MINOR SCHOOLS.
The schools of Squeers, Doctor Blimber, Mr. Creakle, Doctor Strong, and
Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. M'Choakumchild are the most celebrated schools of
Dickens, and they contain the greater part of his pedagogical teaching.
His other schools are, however, worthy of very careful study.
One of the first of the Sketches by Boz described a man who had passed
through many vicissitudes, and at length was reduced to such poverty that
he applied to the parish board for charity. This led to his appointment as
a schoolmaster. Dickens clearly intended to teach the lesson, afterward
emphasized in Nicholas Nickleby and other books, that poverty should not
establish a claim to the position of a school-teacher.
Minerva Hall, also in Sketches by Boz, reveals "one of those public
nuisances, a spoiled child," spoiled because his papa was too busy with
public duties and his mamma with society duties to train him properly. It
also shows the reason Mrs. Cornelius Brook Dingwall had for sending her
daughter to school. She said: "One of my principal reasons for parting
with my daughter is that she has lately acquired some sentimental ideas,
which it is most desirable to eradicate from her young mind." Here the
public nuisance fell out of a chair, and mamma and papa showed their usual
mode of training him. Mamma called him "a naughty boy," and threatened "to
send for James to take him away"--both name and threat being wrong. Papa
merely excused the cherub on the ground of "his great flow of spirits."
The school also shows the silly training of so-called "finishing
schools," as chiefly intended to teach young ladies the small
conventionalities of "society."
In The Old Curiosity Shop there are four schools: Mr. Marton's two
schools, Mrs. Wackles's school, and Miss Monflathers's school. Mr.
Marton's first school was introduced to reveal all the good qualities that
Mr. Squeers lacked, especially sympathy. Mr. Marton was the immediate
successor of Mr. Squeers, and they possessed directly opposite traits of
character in their relationship to childhood. Mr. Squeers was coarse,
unsympathetic, and coercive. Mr. Marton was kind, considerate, and a
perfect type of true sympathy with the child. It is reasonable to believe
that Mr. Marton and Mr. Squeers were drawn as companion pictures to
illustrate and enforce the same truth--that sympathy with the child is the
fundamental element in the character of a true teacher.
The old bachelor emphasized this when he said to Mr. Marton, "You are none
the worse teacher for having learned humanity."
There is a great deal of food for psychological and pedagogical study in
the introduction of the boys he was to teach in his second school, given
by the bachelor to Mr. Marton. The bachelor was as full of genuine boyish
spirit as it is possible for any adult to be, and was in some respects a
more perfect type for an ideal teacher than Mr. Marton. Mr. Marton had the
tender, spiritual sympathy of a true woman, the motherhood spirit that
constitutes the atmosphere in which all right elements of childhood find
their richest development; the bachelor had the perfect manly sympathy
that enabled him to enter heartily into boy life. He had especially the
power of recognising in the things for which boys are often rebuked the
best evidences of their strength, and he could remember his own boyhood so
well as to fully sympathize _with_ the boys. Mr. Marton and the bachelor
reveal the whole range of sympathetic possibilities.
When nothing more was left to be done he charged the boy to run off
and bring his schoolmates to be marshalled before their new master and
solemnly reviewed.
"As good a set of fellows, Marton, as you'd wish to see," he said,
turning to the schoolmaster when the boy was gone; "but I don't let
'em know I think so. That wouldn't do at all."
The messenger soon returned at the head of a long row of urchins,
great and small, who, being confronted by the bachelor at the house
door, fell into various convulsions of politeness; clutching their
hats and caps, squeezing them into the smallest possible dimensions,
and making all manner of bows and scrapes, which the little old
gentleman contemplated with excessive satisfaction, and expressed his
approval of by a great many nods and smiles. Indeed, his approbation
of the boys was by no means so scrupulously disguised as he had led
the schoolmaster to suppose, inasmuch as it broke out in sundry loud
whispers and confidential remarks which were perfectly audible to them
every one.
"This first boy, schoolmaster," said the bachelor, "is John Owen; a
lad of good parts, sir, and frank, honest temper; but too thoughtless,
too playful, too light-headed by far. That boy, my good sir, would
break his neck with pleasure, and deprive his parents of their chief
comfort--and between ourselves, when you come to see him at hare and
hounds, taking the fence and ditch by the finger post, and sliding
down the face of the little quarry, you'll never forget it. It's
beautiful!"
