CRAMMING.
Although Dickens paid much more attention in his writings to the methods
of training than to the methods of teaching, he studied the methods of
teaching sufficiently to recognise some of their gravest defects. Dombey
and Son is unquestionably the greatest book ever written to expose the
evils of cramming. Doctor Blimber, Cornelia, and Mr. Feeder, when closely
studied, represent in the varied phases of their work all the worst forms
of cramming.
Whenever a young gentleman was taken in hand by Doctor Blimber, he
might consider himself sure of a pretty tight squeeze. The doctor only
undertook the charge of ten young gentlemen, but he had always ready a
supply of learning for a hundred, on the lowest estimate; it was at
once the business and delight of his life to gorge the unhappy ten
with it.
In fact, Doctor Blimber's establishment was a great hothouse, in which
there was a forcing apparatus incessantly at work. All the boys blew
before their time. Mental green peas were produced at Christmas, and
intellectual asparagus all the year round. Mathematical gooseberries
(very sour ones too) were common at untimely seasons, and from mere
sprouts of bushes, under Doctor Blimber's cultivation. Every
description of Greek and Latin vegetable was got off the dryest twigs
of boys, under the frostiest circumstances. Nature was of no
consequence at all. No matter what a young gentleman was intended to
bear, Doctor Blimber made him bear to pattern, somehow or other. This
was all very pleasant and ingenious, but the system of forcing was
attended with its usual disadvantages. There was not the right taste
about the premature productions, and they didn't keep well. Moreover,
one young gentleman, with a swollen nose and an excessively large head
(the oldest of the ten who had "gone through" everything) suddenly
left off blowing one day, and remained in the establishment a mere
stalk. And people did say that the doctor had rather overdone it with
young Toots, and that when he began to have whiskers he left off
having brains.
The doctor was a portly gentleman in a suit of black, with strings at
his knees, and stockings below them. He had a bald head, highly
polished; a deep voice, and a chin so very double that it was a wonder
how he ever managed to shave into the creases. He had likewise a pair
of little eyes that were always half shut up and a mouth that was
always half expanded into a grin, as if he had, that moment, posed a
boy, and were waiting to convict him from his own lips. Insomuch that
when the doctor put his right hand into the breast of his coat, and,
with his other hand behind him and a scarcely perceptible wag of his
head, made the commonest observation to a nervous stranger, it was
like a sentiment from the sphinx, and settled his business.
Miss Blimber, too, although a slim and graceful maid, did no soft
violence to the gravity of the house. There was no light nonsense
about Miss Blimber. She kept her hair short and crisp, and wore
spectacles. She was dry and sandy with working in the graves of
deceased languages. None of your live languages for Miss Blimber. They
must be dead--stone dead--and then Miss Blimber dug them up like a
ghoul.
As to Mr. Feeder, B. A., Dr. Blimber's assistant, he was a kind of
human barrel organ, with a little list of tunes at which he was
continually working, over and over again, without any variation. He
might have been fitted up with a change of barrels, perhaps, in early
life, if his destiny had been favourable; but it had not been; and he
had only one, with which, in a monotonous round, it was his occupation
to bewilder the young ideas of Dr. Blimber's young gentlemen. The
young gentlemen were prematurely full of carking anxieties. They knew
no rest from the pursuit of stony-hearted verbs, savage
noun-substantives, inflexible syntactic passages, and ghosts of
exercises that appeared to them in their dreams. Under the forcing
system, a young gentleman usually took leave of his spirits in three
weeks. He had all the care of the world on his head in three months.
He conceived bitter sentiments against his parents or guardians in
four; he was an old misanthrope in five; envied Curtius that blessed
refuge in the earth in six; and at the end of the first twelvemonth
had arrived at the conclusion, from which he never afterward departed,
that all the fancies of the poets, and lessons of the sages, were a
mere collection of words and grammar, and had no other meaning in the
world.
But he went on blow, blow, blowing, in the doctor's hothouse all the
time; and the doctor's glory and reputation were great when he took
his wintry growth home to his relations and friends.
Upon the doctor's doorsteps one day, Paul stood with a fluttering
heart, and with his small right hand in his father's. His other hand
was locked in that of Florence. How tight the tiny pressure of that
one; and how loose and cool the other!
The doctor was sitting in his portentous study, with a globe at each
knee, books all round him, Homer over the door, and Minerva on the
mantelshelf. "And how do you do, sir?" he said to Mr. Dombey; "and how
is my little friend?"
"Very well I thank you, sir," returned Paul, answering the clock quite
as much as the doctor.
