pupils then entered among themselves upon a compet.i.tive examination on the subject of boots, with the view of ascertaining who could tread the hardest upon whose toes. This mental exercise lasted until Biddy made a rush at them and distributed three defaced Bibles (shaped as if they had been unskilfully cut off the chumped end of something), more illegibly printed at the best than any curiosities of literature I have since met with, speckled all over with iron mould, and having various specimens of the insect world smashed between their leaves. This part of the course was usually lightened by several single combats between Biddy and refractory students. When the fights were over, Biddy gave out the number of a page, and then we all read aloud what we could--or what we couldn't--in a frightful chorus; Biddy leading with a high shrill monotonous voice, and none of us having the least notion of, or reverence for, what we were reading about. When this horrible din had lasted a certain time, it mechanically awoke Mr.

Wopsle's great-aunt, who staggered at a boy fortuitously, and pulled his ears. This was understood to terminate the course for the evening, and we emerged into the air with shrieks of intellectual victory.

The reasons for describing this school were to renew the attack on bad private schools, conducted without any state control and no supervision or inspection by competent officers, to show the need of better appliances and text-books, and to teach the utter folly of allowing pupils to try to read any book, especially the Bible, without understanding what they were reading. Incidentally d.i.c.kens taught that to use the Bible as it was used in Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's school develops a lack of reverence for it.

The evil of corporal punishment of the indiscriminate and irregular kind comes in for a share of condemnation in this wretched school.

d.i.c.kens returned to the attack on bad private schools in Our Mutual Friend. He had made a thorough study of the evening schools conducted in London--conducted many of them by organizations with good intentions.

There are a good many Sunday schools yet which in some respects are open to the criticisms made of Charley Hexam's first school.

The school at which young Charley Hexam had first learned from a book--the streets being, for pupils of his degree, the great preparatory establishment, in which very much that is never unlearned is learned without and before book--was a miserable loft in an unsavoury yard. Its atmosphere was oppressive and disagreeable; it was crowded, noisy, and confusing; half the pupils dropped asleep, or fell into a state of stupefaction; the other half kept them in either condition by maintaining a monotonous droning noise, as if they were performing, out of time and tune, on a ruder sort of bagpipe. The teachers, animated solely by good intentions, had no idea of execution, and a lamentable jumble was the upshot of their kind endeavours.

It was a school for all ages and for both s.e.xes. The latter were kept apart, and the former were part.i.tioned off into square a.s.sortments.

But all the place was pervaded by a grimly ludicrous pretence that every pupil was childish and innocent. This pretence, much favoured by the lady visitors, led to the ghastliest absurdities. Young women, old in the vices of the commonest and worst life, were expected to profess themselves enthralled by the good child's book, the Adventures of Little Margery, who resided in the village cottage by the mill; severely reproved and morally squashed the miller, when she was five and he was fifty; divided her porridge with singing birds; denied herself a new nankeen bonnet, on the ground that the turnips did not wear nankeen bonnets, neither did the sheep, who ate them; who plaited straw and delivered the dreariest orations to all comers, at all sorts of unseasonable times. So unwieldy young dredgers and hulking mudlarks were referred to the experiences of Thomas Twopence, who, having resolved not to rob (under circ.u.mstances of uncommon atrocity) his particular friend and benefactor, of eighteenpence, presently came into supernatural possession of three and sixpence, and lived a s.h.i.+ning light ever afterward. (Note, that the benefactor came to no good.) Several swaggering sinners had written their own biographies in the same strain; it always appearing from the lessons of those very boastful persons that you were to do good, not because it _was_ good, but because you were to make a good thing of it. Contrariwise, the adult pupils were taught to read (if they could learn) out of the New Testament; and by dint of stumbling over the syllables and keeping their bewildered eyes on the particular syllables coming round to their turn, were as absolutely ignorant of the sublime history as if they had never seen or heard of it. An exceedingly and confoundingly perplexing jumble of a school, in fact, where black spirits and gray, red spirits and white, jumbled, jumbled, jumbled, jumbled, jumbled every night. And particularly every Sunday night. For then an inclined plane of unfortunate infants would be handed over to the prosiest and worst of all the teachers with good intentions, whom n.o.body older would endure. Who, taking his stand on the floor before them, as chief executioner, would be attended by a conventional volunteer boy as executioner's a.s.sistant. When and where it first became the conventional system that a weary or inattentive infant in a cla.s.s must have its face smoothed downward with a hot hand, or when or where the conventional volunteer boy first beheld such system in operation, and became inflamed with a sacred zeal to administer it, matters not. It was the function of the chief executioner to hold forth, and it was the function of the acolyte to dart at sleeping infants, yawning infants, restless infants, whimpering infants, and smooth their wretched faces, sometimes with one hand, as if he were anointing them for a whisker; sometimes with both hands, applied after the fas.h.i.+on of blinkers. And so the jumble would be in action in this department for a mortal hour; the exponent drawling on to my dearerr childerrenerr, let us say for example, about the beautiful coming to the sepulchre; and repeating the word sepulchre (commonly used among infants) five hundred times and never once hinting what it meant; the conventional boy smoothing away right and left, as an infallible commentary; the whole hotbed of flushed and exhausted infants exchanging measles, rashes, whooping-cough, fever, and stomach disorders, as if they were a.s.sembled in High Market for the purpose.