John Owen having been thus rebuked, and being in perfect possession of
the speech aside, the bachelor singled out another boy.
"Now look at that lad, sir," said the bachelor. "You see that fellow?
Richard Evans his name is, sir. An amazing boy to learn, blessed with
a good memory and a ready understanding, and moreover with a good
voice and ear for psalm singing, in which he is the best among us.
Yet, sir, that boy will come to a bad end; he'll never die in his bed;
he's always falling asleep in sermon time--and to tell you the truth,
Mr. Marton, I always did the same at his age, and feel quite certain
that it was natural to my constitution, and I couldn't help it."
This hopeful pupil edified by the above terrible reproval, the
bachelor turned to another.
"But if we talk of examples to be shunned," said he, "if we come to
boys that should be a warning and a beacon to all their fellows,
here's the one, and I hope you won't spare him. This is the lad, sir;
this one with the blue eyes and light hair. This is a swimmer, sir,
this fellow--a diver, Lord save us! This is a boy, sir, who had a
fancy for plunging into eighteen feet of water, with his clothes on,
and bringing up a blind man's dog, who was being drowned by the weight
of his chain and collar, while his master stood wringing his hands
upon the bank, bewailing the loss of his guide and friend. I sent the
boy two guineas anonymously, sir," added the bachelor, in his peculiar
whisper, "directly I heard of it; but never mention it on any account,
for he hasn't the least idea that it came from me."
Having disposed of this culprit, the bachelor turned to another, and
from him to another, and so on through the whole array, laying, for
their wholesome restriction within due bounds, the same cutting
emphasis on such of their propensities as were dearest to his heart,
and were unquestionably referable to his own precept and example.
Thoroughly persuaded, in the end, that he had made them miserable by
his severity, he dismissed them with a small present, and an
admonition to walk quietly home, without any leapings, scufflings, or
turnings out of the way; which injunction, he informed the
schoolmaster in the same audible confidence, he did not think he could
have obeyed when he was a boy had his life depended on it.
What a model he was for teachers, this glorious bachelor, in his sympathy
_with_ the boys, and in his unconventionality! When teachers begin to feel
the grip of formalism on their better natures and begin to lose faith in
so-called bad boys, they should read this introduction of the pupils by
the bachelor. Bless his memory! he will always rank among the greatest
child trainers.
His pretence of not letting the boys know that he thought they were good
fellows was a pleasant rebuke of the miserable old doctrine that a boy
should always be told his faults, but never be spoken to about his
virtues. This false doctrine having been so carefully applied in homes and
schools for centuries as a religious duty, based on the unscriptural
doctrine of child depravity, has made a large portion of humanity in
Christian countries mere defect dodgers, instead of making them conscious
of power to do independent work for God and their fellow-men. Dickens had
no faith in this doctrine, and he taught that one of the highest things a
teacher can do for a child is to recognise and show honest appreciation of
his best powers and qualities. When superintendents search as carefully
for the good qualities and powers of their teachers as some yet do for
their weaknesses, and when they are so unconventional as to be able to
show genuine appreciation frankly to the teachers themselves, the schools
will reach their proper rate of progressive development.
Through the whole series of criticisms of the boys, Dickens is showing the
full rich sympathy of his own great heart for the whole race of boys in
the unreasonable and unjust criticism to which they are subjected by
forgetful and ignorant adulthood. Those who should be wisest in these
matters--and especially many who think themselves wise--are still very
forgetful of their own early life, and very ignorant of boyhood.
Mrs. Wackles's school was called a "Ladies' Seminary," but it was in
reality "a very small day school for young ladies of proportionate
dimensions."
The several duties of instruction in this establishment were thus
discharged: English grammar, composition, geography, and the use of
the dumb-bells, by Miss Melissa Wackles; writing, arithmetic, dancing,
music, and general fascination, by Miss Sophy Wackles; the art of
needlework, marking, and samplery, by Miss Jane Wackles; corporal
punishment, fasting, and other tortures and terrors, by Mrs. Wackles.
Miss Melissa Wackles was the eldest daughter, Miss Sophy the next, and
Miss Jane the youngest. Miss Melissa might have seen five-and-thirty
summers or thereabout, and verged on the autumnal, Miss Sophy was a
fresh, good-humoured, buxom girl of twenty; and Miss Jane numbered
scarcely sixteen years. Mrs. Wackles was an excellent, but rather
venomous old lady of threescore.