"Ha!" said Dr. Blimber. "Shall we make a man of him?"
"Do you hear, Paul?" added Mr. Dombey; Paul being silent.
"Shall we make a man of him?" repeated the doctor.
"I had rather be a child," replied Paul.
Paul's reply is one of the most touchingly beautiful of even Dickens's
wonderful expressions--wonderful in their exquisite simplicity and their
profound philosophy. When this book was written Dickens was beginning to
get the conception of the great truth, which he illustrated at length in
Hard Times and other works, that it is a crime against a child to rob it
of its childhood.
When Doctor Blimber in his cold, formal manner asked Paul "why he
preferred to be a child," the little fellow was unable to answer, and as
they stared at him, he at length put his hand on the neck of Florence and
burst into tears.
"Mrs. Pipchin," said his father in a querulous manner, "I am really
very sorry to see this."
"Never mind," said the doctor blandly, nodding his head to keep Mrs.
Pipchin back. "Nev-er mind; we shall substitute new cares and new
impressions, Mr. Dombey, very shortly. You would still wish my little
friend to acquire----"
"Everything, if you please, doctor," returned Mr. Dombey firmly.
"Yes," said the doctor, who, with his half-shut eyes and his usual
smile, seemed to survey Paul with the sort of interest that might
attach to some choice little animal he was going to stuff. "Yes,
exactly. Ha! We shall impart a great variety of information to our
little friend, and bring him quickly forward, I dare say. I dare say.
Quite a virgin soil, I believe you said, Mr. Dombey?"
On leaving, Mr. Dombey said to Paul:
"You'll try and learn a great deal here, and be a clever man, won't
you?"
"I'll try," returned the child wearily.
"And you'll soon be grown up now?" said Mr. Dombey.
"Oh! very soon!" replied the child. Once more the old, old look passed
rapidly across his features like a strange light.
After his father and Florence had left him the doctor said to Cornelia:
"Cornelia, Dombey will be your charge at first. Bring him on,
Cornelia, bring him on. Take him round the house, Cornelia, and
familiarize him with his new sphere. Go with that young lady, Dombey."
Cornelia took him first to the schoolroom. Here there were eight young
gentlemen in various stages of mental prostration, all very hard at
work, and very grave indeed.
Mr. Feeder, B. A., had his Virgil stop on, and was slowly grinding
that tune to four young gentlemen. Of the remaining four, two, who
grasped their foreheads convulsively, were engaged in solving
mathematical problems; one, with his face like a dirty window from
much crying, was endeavouring to flounder through a hopeless number of
lines before dinner; and one sat looking at his task in stony
stupefaction and despair--which, it seemed, had been his condition
ever since breakfast time.
After being shown through the dormitories, Cornelia told him dinner would
be ready in fifteen minutes, and that in the meantime he had better go
into the schoolroom among his "friends."
His friends were all dispersed about the room except the stony friend,
who remained immovable. Mr. Feeder was stretching himself in his gray
gown, as if, regardless of expense, he were resolved to pull the
sleeves off.
"Heigh-ho-hum!" cried Mr. Feeder, shaking himself like a cart horse
"oh dear me, dear me! Ya-a-a-ah!"
"You sleep in my room, don't you?" asked a solemn young gentleman,
whose shirt collar curled up the lobes of his ears.
"Master Briggs?" inquired Paul.
"Tozer," said the young gentleman.
Paul answered yes; and Tozer, pointing out the stony pupil, said that
it was Briggs. Paul had already felt certain that it must be either
Briggs or Tozer, though he didn't know why.
"Is yours a strong constitution?" inquired Tozer.
Paul said he thought not. Tozer replied that _he_ thought not also,
judging from Paul's looks, and that it was a pity, for it need be. He
then asked Paul if he were going to begin with Cornelia; and on Paul
saying "Yes," all the young gentlemen (Briggs excepted) gave a low
groan.
At dinner no boy was allowed to speak; every one was compelled to listen
to the tedious discourse of Doctor Blimber on the customs of the Romans.
The cramming of youth was continued with great dignity even during meals.
One boy, Johnson, was unfortunate enough to choke himself by too suddenly
swallowing his water in order to catch Doctor Blimber's eye when he began
an account of the dinners of Vitellius; and to punish him for his breach
of manners, Doctor Blimber said before the boys were dismissed from the
table:
"Johnson will repeat to-morrow morning before breakfast, without book,
and from the Greek Testament, the first chapter of the Epistle of
Saint Paul to the Ephesians. We will resume our studies, Mr. Feeder,
in half an hour."
