Dickens As an Educator Part 17

"I mean," he explained, "that young ways were never my ways. I was the only offspring of parents far advanced in life, and I half believe I was born advanced in life myself. No personality is intended toward the name you will so soon change, when I remark that while the general growth of people seem to have come into existence buds, I seem to have come into existence a chip. I was a chip--and a very dry one--when I first became aware of myself."

d.i.c.kens takes a front rank among the educators who have tried to save the child from "child-quellers," and preserve for them the right to a free, rich, real childhood. The saddest sight in the world to him was a child such as he pictured in A Tale of Two Cities: "The children of St. Antoine had ancient faces and grave voices."

In Barbox Brothers Mr. Jackson said of himself: "I am, to myself, an unintelligible book, with the earlier chapters all torn out and thrown away. My childhood had no grace of childhood, my youth had no charm of youth, and what can be expected from such a lost beginning?"

d.i.c.kens tried to save all children from such a beginning.

CHAPTER VII.

INDIVIDUALITY.

d.i.c.kens began to write definitely about individuality in Martin Chuzzlewit in 1844. Martin described a company he met in America "who were so strangely devoid of individual traits of character that any one of them might have changed minds with the other and n.o.body would have found it out."

In David Copperfield he makes Traddles, who was trained by Mr. Creakle, say: "I have no invention at all, not a particle. I suppose there never was a young man with less originality than I have."

David himself said sagely: "I have encountered some fine ladies and gentlemen who might as well have been born caterpillars."

David emphasizes the phase of individuality that teaches the power of each individual to do some special good, when he said to Martha when she spoke of the river as the end of her useless life:

"In the name of the great Judge, before whom you and all of us must stand at his dread time, dismiss that terrible idea! We can all do some good, if we will."

In Bleak House Sir Leicester Dedlock is represented as of opinion that he should at least think for every one in connection with his estate.

The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master. He supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual characters, intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he was born to supersede the necessity of their having any. If he were to make a discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned--would never recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die.

The same absolute contempt for the individuality of the poor is ridiculed in The Chimes. Sir Joseph Bowley is a type of the English squire who used to act on the a.s.sumption that he had to care for the workmen on his estate, and the poor of his neighbourhood, as he did for his horses and other animals.

"I do my duty as the Poor Man's Friend and Father; and I endeavour to educate his mind by inculcating on all occasions the one great moral lesson which that cla.s.s requires--that is, entire Dependence on myself. They have no business whatever with--with themselves. If wicked and designing persons tell them otherwise, and they become impatient and discontented, and are guilty of insubordinate conduct and black-hearted ingrat.i.tude--which is undoubtedly the case--I am their Friend and Father still. It is so ordained. It is in the nature of things. They needn't trouble themselves to think about anything. I will think for them; I know what is good for them; I am their perpetual parent. Such is the dispensation of an all-wise Providence."

It is strange that men so commonly ascribe to Providence the dreadful conditions which have resulted from man's ignorance and selfishness, and which Providence intended man to reform.

Esther, in Bleak House, speaking of the influence of the chancery suit on Richard Carstone, said:

"The character of much older and steadier people may be even changed by the circ.u.mstances surrounding them. It would be too much to expect that a boy's, in its formation, should be the subject of such influences, and escape them."

I felt this to be true; though, if I may venture to mention what I thought besides, I thought it much to be regretted that Richard's education had not counteracted those influences or directed his character. He had been eight years at a public school, and had learned, I understood, to make Latin verses of several sorts, in the most admirable manner. But I never heard that it had been anybody's business to find out what his natural bent was, or where his failings lay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge to _him_. _He_ had been adapted to the verses, and had learned the art of making them to such perfection, that if he had remained at school until he was of age I suppose he could only have gone on making them over and over again, unless he had enlarged his education by forgetting how to do it.

Still, although I had no doubt that they were very beautiful, and very improving, and very sufficient for a great many purposes of life, and always remembered all through life, I did doubt whether Richard would not have profited by some one studying him a little, instead of his studying them quite so much.

Richard was one of those unstable men who have good abilities, but who do not use them persistently in the accomplishment of any one purpose, and who never seem to find the sphere for which they are best fitted. They are man-products, not G.o.d-products. When Richard, after several attempts to work at other things with high enthusiasm for a few weeks, decided to be a physician, Esther said:

Mistrusting that he only came to this conclusion because, having never had much chance of finding out for himself what he was fitted for, and having never been guided to the discovery, he was taken with the newest idea, and was glad to get rid of the trouble of consideration, I wondered whether the Latin verses often ended in this, or whether Richard's was a solitary case.

Richard very often came to see us while we remained in London (though he soon failed in his letter writing), and with his quick abilities, his good spirits, his good temper, his gaiety and freshness, was always delightful. But though I liked him more and more the better I knew him, I still felt more and more how much it was to be regretted that he had been educated in no habits of application and concentration. The system which had addressed him in exactly the same manner as it had addressed hundreds of other boys, all varying in character and capacity, had enabled him to dash through his tasks, always with fair credit, and often with distinction; but in a fitful, dazzling way that had confirmed his reliance on those very qualities in himself which it had been most desirable to direct and train. They were great qualities, without which no high place can be meritoriously won; but, like fire and water, though excellent servants, they were very bad masters. If they had been under Richard's direction, they would have been his friends; but Richard being under their direction, they became his enemies.

Any educational system that "addresses hundreds of boys exactly in the same manner" must destroy their individuality.

In Hard Times Tom Gradgrind became a low, degraded, sensual, dissipated criminal, and d.i.c.kens accounts for his failure by the unnatural restraint, constant oversight, and the strangling of his imagination in his cradle and afterward. In other words, the boy's selfhood never had a chance to develop, and every power he had naturally to make him strong, true, and independent had helped to work his ruin.

