Dickens As an Educator Part 9

exclaimed Mrs. Pipchin, shaking out her black bombazine skirts, and plucking up all the ogress within her. "If she don't like it, Mr. Dombey, she must be taught to lump it." She would "shake her head and frown down a legion of children," and "the wild ones went home tame enough after sojourning for a few months beneath her hospitable roof." She tamed them by robbing them of their power, as Froebel's boy tamed flies by tearing off their wings and legs, and then saying, "See how tame they are."

Teachers used to boast about their ability to tame children, when their ability really meant the power to destroy the tendency to put forth effort, to subst.i.tute negativeness for positiveness.

Susan Nipper, in her usual graphic style, expressed her views regarding the coercive practices of Mrs. Pipchin and the Blimbers.

"Goodness knows," exclaimed Miss Nipper, "there's a-many we could spare instead, if numbers is a object; Mrs. Pipchin as a overseer would come cheap at her weight in gold, and if a knowledge of black slavery should be required, them Blimbers is the very people for the sitiwation."

One of Mrs. Pipchin's favourite methods of coercing, or taming, or child-quelling was to send children to bed.

"The best thing you can do is to take off your things and go to bed this minute." This was the sagacious woman's remedy for all complaints, particularly lowness of spirits and inability to sleep; for which offence many young victims in the days of the Brighton Castle had been committed to bed at ten o'clock in the morning.

Another a.s.sault on coercion was made in Dombey and Son in the brief description of the Grinders' school.

Biler's life had been rendered weary by the costume of the Charitable Grinders. The youth of the streets could not endure it. No young vagabond could be brought to bear its contemplation for a moment without throwing himself upon the unoffending wearer and doing him a mischief. His social existence had been more like that of an early Christian than an innocent child of the nineteenth century. He had been stoned in the streets. He had been overthrown into gutters; bespattered with mud; violently flattened against posts. Entire strangers to his person had lifted his yellow cap off his head and cast it to the winds. His legs had not only undergone verbal criticism and revilings, but had been handled and pinched. That very morning he had received a perfectly unsolicited black eye on his way to the Grinders' establishment, and had been punished for it by the master: 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.

Poor Biler went wrong, and when he was taken to task for it by Mr. Carker he gave his theory to account for the fact that he had not done better at school.

"You're a nice young gentleman!" said Mr. Carker, shaking his head at him. "There's hemp-seed sown for _you_, my fine fellow!"

"I'm sure, sir," returned the wretched Biler, blubbering again, and again having recourse to his coat cuff: "I shouldn't care, sometimes, if it was growed too. My misfortunes all began in wagging, sir, but what could I do, exceptin' wag?"

"Excepting what?" said Mr. Carker.

"Wag, sir. Wagging from school."

"Do you mean pretending to go there, and not going?" said Mr. Carker.

"Yes, sir, that's wagging, sir," returned the quondam Grinder, much affected. "I was chivied through the streets, sir, when I went there, and pounded when I got there. So I wagged and hid myself, and that began it."

When Mr. Dombey, by whose act of superior grace Biler had been sent to the Charitable Grinders' school, upbraided the boy's father for his failure to turn out well,

the simple father said that he hoped his son, the quondam Grinder, huffed and cuffed, and flogged and badged, and taught, as parrots are, by a brute jobbed into his place of schoolmaster with as much fitness for it as a hound, might not have been educated on quite a right plan.

Sagacious teachers and parents often blame and punish children for being what they made them.

Still another ill.u.s.tration of the cruel coercion practised on children is found in Dombey and Son, in the training of Alice Marwood.

"There was a child called Alice Marwood," said the daughter, with a laugh, and looking down at herself in terrible derision of herself, "born among poverty and neglect, and nursed in it. n.o.body taught her, n.o.body stepped forward to help her, n.o.body cared for her."

"n.o.body!" echoed the mother, pointing to herself, and striking her breast.

"The only care she knew," returned the daughter, "was to be beaten, and stinted, and abused sometimes; and she might have done better without that."