It used to be a common practice to cultivate a loving reverence for God by
using the Bible as a means of punishment. This was in harmony with the old
educational and the old theological ideal of punishment, as the supreme
means available for guiding children properly. It was considered a
perfectly appropriate use of the best book to use it for this best of
purposes.
The young gentlemen bowed and withdrew; Mr. Feeder did likewise.
During the half hour the young gentlemen, broken into pairs, loitered
arm in arm up and down a small piece of ground behind the house. But
nothing happened so vulgar as play. Punctually at the appointed time
the gong was sounded, and the studies, under the joint auspices of
Doctor Blimber and Mr. Feeder, were resumed.
Tea was served in a style no less polite than dinner; and after tea
the young gentlemen, rising and bowing as before, withdrew to fetch up
the unfinished tasks of that day or to get up the already looming
tasks of to-morrow. After prayers and light refreshments at eight
o'clock or so, the "young gentlemen" were sent to bed by the doctor
rising and solemnly saying, "We will resume our studies at seven
to-morrow"; the pupils bowed again, and went to bed.
In the confidence of their own room upstairs, Briggs said his head
ached ready to split, and that he should wish himself dead if it
wasn't for his mother and a blackbird he had at home. Tozer didn't say
much, but he sighed a good deal, and told Paul to look out, for his
turn would come to-morrow. After uttering those prophetic words, he
undressed himself moodily and got into bed. Briggs was in his bed too,
and Paul in his bed too, before the weak-eyed young man appeared to
take away the candle, when he wished them good-night and pleasant
dreams. But his benevolent wishes were in vain as far as Briggs and
Tozer were concerned; for Paul, who lay awake for a long while, and
often woke afterward, found that Briggs was ridden by his lesson as a
nightmare; and that Tozer, whose mind was affected in his sleep by
similar causes, in a minor degree, talked unknown tongues, or scraps
of Greek and Latin--it was all one to Paul--which, in the silence of
night, had an inexpressibly wicked and guilty effect.
As Paul was going downstairs in the morning Miss Blimber called him into
her room, and, pointing to a pile of new books on her table, said:
"These are yours, Dombey."
"All of 'em, ma'am?" said Paul.
"Yes," returned Miss Blimber; "and Mr. Feeder will look you out some
more very soon, if you are as studious as I expect you will be,
Dombey."
"Thank you, ma'am," said Paul.
"I am going out for a constitutional," resumed Miss Blimber; "and
while I am gone--that is to say, in the interval between this and
breakfast, Dombey--I wish you to read over what I have marked in these
books, and to tell me if you quite understand what you have got to
learn. Don't lose time, Dombey, for you have none to spare, but take
them downstairs, and begin directly."
"Yes, ma'am," answered Paul.
There were so many of them, that although Paul put one hand under the
bottom book and his other hand and his chin on the top book, and
hugged them all closely, the middle book slipped out before he reached
the door, and then they all tumbled down on the floor. Having at last
amassed the whole library and climbed into his place, he fell to work,
encouraged by a remark from Tozer to the effect that he "was in for it
now"; which was the only interruption he received till breakfast time.
At that meal, for which he had no appetite, everything was quite as
solemn and genteel as at the others; and when it was finished, he
followed Miss Blimber upstairs.
"Now, Dombey," said Miss Blimber, "how have you got on with those
books?"
They comprised a little English, and a deal of Latin--names of things,
declensions of articles and substantives, exercises thereon, and
preliminary rules--a trifle of orthography, a glance at ancient
history, a wink or two at modern ditto, a few tables, two or three
weights and measures, and a little general information. When poor Paul
had spelled out number two, he found he had no idea of number one;
fragments whereof afterward obtruded themselves into number three,
which slided into number four, which, grafted itself on to number two.
So that whether twenty Romuluses made a Remus, or hic haec hoc was troy
weight, or a verb always agreed with an ancient Briton, or three
times four was Taurus a bull, were open questions with him.
"Oh, Dombey, Dombey!" said Miss Blimber, "this is very shocking."
So Paul's cramming went on day by day. The delicate little boy, who should
not have been sent to school at all, was forced to memorize confused
masses of words that had no meaning to him, but he learned to repeat the
words, and so got the credit of doing well, and because he learned easily
was driven harder and harder. The more easily he carried his burden the
higher it was piled on his back.
It was not that Miss Blimber meant to be too hard upon him, or that
Doctor Blimber meant to bear too heavily on the young gentlemen in
general. Cornelia merely held the faith in which she had been bred;
and the doctor, in some partial confusion of his ideas, regarded the
young gentlemen as if they were all doctors, and were born grown up.