In Little Dorrit Mrs. General is herself a model to be avoided, and her system of training is ridiculed because she paid no attention whatever to the selfhood of her pupils except to conceal it artfully and prevent the recognition of any of the evils by which it was surrounded and which it should help to overcome.

Mrs. General had no opinions. Her way of forming a mind was to prevent it from forming opinions. She had a little circular set of mental grooves or rails, on which she started little trains of other people's opinions, which never overtook one another and never got anywhere.

Even her propriety could not dispute that there was impropriety in the world; but Mrs. General's way of getting rid of it was to put it out of sight, and make believe that there was no such thing. This was another of her ways of forming a mind--to cram all articles of difficulty into cupboards, lock them up, and say they had no existence. It was the easiest way and, beyond all comparison, the properest.

Mrs. General was not to be told of anything shocking. Accidents, miseries, and offences were never to be mentioned before her. Pa.s.sion was to go to sleep in the presence of Mrs. General, and blood was to change to milk and water. The little that was left in the world, when all these deductions were made, it was Mrs. General's province to varnish. In that formation process of hers, she dipped the smallest of brushes into the largest of pots, and varnished the surface of every object that came under consideration. The more cracked it was, the more Mrs. General varnished it.

There was varnish in Mrs. General's voice, varnish in Mrs. General's touch, an atmosphere of varnish round Mrs. General's figure.

d.i.c.kens wished the training of the real inner selfhood, not the varnis.h.i.+ng of the surface merely. Not what George Macdonald describes as "sandpapering a boy into a saint," but genuine character development by the working out of the selfhood in the improvement of its environment, physically, intellectually, and spiritually.

Briggs's education, in Dombey and Son, had been of such a character that "his intellectual fruit had nothing of its original flavour remaining."

The character of his real selfhood had been destroyed, not developed, by his "education."

In Our Mutual Friend Mr. Podsnap is used as a type of the men who not only see no need for any person else forming opinions, but who take pains to prevent others forming opinions, so far as possible.

As Mr. Podsnap stood with his back to the drawing-room fire, pulling up his s.h.i.+rt collar, like a veritable c.o.c.k of the walk literally pluming himself in the midst of his possessions, nothing would have astonished him more than an intimation that Miss Podsnap, or any young person properly born and bred, could not be exactly put away like the plate, brought out like the plate, polished like the plate, counted, weighed, and valued like the plate. That such a young person could possibly have a morbid vacancy in the heart for anything younger than the plate, or less monotonous than the plate, or that such a young person's thoughts could try to scale the region bounded on the north, south, east, and west by the plate, was a monstrous imagination which he would on the spot have flourished into s.p.a.ce.

Eugene Wrayburn's criticism of his father's habit of choosing professions for his sons almost as soon as they were born, or even before, without the slightest possible consideration for their natural apt.i.tudes for the work to which they were a.s.signed, is a severe attack on a condition which exists even yet through the failure of the schools or the homes to discover and reveal to boys and girls their highest powers, so that they may reach their best growth in school or college and choose the profession in which they can do most good and attain their most complete evolution.

There is no better field for co-ordinate work by the home and the school than the joint study of the children to find their sphere of greatest power. Every child should be helped to find the sphere in which he can most successfully achieve the highest destiny for himself and for humanity.

Eugene Wrayburn's father extended his paternal care and forethought for his children not only by choosing their professions without regard for their selfhood, but by considerately selecting partners for his sons without regard for their individual tastes.

Eugene, speaking to Mortimer Lightwood, said:

"My respected father has found, down in the parental neighbourhood, a wife for his not-generally-respected son."

"With some money, of course?"

"With some money, of course, or he would not have found her. My respected father--let me shorten the dutiful tautology by subst.i.tuting in future M. R. F., which sounds military, and rather like the Duke of Wellington."

"What an absurd fellow you are, Eugene!"

"Not at all. I a.s.sure you. M. R. F. having always in the clearest manner provided (as he calls it) for his children by prearranging from the hour of the birth of each, and sometimes from an earlier period, what the devoted little victim's calling and course in life should be, M. R. F. prearranged for myself that I was to be the barrister I am (with the slight addition of an enormous practice, which has not accrued), and also the married man I am not."

"The first you have often told me."

"The first I have often told you. Considering myself sufficiently incongruous on my legal eminence, I have until now suppressed my domestic destiny. You know M. R. F., but not as well as I do. If you knew him as well as I do, he would amuse you."

"Filially spoken, Eugene!"

"Perfectly so, believe me; and with every sentiment of affectionate deference toward M. R. F. But if he amuses me, I can't help it. When my eldest brother was born, of course the rest of us knew (I mean the rest of us would have known, if we had been in existence) that he was heir to the family embarra.s.sments--we call it before company the family estate. But when my second brother was going to be born by and by, 'This,' says M. R. F., 'is a little pillar of the church.' _Was_ born, and became a pillar of the church--a very shaky one. My third brother appeared considerably in advance of his engagement to my mother; but M. R. F., not at all put out by surprise, instantly declared him a circ.u.mnavigator. Was pitchforked into the navy, but has not circ.u.mnavigated. I announced myself, and was disposed of with the highly satisfactory results embodied before you. When my younger brother was half an hour old, it was settled by M. R. F. that he should have a mechanical genius, and so on. Therefore I say M. R. F.

amuses me."

In the same book Bradley Headstone's school is described as one of a system of schools in which "school buildings, school-teachers, and school pupils are all according to pattern, and all engendered in the light of the latest Gospel according to Monotony."