Mrs. Wackles's school is described to show the frivolous nature of such
so-called private educational institutions, and to strike again the
abominable practice of abusing children by "corporal punishment, fasting,
and other tortures and terrors" by "a venomous old lady of threescore."
Miss Monflathers's school was a boarding establishment for young ladies,
in which they were duly impressed with the dignity of their social
position; with the terrible danger of yielding in any way to their natural
impulses, all of which were assumed to be very wicked; with the sinfulness
of sympathizing with or in any way recognising the lower classes; with the
impropriety of knowing the fact that there was any wrong in the world to
be righted or any suffering to be relieved; with the inestimable value of
aristocratic birth; and with the most important truth that men are very
dangerous animals, to be carefully shunned.
Little Nell was sent to the establishment of Miss Monflathers with notices
of Mrs. Jarley's waxworks, being temporarily in the employ of that lady.
Nell had no difficulty in finding out Miss Monflathers's Boarding and
Day Establishment, which was a large house, with a high wall, and a
large garden gate with a large brass plate, and a small grating
through which Miss Monflathers's parlour maid inspected all visitors
before admitting them; for nothing in the shape of a man--no, not even
a milkman--was suffered, without special license, to pass that gate.
Even the taxgatherer, who was stout, and wore spectacles and a
broadbrimmed hat, had the taxes handed through the grating. More
obdurate than gate of adamant or brass, this gate of Miss
Monflathers's frowned on all mankind. The very butcher respected it as
a gate of mystery, and left off whistling when he rang the bell.
As Nell approached the awful door, it turned slowly upon its hinges
with a creaking noise, and forth from the solemn grove beyond came a
long file of young ladies, two and two, all with open books in their
hands, and some with parasols likewise. And last of the goodly
procession came Miss Monflathers, bearing herself a parasol of lilac
silk, and supported by two smiling teachers, each mortally envious of
the other, and devoted unto Miss Monflathers.
Confused by the looks and whispers of the girls, Nell stood with
downcast eyes and suffered the procession to pass on, until Miss
Monflathers, bringing up the rear, approached her, when she courtesied
and presented her little packet; on receipt whereof Miss Monflathers
commanded that the line should halt.
"You're the waxwork child, are you not?" said Miss Monflathers.
"Yes, ma'am," replied Nell, colouring deeply, for the young ladies had
collected about her, and she was the centre on which all eyes were
fixed.
"And don't you think you must be a very wicked little child," said
Miss Monflathers, who was of rather uncertain temper, and lost no
opportunity of impressing moral truths upon the tender minds of young
ladies, "to be a waxwork child at all?"
Poor Nell had never viewed her position in this light, and not knowing
what to say, remained silent, blushing more deeply than before.
"Don't you know," said Miss Monflathers, "that it's very naughty and
unfeminine, and a perversion of the properties wisely and benignantly
transmitted to us, with expansive powers to be roused from their
dormant state through the medium of cultivation?"
"Don't you feel how naughty it is of you," resumed Miss Monflathers,
"to be a waxwork child, when you might have the proud consciousness of
assisting, to the extent of your infant powers, the manufactures of
your country; of improving your mind by the constant contemplation of
the steam engine; and of earning a comfortable and independent
subsistence of from two and ninepence to three shillings per week?
Don't you know that the harder you are at work, the happier you are?"
"'How doth the little----'" murmured one of the teachers in quotation
from Dr. Watts.
"Eh?" said Miss Monflathers, turning smartly round. "Who said that?"
"The little busy bee," said Miss Monflathers, drawing herself up, "is
applicable only to genteel children.
'In books, or work, or healthful play'
is quite right as far as they are concerned; and the work means
painting on velvet, fancy needlework, or embroidery. In such cases as
these," pointing to Nell with her parasol, "and in the case of all
poor people's children, we should read it thus:
'In work, work, work. In work alway
Let my first years be passed,
That I may give for ev'ry day
Some good account at last.'"
Just then somebody happened to discover that Nell was crying, and all
eyes were again turned toward her.
There were indeed tears in her eyes, and drawing out her handkerchief
to brush them away, she happened to let it fall. Before she could
stoop to pick it up, one young lady of about fifteen or sixteen, who
had been standing a little apart from the others, as though she had no
recognised place among them, sprang forward and put it in her hand.
She was gliding timidly away again, when she was arrested by the
governess.