Comforted by the applause of the young gentlemen's nearest relations,
and urged on by their blind vanity and ill-considered haste, it would
have been strange if Doctor Blimber had discovered his mistake, or
trimmed his swelling sails to any other tack.
Thus in the case of Paul. When Doctor Blimber said he made great
progress, and was naturally clever, Mr. Dombey was more bent than ever
on his being forced and crammed. In the case of Briggs, when Doctor
Blimber reported that he did not make great progress yet, and was not
naturally clever, Briggs senior was inexorable in the same purpose. In
short, however high and false the temperature at which the doctor kept
his hothouse, the owners of the plants were always ready to lend a
helping hand at the bellows and to stir the fire.
When the midsummer vacation approached, no indecent manifestations of
joy were exhibited by the leaden-eyed young gentlemen assembled at
Doctor Blimber's. Any such violent expression as "breaking up" would
have been quite inapplicable to that polite establishment. The young
gentlemen oozed away, semi-annually, to their own homes; but they
never broke up. They would have scorned the action.
Tozer, who was constantly galled and tormented by a starched white
cambric neckerchief, which he wore at the express desire of Mrs.
Tozer, his parent, who, designing him for the Church, was of opinion
that he couldn't be in that forward state of preparation too
soon--Tozer said, indeed, that choosing between two evils, he thought
he would rather stay where he was, than go home. However inconsistent
this declaration might appear with that passage in Tozer's essay on
the subject, wherein he had observed "that the thoughts of home and
all its recollections awakened in his mind the most pleasing emotions
of anticipation and delight," and had also likened himself to a Roman
general, flushed with a recent victory over the Iceni, or laden with
Carthaginian spoil, advancing within a few hours' march of the
Capitol, presupposed, for the purposes of the simile, to be the
dwelling place of Mrs. Tozer, still it was very sincerely made. For it
seemed that Tozer had a dreadful uncle, who not only volunteered
examinations of him, in the holidays, on abstruse points, but twisted
innocent events and things, and wrenched them to the same fell
purpose. So that if this uncle took him to the play, or, on a similar
pretence of kindness, carried him to see a giant, or a dwarf, or a
conjurer, or anything, Tozer knew he had read up some classical
allusion to the subject beforehand, and was thrown into a state of
mortal apprehension; not foreseeing where he might break out, or what
authority he might not quote against him.
As to Briggs, _his_ father made no show of artifice about it. He never
would leave him alone. So numerous and severe were the mental trials
of that unfortunate youth in vacation time, that the friends of the
family (then resident near Bayswater, London) seldom approached the
ornamental piece of water in Kensington Gardens without a vague
expectation of seeing Master Briggs's hat floating on the surface and
an unfinished exercise lying on the bank. Briggs, therefore, was not
at all sanguine on the subject of holidays; and these two sharers of
little Paul's bedroom were so fair a sample of the young gentlemen in
general, that the most elastic among them contemplated the arrival of
those festive periods with genteel resignation.
Dickens did not wish to lay all the blame for the stupid process of
cramming on the teachers. He properly revealed to parents that they were
even more to blame than the teachers, because they got what they
demanded. Doctor Blimber summed up the whole philosophy of the adulthood
of his time in regard to a child's education when he said to his daughter,
"Bring him on, Cornelia! Bring him on!"
The standard of knowledge cramming fixed by parents and school boards is
changing very slowly. Even yet a teacher's success is measured and his
chances of re-engagement decided in most places by the answer to the
question, "How does he bring the children on?"
When asked by Doctor Blimber what he wished his little sickly son to
learn, Mr. Dombey answered, "Oh, everything."
When Paul learned easily, his father pressed for more studies; and because
Briggs was dull, his father demanded that he be driven harder at school,
and made the poor boy's life miserable at home by tedious lessons during
the holidays.
The uncle who made Tozer wretched by asking him unexpected questions on
all occasions is a type of an ogre who sometimes blights the lives of
children still.
Dickens had a beautiful sympathy with childhood in its sufferings not
merely on account of deliberate cruelty and neglect, but because of the
burdens placed upon it by adults who, with the best intentions, robbed it
of its natural rights of joyousness and freedom.
Whenever Doctor Blimber was informed that Paul was "old-fashioned" or
"peculiar," he said, as he had said when Paul first came, that study would
do much; and he also said, as he said on that occasion, "Bring him on,
Cornelia! Bring him on!"
Just before the close of the term Paul fainted and had to be carried to
his room, and after an examination the physician advised Doctor Blimber to
"release the young gentleman from his books just now, the vacation being
so near at hand."
