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DICKENS AS AN EDUCATOR.

CHAPTER I.

THE PLACE OF DICKENS AMONG EDUCATORS.

DICKENS was England's greatest educational reformer. His views were not given to the world in the form of ordinary didactic treatises, but in the form of object lessons in the most entertaining of all stories. Millions have read his books, whereas but hundreds would have read them if he had written his ideals in the form of direct, systematic exposition. He is certainly not less an educator because his books have been widely read.

The highest form of teaching is the informal, the indirect, the incidental. The fact that his educational principles are revealed chiefly by the evolution of the characters in his novels and stories, instead of by the direct philosophic statements of scientific pedagogy or psychology, gives Dickens higher rank as an educator, not only because it gives him much wider influence, but because it makes his teaching more effective by arousing deep, strong feeling to give permanency and propulsive force to his great thoughts.

Was Dickens consciously and intentionally an educator? The prefaces to his novels; the preface to his Household Words; the educational articles he wrote; the prominence given in his books to child training in homes, institutions, and schools; the statements of the highest educational philosphy found in his writings; and especially the clearness of his insight and the profoundness of his educational thought, as shown by his condemnation of the wrong and his appreciation of the right in teaching and training the child, prove beyond question that he was

not only broad and true in his sympathy with childhood, but that he was a careful and progressive student of the fundamental principles of education.

Dickens deals with twenty-eight schools in his writings, evidently with definite purposes in each case: "Minerva House,” in Sketches by Boz; "Dotheboys Hall," in Nicholas Nickleby; Mr. Marton's two schools, Miss Monflather's school, and Mrs. Wackles's school, in Old Curiosity Shop; Dr. Blimber's school and The Grinders" " school, in Dombey and Son; Mr. Creakle's school, Dr. Strong's school, Agnes's school, and the school Uriah Heep attended, in David Copperfield; the school at which Esther was a day boarder and Miss Donney's school, in Bleak House; Mr. McChoakumchild's school, in Hard Times; Mr. Wopsle's great aunt's school, in Great Expectations; the evening school attended by Charley Hexam, Bradley Headstone's school, and Miss Peecher's school, in Our Mutual Friend; Phoebe's school, in Barbox Brothers; Mrs. Lemon's school, in Holiday Romance; Jemmy Lirriper's school, in Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings; Miss Pupford's school, in Tom Tiddler's Ground; the school described in The Haunted House; Miss Twinkleton's seminary, in Edwin Drood; the schools of the Stepney Union; The Schoolboy's Story; and Our School.

In addition to these twenty-eight schools, he describes a real school in American Notes, and makes brief references to The Misses Nettingall's establishment, Mr. Cripples's academy, Drowvey and Grimmer's school, the Foundation school attended by George Silverman, Scrooge's school, Pecksniff's school for architects, Fagin's school for training thieves, and three dancing schools, conducted by Mr. Baps, Signor Billsmethi, and Mr. Turveydrop. He introduces Mr. Pocket, George Silverman, and Canon Crisparkle as tutors, and Mrs. General, Miss Lane, and Ruth Pinch as governesses. Mrs. Sapsea had been the proprietor of an academy in Cloisterham. One of the first sketches by "Boz" was Our Schoolmaster, and his books are full of illustrations of wrong training of children in homes, in institutions, and by professional child trainers such as Mrs. Pipchin.

Clearly Dickens intended to reveal the best educational ideals, and to expose what he regarded as weak or wrong in school methods, and especially in child training.

Dickens was the first great English student of the kindergarten. His article on Infant Gardens, published in Household Words in 1855, is one of the most comprehensive articles ever written on the kindergarten philosophy. It shows a perfect appreciation of the physical, intellectual, and spiritual aims of Froebel, and a clear recognition of the value of right early training and of the influence of free self-activity in the development of individual power and character.

Dickens is beyond comparison the chief English apostle of childhood, and its leading champion in securing a just, intelligent, and considerate recognition of its rights by adulthood, which till his time had been deliberately coercive and almost universally tyrannical in dealing with children. He entered more fully than any other English author into sympathy with childhood from the standpoint of the child. Other educators and philanthropists have shown consideration for children, but Dickens had the perfect sympathy with childhood that sees and feels with the child, not merely for him.