"It was Miss Edwards who did that, I _know_," said Miss Monflathers
predictively. "Now I am sure that was Miss Edwards."
It was Miss Edwards, and everybody said it was Miss Edwards, and Miss
Edwards herself admitted that it was.
"Is it not," said Miss Monflathers, putting down her parasol to take a
severer view of the offender, "a most remarkable thing, Miss Edwards,
that you have an attachment to the lower classes which always draws
you to their sides; or, rather, is it not a most extraordinary thing
that all I say and do will not wean you from propensities which your
original station in life has unhappily rendered habitual to you, you
extremely vulgar-minded girl?"
"I really intended no harm, ma'am," said a sweet voice. "It was a
momentary impulse, indeed."
"An impulse!" repeated Miss Monflathers scornfully. "I wonder that you
presume to speak of impulses to me"--both the teachers assented--"I am
astonished"--both the teachers were astonished--"I suppose it is an
impulse which induces you to take the part of every grovelling and
debased person that comes in your way"--both the teachers supposed so
too.
"But I would have you know, Miss Edwards," resumed the governess, in a
tone of increased severity, "that you can not be permitted--if it be
only for the sake of preserving a proper example and decorum in this
establishment--that you can not be permitted, and that you shall not
be permitted, to fly in the face of your superiors in this extremely
gross manner. If _you_ have no reason to feel a becoming pride before
waxwork children, there are young ladies here who have, and you must
either defer to those young ladies or leave the establishment, Miss
Edwards."
This young lady, being motherless and poor, was apprenticed at the
school--taught for nothing--teaching others what she learned for
nothing--boarded for nothing--lodged for nothing--and set down and
rated as something immeasurably less than nothing, by all the dwellers
in the house. The servant maids felt her inferiority, for they were
better treated; free to come and go, and regarded in their stations
with much more respect. The teachers were infinitely superior, for
they had paid to go to school in their time, and were paid now. The
pupils cared little for a companion who had no grand stories to tell
about home; no friends to come with post horses, and be received in
all humility, with cake and wine, by the governess; no deferential
servant to attend and bear her home for the holidays; nothing genteel
to talk about, and nothing to display. But why was Miss Monflathers
always vexed and irritated with the poor apprentice--how did that come
to pass?
Why, the gayest feather in Miss Monflathers's cap, and the brightest
glory of Miss Monflathers's school, was a baronet's daughter--the real
live daughter of a real live baronet--who, by some extraordinary
reversal of the laws of Nature, was not only plain in features but
dull in intellect, while the poor apprentice had both a ready wit and
a handsome face and figure. It seems incredible. Here was Miss
Edwards, who only paid a small premium which had been spent long ago,
every day outshining and excelling the baronet's daughter, who learned
all the extras (or was taught them all), and whose half yearly bill
came to double that of any other young lady's in the school, making no
account of the honour and reputation of her pupilage. Therefore, and
because she was a dependent, Miss Monflathers had a great dislike to
Miss Edwards, and was spiteful to her, and aggravated by her, and,
when she had compassion on Little Nell, verbally fell upon and
maltreated her, as we have already seen.
"You will not take the air to-day, Miss Edwards," said Miss
Monflathers. "Have the goodness to retire to your own room, and not to
leave it without permission."
The poor girl was moving hastily away, when she was suddenly, in a
nautical phrase, "brought to" by a subdued shriek from Miss
Monflathers.
"She has passed me without any salute!" cried the governess, raising
her eyes to the sky. "She has actually passed me without the slightest
acknowledgment of my presence!"
The young lady turned and courtesied. Nell could see that she raised
her dark eyes to the face of her superior, and that their expression,
and that of her whole attitude for the instant, was one of mute but
most touching appeal against this ungenerous usage. Miss Monflathers
only tossed her head in reply, and the great gate closed upon a
bursting heart.
In addition to the gross evils of such institutions already suggested,
Dickens exposed the cruelty of Miss Monflathers, as a type of Christian
rectitude, toward Nell, whom she assumed to be very wicked, and the
tendency of society to treat teachers with contempt, if they are not rich.
The standard based on mere wealth is happily changing.
The tone of Miss Monflathers's lofty criticism in language and thought,
quite incomprehensible to the person admonished, is very true to the life
in cases of conventional people, who take no pains to understand child
nature or human nature in any phase, except its depravity.