It was so very considerate to release him from study, when he was utterly
unable to study any longer.
At the close of the school party when he was leaving--
Cornelia, taking both Paul's hands in hers, said, "Dombey, Dombey, you
have always been my favourite pupil. God bless you!" And it showed,
Paul thought, how easily one might do injustice to a person; for Miss
Blimber meant it--though she _was_ a Forcer.
Paul never returned to school. His life was sacrificed to his father's
desire to have him "learn everything."
In a brief look at the results of Doctor Blimber's teaching, Dickens
tersely outlines three common results of cramming:
Mr. Tozer, now a young man of lofty stature, in Wellington boots, was
so extremely full of antiquity as to be nearly on a par with a genuine
ancient Roman in his knowledge of English; a triumph that affected his
good parents with the tenderest emotions, and caused the father and
mother of Mr. Briggs (whose learning, like an ill-arranged luggage,
was so tightly packed that he couldn't get at anything he wanted) to
hide their diminished heads. The fruit laboriously gathered from the
tree of knowledge by this latter young gentleman, in fact, had been
subjected to so much pressure, that it had become a kind of
intellectual Norfolk Biffin, and had nothing of its original form or
flavour remaining. Master Bitherstone now, on whom the forcing system
had the happier and not uncommon effect of leaving no impression
whatever, when the forcing apparatus ceased to work was in a much more
comfortable plight; and being then on shipboard, bound for Bengal,
found himself forgetting with such admirable rapidity, that it was
doubtful whether his declensions of noun-substantives would hold out
to the end of the voyage.
Dickens, in his very able description of Doctor Blimber's school, directs
attention to nearly every phase of the evils of cramming. Toots is an
illustration of the destruction of mental power by the "hard mathematics"
and other subjects, when they are taught improperly. It is a serious
result of an educational system, when the brightest young men "cease to
have brains when they begin to have whiskers."
Paul's experience is used to show the terrible physical evils of cramming
in any life, especially in the life of a delicate child. Paul was killed
by his father and Doctor Blimber. He should have lived.
Cornelia's aversion to live languages and her delight in "digging up the
dead languages like a ghoul," and the address presented to Doctor Blimber
"which contained very little of the mother tongue, but fifteen quotations
from the Latin and seven from the Greek," were intended as a protest
against paying too much attention to the classics to the neglect of other
studies. He returned to this subject again in Bleak House. Richard
Carstone "could make Latin verses," but although his powers were naturally
excellent he was a complete failure in life. He was not educated properly,
notwithstanding his ability to make Latin verses.
Mr. Feeder is the perfect type of a mechanical crammer, "a sort of barrel
organ with a little list of tunes at which he was continually working,
over and over again, without any variation." What suggestiveness there is
in the sentence "Mr. Feeder had his Virgil stop on, and was grinding that
tune to four young gentlemen"!
"Bewilder the young ideas of Doctor Blimber's young gentlemen," used to be
considered too strong a criticism, but modern psychology fully sustains
Dickens in his view. "Arrested development" is well understood now to
result from too much grinding at any one subject or department of a
subject, from the monotonous drill of the crammer, or from directing the
child's attention too much to any one study.
The influence of uninteresting study on the spirits was clear to Dickens.
There is inspiration and physical advantage of a decided character in the
successful study of an interesting subject--interesting to the child, of
course--if the process of study includes the true self-activity of the
child. There is blight, and nervous irritation, and "carking anxiety," if
the child works under compulsion at the dead matter of study. No wonder
the young gentlemen at Doctor Blimber's took leave of their spirits in
three weeks, and passed through the subsequent stages of deeper gloom
described by Dickens. They had none of the joy of living interest in their
study, none of the vital enthusiasm connected with independent thought,
none of the health that comes from pleasant occupation, none of the
happiness that is found in self-activity alone.
One of the best criticisms of wrong methods of teaching done by Mr. Feeder
is the criticism of the method of teaching literature. "At the end of the
first twelvemonth the boys had arrived at the conclusion, from which they
never afterward departed, that all the fancies of the poets, and the
lessons of the sages, were a mere collection of words and grammar, and had
no other meaning in the world." There are high schools yet in which more
attention is paid to the "words and grammar" than to the sacred and
inspiring thought of the author.
A professor in one of the leading educational institutions of America
travelled in Scotland with his daughters. They were graduates of a high
school. He observed with deep regret that they visited the mountains, and
valleys, and rivers, and islands, and battlefields, and cathedrals of the
land, that to him had been filled with sacred interests by the writings of
Scott, and saw them all without emotion. One day he said to them: "Why are
you not interested here? To me every foot of ground here is full of living
memories. Scott describes it in The Lady of the Lake." One of them
explained the reason. "Oh!" she said, "we're sick of Scott; we had enough
of him in the high school."