Dickens attacked all forms of coercion in child training. He discussed fourteen types of coercion, from the brutal corporal punishment of Squeers and Creakle in schools, of Bumble and the Christian philanthropist with the white waistcoat in institutions, and of the Murdstones and Mrs. Gargery in homes, to the gentle but dwarfing firmness of the dominant will of placid Mrs. Crisparkle. He condemned all coercion because it prevents the full development of selfhood, and makes men negative instead of positive.

Among the many improvements made in child training none is more complete than the change in discipline. For this change the world is indebted chiefly to Froebel and Dickens. Froebel revealed the true philosophy, Dickens gave it wings; Froebel gave the thought, Dickens made the thought clear and strong by arousing energetic strong feeling in harmony with it.

Thought makes slow progress without a basis of feeling. Dickens opened the hearts of humanity in sympathy for suffering childhood, and thus gave Froebel's philosophy definiteness and propulsive power. The darkest clouds have been cleared away from child life during the past fifty years. Teachers, managers of institutions for the care of children, and parents are now severely punished by the laws of civilized countries for offences against children that were approved by the most enlightened Christian philosophy at the time of Froebel and Dickens as necessary duties essential in the proper training of childhood.

Dickens helped to break the bonds of the doctrine of child depravity. This doctrine had a most depressing influence on educators. It was not possible to reverence a child so long as he was regarded as a totally depraved thing. Froebel and Dickens did not teach that a child is totally divine, but they did believe that every child possesses certain elements of divinity which constitute selfhood or individuality, and that if this selfhood is developed in conscious unity with the Divine Fatherhood the child will attain to complete manhood. This thought gives the educator a new and a higher attitude toward childhood. The child is no longer a thing to be repressed, but a being to be developed. Men are not persistently dwarfed now by deliberate efforts to define a blighting consciousness of weakness; they are stimulated to broader effort and higher purpose by a true self-consciousness of individual power. The philosophy that trains men to recognise responsibility for the good in their nature is infinitely more productive educationally than that which teaches men responsibility for the evil in their nature.

Dickens taught that loving sympathy is the highest qualification of a true teacher. He showed this to be true by both positive and negative illustrations. Mr. Marton, the old schoolmaster in Old Curiosity Shop, was a perfect type of a sympathetic teacher. Dr. Strong was "the ideal of the whole school, for he was the kindest of men. Phoebe's school was such a good place for the little ones, because she loved them. Like Mr. Marton,

she had not studied the new systems of teaching, but loving sympathy gave her power and made her school a place in which the good in human hearts grew and blossomed naturally.

"You are fond of children and learned in the new systems of teaching them," said Mr. Jackson.

"Very fond of them," replied Phoebe, "but I know nothing of teaching beyond the pleasure I have in it, and the pleasure it gives me when they learn. Perhaps your overhearing my little scholars sing some of their lessons has led you so far astray as to think me a good teacher? Ah, I thought so! No, I have only read and been told about that system. It seems 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."

She had heard of the kindergarten and had caught some of its spirit of sympathy with the child, but she did not understand its methods. Jemmy Lirriper received perfectly sympathetic treatment from Mrs. Lirriper and the Major; Agnes loved her little scholars; Esther, who sympathized with everybody, loved her pupils, and was beloved by them; and the Bachelor, who introduced Mr. Marton to his second school, was a genuine boy in his comprehensive sympathy with real, boyish boyhood.

So throughout all his books Dickens pleads for kindly treatment for the child, and for complete sympathy with him in his childish feelings and interests. He gave the child the place of honour in literature for the first time, and he aroused the heart of the Christian world to the fact that it was treating the child in a very un-Christlike way. He pleaded for a better education for the child, for a free childhood, for greater liberty in the home and in the school, for fuller sympathy especially at the time when childhood merges into youth and when the mysteries of life have begun to make themselves conscious to the young mind and heart. The poorer the child the greater the need he revealed.

Canon Crisparkle, Esther Summerson, Mr. Jarndyce, Joe Gargery, Rose Maylie, Allan Woodcourt, Betty Higden, Mr. Sangsby, the Old Schoolmaster, the Bachelor,

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