The heartlessness of the distinction between the "genteel" children and
poor children is clearly pointed out. There could scarcely be a more
unchristlike thought than the one that would prohibit the children of the
poor from the enjoyment of their natural tendency to play. No civilization
in which either by deliberate purpose or by criminal negligence the
children of the poorest are left without the privilege and the means for
full free play should dare to call itself Christian. Yet Miss
Monflathers's parody aptly represented the practical outworking of
civilization at the time of Dickens, and long since, too, in regard to
poor children.
Miss Monflathers told Miss Edwards majestically that she "must not take
the air to-day," and contemptuously ordered her to remain in her room all
day. This was written to condemn the common punishment of keeping children
in at recess or confining them as a means of punishment. Dickens always
thought it a crime against childhood to punish a child by robbing it of
any of its natural rights to food, or fresh air, or free exercise.
The ecstasy of passion reached by Miss Monflathers because Miss Edwards
passed her without saluting her showed Dickens's attitude toward those who
insisted and still insist on obeisance from those whom they are pleased to
regard as "inferiors." Public school education has been criticised because
"it does not train poor children to courtesy to their superiors." Any
system deserves the support of all right-thinking people if it trains the
children of the poorest to hold their heads up respectfully, and look the
world squarely in the face without a debasing consciousness of
inferiority. The greatest aim of education, so far as the individual is
concerned, is freedom--spiritual freedom. Respect for properly constituted
authority should become a part of every child's consciousness, but this
properly involves contempt for the arrogant assumption of certain people
that certain other people should bow down in servile humility to them.
Education must always be the enemy of tyranny, slavery, and all kinds of
abasement.
The grinders' school was introduced to ridicule the practice of forcing
all children in charitable institutions to wear a uniform dress, and to
attack corporal punishment, neglect of moral training, and the practice of
placing ignorant men in the high position of a teacher. The teacher in the
grinders' school was "a superannuated old grinder of savage disposition,
who had been appointed schoolmaster because he didn't know anything, and
wasn't fit for anything, and for whose cruel cane all chubby little boys
had a perfect fascination." The practice of dressing all children alike,
and of dressing them all without taste, is continued in most homes for
orphan children still. Surely the poor orphans have suffered enough
without subjecting them to the indignity of tasteless dressing. There
might at least be a difference of taste in colour, for instance, for the
blondes and the brunettes.
The school taught by Agnes in David Copperfield is mentioned to show that
if a teacher works with a true spirit (Agnes was a splendid character for
women to study with great care), teaching is a pleasant instead of an
unhappy profession.
David said: "It is laborious, is it not?" "The labour is so pleasant," she
returned, "that it is scarcely grateful in me to call it by that name."
The school attended by Uriah Heep and his father before him was described
as an attack on the practice of instilling into the minds of poor children
the consciousness of subserviency. David says: "I fully comprehended now
for the first time (after hearing Uriah describe his training at school)
what a base, unrelenting, and revengeful spirit must have been engendered
by this early, and this long, suppression."
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 godmother
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 Dickens 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 bumping 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 unassisted 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 passed 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 competitive
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 Dickens 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.
Dickens 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 sexes. The latter were kept
apart, and the former were partitioned off into square assortments.
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 circumstances of uncommon atrocity) his
particular friend and benefactor, of eighteenpence, presently came
into supernatural possession of three and sixpence, and lived a
shining 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 nobody 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 assistant. When and where it first became the
conventional system that a weary or inattentive infant in a class 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 fashion 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
assembled 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.
Dickens 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 sexes 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 nobody older would endure."
The dreadful practice, still kept up in some heathen-producing Sunday
schools, of having an "executioner's assistant 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 assistant 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. Dickens 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 Dickens. 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 passed.
"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 Dickens 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
Dickens 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 godfather, two godmothers, 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. Alicumpaine, 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.
When Mr. and Mrs. Orange were going home they passed 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 Dickens, 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 Dickens 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 ennoblement 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.
Dickens 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 Godfather forever, and the story was ended?"
"No! Nobody ever quarrelled."
"And did the money never melt away?"
"No! Nobody could ever spend it all."
"And did none of them ever grow older?"
"No! Nobody 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. "Nobody 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 assistant
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 Dickens had begun a description of the school: "On the trim
gate inclosing the courtyard of which is a resplendent brass 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 institutions, 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 superstition
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 assured 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 Dickens.
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 associated 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 association 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
accumulated"; 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.
Dickens 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 institute 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
class. 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 passages
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.