Even in this temple of good intentions, an exceptionally sharp boy exceptionally determined to learn, could learn something, and, having learned it, could impart it so much better than the teachers; as being more knowing than they, and not at the disadvantage in which they stood toward the shrewder pupils. In this way it had come about that Charley Hexam had risen in the jumble, taught in the jumble, and been received from the jumble into a better school.

d.i.c.kens slaughtered evils by wholesale in this brief description. The influence of the great preparatory establishment, the street, was brought to the notice of thinking people.

The need of ventilation was pointed out, and the evil of crowding a large number of pupils into poorly ventilated rooms was made very clear. "Half the pupils dropped asleep, or fell into a state of waking stupefaction."

The teachers were untrained. "They were animated solely by good intentions, and had no idea of execution." The consequence was a lamentable jumble.

The separation of the s.e.xes was not approved.

The stupid blunder of treating all pupils alike, without regard to heredity, environment, or past experience, is aptly caricatured in giving the Adventures of Little Margery and the Experiences of Thomas Twopence to young women old in vice and to young male criminals in order to reform them.

Incidentally he disapproves of such literature for any children, and also of the autobiographies of "swaggering sinners."

The error pointed out in Pip's education of using the New Testament as a book from which pupils should be taught how to read is emphasized. "By dint of stumbling over the syllables and keeping their bewildered eyes on the particular syllables coming round to their turn, they were as absolutely ignorant of the sublime history as if they had never seen or heard of it."

He criticised severely the old custom of giving least attention to the choice of a teacher for the little ones. The old theory was: they can not learn much any way; anybody will do to teach them. "The inclined plane of unfortunate infants would be handed over to the prosiest and worst of all the teachers of good intentions, whom n.o.body older would endure."

The dreadful practice, still kept up in some heathen-producing Sunday schools, of having an "executioner's a.s.sistant to keep order," is severely condemned. "It was the function of the acolyte to dart at sleeping infants, restless infants, whimpering infants, and smooth, their wretched faces." The irritating influence of this operation on the suffering infants and the degrading effect on the executioner's a.s.sistant himself are clearly indicated.

But the greatest cruelty was in having the infants talked at in a droning voice for an hour by the chief executioner in a voice that would sometimes deaden, sometimes irritate their nervous systems, and in language they could not comprehend, about subjects entirely foreign to their experiences.

The danger of spreading contagious diseases in such badly ventilated schools was shown. d.i.c.kens was a leader in the department of sanitation both in homes and in schools.

The schools taught by Bradley Headstone and Miss Peecher were

newly built, and there were so many like them all over the country, that one might have thought the whole were but one restless edifice with the locomotive gift of Aladdin's palace.