The picture of George Silverman's early life is one of the most touching of all the appeals of d.i.c.kens on behalf of childhood. He lived in a cellar, and when he was removed at length he knew only the sensations of "cold, hunger, thirst, and the pain of being beaten." The poor child used to speculate on his mother's feet having a good or ill temper as she descended the stairs to their cellar home, and he watched her knees, her waist, her face, as they came into view, to learn whether he was likely to be abused or not. Many mothers realized their own cruelty by reading such descriptions of cruelty toward little children.

The whole system of training of Mr. Gradgrind and his teacher, Mr.

M'Choak.u.mchild (the latter name contains volumes of coercion) was a scientific system of coerciveness and restraint, planned and carried out by a good man misguided by false ideas about child training and character building. Coercion was only one of several bad elements in his system, but he was terribly coercive. His children were lavishly supplied with almost everything they did not care for, and robbed of everything they should naturally be interested in.

The results were, as might be expected, disastrous. His son Tom became a monster of selfishness, sensuality, and criminality. d.i.c.kens uses the name "whelp" to describe him, and, in a satirical manner, accounts for his meanness and weaknesses in the following summary:

It was very remarkable that a young gentleman who had been brought up under one continuous system of unnatural restraint should be a hypocrite; but it was certainly the case with Tom. It was very strange that a young gentleman who had never been left to his own guidance for five consecutive minutes should be incapable at last of governing himself; but so it was with Tom. It was altogether unaccountable that a young gentleman whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle should be still inconvenienced by its ghost in the form of grovelling sensualities; but such a monster, beyond all doubt, was Tom.

When Mr. Gradgrind became convinced that he had been altogether wrong in his educational ideals and was endeavouring to explain the matter to Mr.

Bounderby, that gentleman gave expression to the views of many people of his time. Fortunately there are few Bounderbys now, but there are some even yet.

"Well, well!" returned Mr. Gradgrind, with a patient, even a submissive air. And he sat for a little while pondering. "Bounderby, I see reason to doubt whether we have ever quite understood Louisa."

"What do you mean by we?"

"Let me say, I, then," he returned, in answer to the coa.r.s.ely blurted question; "I doubt whether I have understood Louisa. I doubt whether I have been quite right in the manner of her education."

"There you hit it," returned Bounderby. "There I agree with you. You have found it out at last, have you? Education! I'll tell you what education is--to be tumbled out of doors, neck and crop, and put upon the shortest allowance of everything except blows. That's what _I_ call education."

In his last book--Edwin Drood--d.i.c.kens pictured Mr. Honeythunder as a type of coercive philanthropists, whom he regarded as intolerable as well as intolerant nuisances--people who would use force to compel everybody to think and act as they are told to think and act by the Honeythunders.

In speaking of Mr. Honeythunder and his cla.s.s of philanthropists, Rev.

Canon Crisparkle said:

It is a most extraordinary thing that these philanthropists are so given to seizing their fellow-creatures by the scruff of the neck, and (as one may say) b.u.mping them into the paths of peace.

Neville Landless described his training to Canon Crisparkle in telling words:

"And to finish with, sir: I have been brought up among abject and servile dependents of an inferior race, and I may easily have contracted some affinity with them. Sometimes I don't know but that it may be a drop of what is tigerish in their blood."

There is a profound philosophy of one phase of the evils of coercion in this statement. Coercion does not always destroy power by blighting it.

Often the power that was intended to bless turns to poison when it is repressed, and makes men hypocritical and tigerish. It is true, too, that a child who is brought up with the idea of dominating a servile cla.s.s, or even servile individuals, can never have a true conception of his own freedom.

d.i.c.kens was not satisfied with his numerous and sustained attacks on the more violent forms of coercion and repression. He began in Edwin Drood to draw a picture of Mrs. Crisparkle, the mother of the Canon, to show that the placid firmness of her strong will had a baleful influence on character. Her character was not completed, but the outlines given are most suggestive. What could surpa.s.s the absolute indifference she showed to the slightest consideration for the individuality or opinions of other people when she spoke of her wards, who were grown up, it should be remembered, to young manhood and womanhood.

"I have spoken with my two wards, Neville and Helena Landless, on the subject of their defective education, and they give in to the plan proposed; as I should have taken good care they did, whether they liked it or not."