There are Feeders yet who profane the temple of literature; who never
connect the souls of their pupils with the soul life of the authors they
study. Very few of the graduates of high schools have learned the high art
of loving literature for its beauty and ennobling thought, fewer still
have learned how to dig successfully in the rich mines of wealth that
literature contains, and even a smaller number have learned to transmute
the revelations of literature into character and new revelations in life
or richer literature for the happiness and culture of coming generations.
We may yet learn from Dickens.
Tozer became an antique pedant, learned but not educated.
Briggs grew to be dull and heavy-witted, and had his "knowledge so tightly
packed that he couldn't get at anything he wanted."
Bitherstone was one of the few fortunate fellows who are gifted with
natural power to pass through the cramming system without being affected
seriously in any way. They get little, if any, good, and they speedily
forget the wrongs inflicted upon them and the learning with which their
teachers attempted to cram them.
Briggs showed the evil effects of cramming in the destruction of
individuality. "His fruit had nothing of its original flavour remaining."
This is one of the general charges made against Doctor Blimber's forcing
establishment, or hothouse. "Nature was of no consequence at all. No
matter what a young gentleman was intended to bear, Doctor Blimber made
him bear to pattern somehow or other." The destruction of selfhood was the
great evil of the old system of teaching.
Another important criticism made by Dickens of the hothouse system is
worthy of special attention by educators. He recognised the evil effects
of giving any study or work to children, that is naturally adapted to a
later stage of their development. The development of children is always
arrested when the work of a higher stage is forced into a lower stage of
their growth. The true evolution of the child consists in a growth through
a series of progressive and interdependent stages. This was not recognised
in the educational system Dickens desired to improve. It is not yet
recognised to a very large extent in practice. "All the boys blew before
their time," in Doctor Blimber's school. "The doctor, in some partial
confusion of ideas, regarded the young gentlemen as if they were all
doctors, and were born grown up."
Dickens was so careful to make his names and terms express volumes of
meaning that he probably meant the phrase "mathematical gooseberries" to
be especially significant. The fact that they were grown on "mere sprouts
of bushes," and as a consequence were "very sour ones, too," reveals the
philosophy since made so clear by Doctor Harris, that early "drilling" in
arithmetic has been one of the prolific causes of arrested development in
children. The appeal against the common practice of growing "every
description of Greek and Latin vegetable" _from_ "_dry twigs of boys_" was
comprehensive and timely. They were not merely twigs, but dry twigs in
whom the sap had not begun to circulate freely. No expressions, no
volumes, could state the evil of untimely cramming more clearly than this
group of phrases used by Dickens in describing Doctor Blimber's school.
"The frostiest circumstances" is another of the thought-laden phrases,
which was evidently intended to warn teachers against the mistake of
trying to produce any intellectual fruit at untimely periods of the
child's development. "Wintry growth" means unseasonable or untimely
development.
The condemnation of the feeling shown by Paul in parting from Florence,
and the Doctor's cold-blooded observation, "Never mind; we shall
substitute new cares and new impressions, Mr. Dombey, very shortly," were
intended to show how utterly the knowledge cramming ideal had prevented
the recognition of the fundamental fact that feeling is the basis and the
battery power of intellectual force and energy. The same principle is
taught by Cornelia's shock at Paul's affection for old Glubb, and her
father's summary settlement of the case, when he realized that the little
child was intensely affectionate and sympathetic. "Ha!" said the Doctor,
shaking his head, "this--is--bad, but study will do much."
Dickens deals in a most thorough manner with the absolute wickedness of
neglecting, or attempting to smother feeling in the training and education
of children in Hard Times. He undoubtedly received his clear conceptions
relating to the intellectual value of feeling from Froebel's writings.
The bad effects of cramming on the physical constitution of children are
pointed out in "the convulsive grasping of their foreheads" by the two
boys engaged in solving mathematical problems. Nervous exhaustion is here
plainly indicated. They were "very feverish," too, and poor Briggs was in
even a worse condition, for "he was in a state of stupefaction and was
flabby and quite cold." Both Briggs and Tozer frightened Paul the first
night he tried to sleep in their room by talking Latin and Greek in their
dreams. Paul thought they were swearing. Education should never interfere
with a child's sleep, either with its soundness or its duration. Even the
boys told Paul on the first day of his school life that he would need a
good constitution to withstand the strain at Doctor Blimber's.