All things in these schools--buildings, teachers, and pupils--were according to pattern, and engendered in the light of the latest Gospel according to Monotony.

These brief descriptions contained volumes of protest against the dead uniformity of school architecture, and against the sacrifice of individuality in schools. There are no other buildings in which there should be more care taken to have truly artistic architecture than in schools, because the children are influenced so much by their environment.

Correct taste may be formed more easily and more definitely by making the places in which children spend so much of their lives truly artistic than by studying the best authorities. The child's spirits should be toned by the colouring of the walls of the schoolroom, and by the pictures, statues, and other artistic articles around them.

The phrase "Gospel according to Monotony" is one of the most effective phrases ever used to describe the destruction of individuality.

The Peecher-Headstone schools were described as one of several protests against separating little girls from little boys in schools.

Phoebe, the happy young woman, who had never been able to sit up since she had been dropped by her mother when she was in a fit, is one of the sweetest of the characters of d.i.c.kens. She lay on a couch as high as the window and enjoyed the view as she made lace. She taught a little school part of the day, and when Barbox Brothers was at Mugby Junction he heard the children singing in the school, and watched them trooping home happily till he became so interested in what was going on in the little cottage that he went in to investigate. He found a small but very clean room, with no one there but Phoebe lying on her couch. He asked her if she was learned in the new system of teaching, meaning the kindergarten system, because he had heard her children singing as he pa.s.sed.

"No," she said, "I am very fond of children, but I know nothing of teaching, beyond the interest I have in it, and the pleasure it gives me, when they learn. I have only read and been told about the new system. It seemed 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. My school is a pleasure to me. I began it, when I was but a child, because it brought me and other children into company, don't you see?

I carry it on still, because it keeps children about me. I do it as love, not as work."

What a beautiful school! What an ideal spirit for every true teacher! What a wise man d.i.c.kens was to reveal so much sweetness and trueness in the life of such a woman as Phoebe! When Phoebe had overcome her restrictions so triumphantly, surely every one who dares to teach should try to rise above personal infirmities, and treat children like the "merry robins that they are."

The Holiday Romance, in which three young children write romances for the edification of their adult friends and relatives, to show how adult treatment impresses young children, is usually regarded as merely an exquisite piece of humour. In writing to Mr. Fields about the story d.i.c.kens said: "It made me laugh to that extent, that my people here thought I was out of my wits, until I gave it to them to read, when they did likewise."

There is more philosophy than fun in these stories, however, and when carefully studied they should aid in the "education of the grown-up people"--not merely the "grown-ups" for whom they were intended, but all "grown-ups." This is especially true of the last story, written by Miss Nettie Ashford, aged "half-past-six."

The story is about Mrs. Lemon's school and Mrs. Orange's family.

"The grown-up people" were the children in Nettie's story, and the children were the managers of all things at home and at school.

Mrs. Orange went to Mrs. Lemon's and told her that "her children were getting positively too much for her." She had two parents, two intimate friends of theirs, one G.o.dfather, two G.o.dmothers, and an aunt. She wished to send them to school, because they were "getting too much for her." Many real mothers give the same reason.

"Have you as many as eight vacancies?"

"I have just eight, ma'am," said Mrs. Lemon.

"Corporal punishment dispensed with?"

"Why, we do occasionally shake," said Mrs. Lemon, "and we have slapped. But only in extreme cases."

Mrs. Orange was shown through the school, and had the bad "grown-ups"

pointed out to her and their evil propensities explained to her in their hearing, as naturally as in a real school. She decided to send her family, and went home with her baby--which was a doll--saying, "These troublesome troubles are got rid of, please the pigs."

A small party for the grown-up children was given by Mrs. Alic.u.mpaine, and the arrangements made for the adults, and the ways in which they were treated by their child masters, and the criticisms on the way the seniors behaved are all instructive to thoughtful parents. The real things that adult people say and do appear delightfully stupid or exquisitely silly when made to appear as said and done by children.