The exhaustive and exasperating practice of piling up arrears of work, so
naturally connected with cramming--in fact, so essential a part of the
unnatural process--comes in for its share of condemnation, too. One of the
boys, "whose face was like a dirty window, from much crying, was
endeavouring to flounder through a hopeless number of lines." The friends
of Briggs were constantly in terror "lest they should find his hat
floating on a pond and an unfinished exercise on the bank."
The same practice of charging up arrears of work is condemned in David
Copperfield by associating it with the hateful Murdstones.
The crammer's absolute indifference and contempt for any semblance of
correlation in studies is revealed by Cornelia's action in giving him a
collection of books on his first morning before school with instructions
to study them at the places she had marked for him. No wonder that "when
poor Paul had spelled out number two he found he had no idea of number
one; fragments whereof afterward obtruded themselves into number three,
which sidled into number four, which grafted itself on to number two--so
that whether twenty Romuluses made a Remus, or hic haec hoc was troy
weight, or a verb always agreed with an ancient Briton, or three times
four was Taurus, a bull, were open questions with him."
Whenever words are given before thought, or as a substitute for thought,
and without definite relationship to the thought already in the mind, they
lie in the mind as unrelated, and therefore unavailable knowledge.
A boy in London had received considerable historical teaching, and his
mind had made a certain kind of unity out of the confused mass. When asked
at his final examination "What he knew about Cromwell," he answered:
"Cromwell interfered with the Irish, and he was put in prison. When he was
in prison he wrote the Pilgrim's Progress, and he afterward married Mrs.
O'Shea."
This was equalled by the other boy who wrote at an examination: "Wolsey
was a famous general who fought in the Crimean War, and who, after being
decapitated several times, said to Cromwell: 'If I had served you as you
have served me I would not have been deserted in my old age.'"
Paul's studies were always dark and crooked to him till Florence bought
copies of his books and studied them, and by patient sympathy made all
that had been dark light, and all that had been crooked straight.
The habit of giving definitions of abstractions to children, and expecting
the definitions alone to be comprehended by children, is held up to
deserved ridicule in the explanation of the word "analysis" to Paul, when
Cornelia proposed to read the analysis of his character.
"If my recollection serves me, the word analysis, as opposed to synthesis,
is thus defined by Walker: 'The resolution of an object, whether of the
senses or of the intellect, into its first elements.' As opposed to
synthesis, you observe. _Now_ you know what analysis is, Dombey."
How perfectly simple and clear and expanding this would be to a child's
mind! Dickens says: "Dombey didn't seem absolutely blinded by the light
let in upon his intellect, but he made Miss Blimber a little bow."
What loose habits of thought, and how much hypocrisy and mental vagueness
are caused by using words instead of realities in the early teaching of
children, and then asking them if they understand what we have been
telling them! The "little bow" has usually a demoralizing effect.
It is a mere farce to call the committing to memory of definitions
"education."
Whatever the subjects, it is a dwarfing process, whether the definitions
are memorized at home or at school, silently, by oral repetition, or by
singing them. All definition learning as the origin of thought is certain
to destroy interest and arrest development and lead to inaccuracy of
thought. Miss Le Row's collection of blunders made by children could never
have been made if the children had been taught properly.
Such mistakes as "The body is mostly composed of water, and about one half
of avaricious tissue" or "Parasite, a kind of umbrella," or "Emphasis,
putting more distress on one word than on another," should suggest to
teachers the absurdity of committing definitions to memory. It is one of
the weakest forms of cramming, and is most ridiculous and least useful
when the memorizing is done by simultaneous oral repetition.
Hard Times exposes the evils of cramming in the teaching practised in the
normal school in which Mr. M'Choakumchild was trained, and in the
definition repetition as given by Bitzer, and so highly praised by Mr.
Gradgrind:
"Bitzer, your definition of a horse:"
"Quadruped, graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely, twenty-four grinders,
four eyeteeth, and twelve incisors. Sheds coat in the spring; in
marshy countries sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be
shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth."
How clear this would make the conception of a horse to a man who had never
seen one! Sissy Jupe, too, is used to show the failure of cramming to
educate a girl of quick intellect and strong emotions. She could not be
crammed.
M'Choakumchild reported that she had a very dense head for figures;
that, once possessed with a general idea of the globe, she took the
smallest conceivable interest in its exact measurements; that she was
extremely slow in the acquisition of dates, unless some pitiful
incident happened to be connected therewith; that she would burst into
tears on being required (by the mental process) immediately to name
the cost of two hundred and forty-seven muslin caps at fourteenpence
half-penny; that she was as low down in the school as low as could be;
that after eight weeks of induction into the elements of political
economy, she had only yesterday been set right by a prattler three
feet high, for returning to the question, "What is the first principle
of this science?" the absurd answer, "To do unto others as I would
that they should do unto me."
Mr. Gradgrind observed, shaking his head, that all this was very bad;
that it showed the necessity of infinite grinding at the mill of
knowledge as per system, schedule, blue book, report, and tabular
statements A to Z; and that Jupe "must be kept to it." So Jupe was
kept to it, and became low-spirited, but no wiser.
Dickens makes the artist in Somebody's Luggage say:
"Who are you passing every day at your competitive excruciations? The
fortunate candidates whose heads and livers you have turned upside
down for life? Not you, you are really passing the crammers and
coaches."
And Jemmy Lirriper, in describing his teacher, said: "Oh, he was a Tartar!
Keeping the boys up to the mark, holding examinations once a month,
lecturing upon all sorts of subjects at all sorts of times, and knowing
everything in the world out of a book."
Dickens saw the evils of competitive examinations more clearly than many
educators do two generations after him.
When educators in schools, colleges, and universities learn a better way
to promote pupils, to classify men and women and to rank them at
graduation, than by holding promotion and graduation examinations cramming
will be of no use, and there shall be no more cramming.
Dickens was right as usual. The crammers and coaches are those who are
tested by "competitive excruciations"; and how those who force through
most students boast and strut and lord it over the less successful
crammers and coaches on commencement days and other public occasions! What
a misleading mockery examinations are as tests of power and character!
Few even of Dickens's phrases contain such a condensation of fact and
philosophy as the phrase "whose heads and livers you have turned upside
down for life." Few phrases deserve more careful consideration from
educators.
Dickens makes the effect on the head still more startling by the
description of Miss Wozenham's brother in Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy. "Miss
Wozenham out of her small income had to support a brother that had had the
misfortune to soften his brain against the hard mathematics."
In the same story he laughs at the practical results of language cramming
usually done in the schools:
And the way in which Jemmy spoke his French was a real charm. It was
often wanted of him, for whenever anybody spoke a syllable to me I
says "Noncomprenny, you're very kind but it's no use--Now Jemmy!" and
then Jemmy he fires away at 'em lovely, the only thing wanting in
Jemmy's French being as it appeared to me that he hardly ever
understood a word of what they said to him, which made it scarcely of
the use it might have been.
Dickens attempted to picture the feelings of a boy toward his teachers in
the days when cramming was almost universally practised in the story of
Lieutenant-Colonel Robin Redforth, aged nine. When the Latin master was
captured, he was saved by Captain Boldheart from the punishment of death
to which he was condemned by the crew of The Beauty. Captain Boldheart had
been one of his pupils, and he said: "Without taking your life, I must yet
forever deprive you of the power of spiting other boys. I shall turn you
adrift in this boat. You will find in her two oars, a compass, a bottle of
rum, a small cask of water, a piece of pork, a bag of biscuit, and my
Latin grammar. Go! and spite the natives if you can find any."
When he afterward released him from the savages who were about to eat him,
he granted him his life for the second time on condition:
"1. That he should never under any circumstances presume to teach any boy
anything any more.
"2. That, if taken back to England, he should pass his life in travelling
to find out boys who wanted their exercises done, and should do their
exercises for nothing, and never say a word about it."
When it finally became necessary to hang the Latin master, Boldheart
"impressively pointed out to him that this is what spiters come to."
There are many kinds of cram that yet pass as fairly respectable in
schools and universities. When the teachers or the professors give notes
to be copied by the pupils and memorized, they are cramming. When teachers
are storing the memories of children with facts, tables, dates, etc., to
be used at some future time, they are cramming. All memorizing by
repetition of words, even if they are understood, is cram, if the pupil
can work the thought into his life by repetition of process or of
operation. Words can never take the place of self-activity, nor even of
activity.
So long as knowledge storing is placed above character development,
examinations by "examiners" will retain their power for evil, and so long
as such examinations are held cramming will continue.
All processes that attempt to educate from without inward, instead of from
within outward, are in the last analysis cram. The selfhood must be active
in going out for the new knowledge. The child must himself be originative,
directive, and executive in the learning process if cram is to be avoided
completely. This is the only sure way to secure perfect apperception, and
without apperception the new knowledge lies dormant, if not dead, and
unrelated in the memory until it disappears, as did Bitherstone's. His
declensions, according to Dickens, were not likely to last out his journey
from England to India.