How exquisitely he reveals the character of the eminently dogmatic, though quiet, Christian lady by her remarking so definitely to her son, the Canon:

"I have no objection to discuss it, Sept. I trust, my dear, I am always open to discussion." There was a vibration in the old lady's cap, as though she internally added, "And I should like to see the discussion that would change _my_ mind!"

d.i.c.kens meant to show that whether the coercion partook of the nature of that exercised by Squeers or Mrs. Crisparkle, it resulted in forcing those compelled to submit to it to "give in," and that all children who are regularly made to "give in" acquire the habit of "giving in," and eventually become "give-iners" and hypocrites until circ.u.mstances make them rebels and anarchists. So he condemned every form of coercion, and taught the doctrine of true freedom for the child as a necessary element in his best development. When this doctrine is fully understood men will soon become truly free. All true education has been a movement toward freedom. All true national advancement has been toward more perfect freedom. The ideal of national, const.i.tutional liberty has changed in harmony with the educational revelations of the broadening conception of freedom; and more progressive conceptions of national liberty have rendered it necessary for the educators to reveal truer, freer methods of training children in harmony with the higher national organization.

When the ideal of national organization was the divine right of kings to rule their subjects by absolute authority, the system of national organization required pa.s.sive obedience on the part of the subject. To secure this coercive discipline the prompt submission of the child to the immediate authority over him was the ideal process. Pa.s.sive submission was required as the full duty of the citizen, and pa.s.sive obedience was the desired product of the school. But the new ideal of government is rule by the people through their representatives, and national citizens.h.i.+p means the intelligent co-operation of independent individuals; so the true educational ideal is a free selfhood, and a free selfhood in maturity demands a free selfhood in childhood. To secure this it is essential that schools shall become "free republics of childhood."

"But a free selfhood in childhood must lead to anarchy," say those who cling to the coercive ideal. Anarchy never springs from freedom. Anarchy is the foul son of coercion. True freedom does not include liberty to do wrong. The "perfect law of liberty" is the only basis for perfect happiness, because it is not freedom beyond law, but freedom within law, freedom because of law. Law should never be coercive to the child. When it becomes so the law is wrong and it makes the child wrong, and produces the apperceptive centres of anarchy in feeling and thought out of the very elements that should have produced joyous co-operation. Law should give the child consciousness of power, and not of restraint. Undirected selfhood, uncontrolled selfhood, is not true freedom. The exercise of power without limitations leads to confusion, indecision, and anarchy in everything except its spirit of rebellion. The guidance and control of adulthood and the limitations of law are necessary to the accomplishment of the best results in the immediate product of effort put forth by the child, in the effect on his character, and in the development of a true consciousness of freedom in his life.

The terrible blunder of the past in child training has been to make law coercive instead of directive. Law has been prohibitive, not stimulative.

Law has defined barriers to prevent effort, instead of outlining the direction effort should take. The limitations of law have been used to define the course the child should not take; they should have defined the course he ought to take, and within the range of which course he should use his selfhood in the freest possible way. Law has said "thou shalt not"

when it should have said "thou shalt"; it has said "don't" when it should have said "do"; it has said "quit" when it should have said "go on"; it has said "be still" when it should have said "work"; it has stood in the way to check when it should have moved on to lead to victory and progress along the most direct lines; it has given a consciousness of weakness instead of a consciousness of power; it has developed moroseness instead of joyousness, self-depreciation instead of self-reverence; and children for these reasons have been led to dislike law, and the apperceptive centres of anarchy have been laid by a coercive instead of a stimulative use of law.

By false ideals of coercive law adulthood has been made repressive instead of suggestive, depressive instead of helpful, dogmatic instead of reasonable, tyrannical instead of free, "child-quellers" instead of sympathetic friends of childhood, executors of penalties instead of wise guides, agents to keep children under instead of helping them up; and so children have learned to dislike school, and work, and teachers, and often home and parents. And the children have not been to blame for their dislike of law and their distrust of adulthood.

And the children themselves by coercion have been made don'ters instead of doers, quitters instead of workers, give-iners instead of persevering winners, yielders to opposition instead of achievers of victory, negative instead of positive, apathetic instead of energetic, pa.s.sive instead of active, imitative instead of original, followers instead of leaders, dependent instead of independent, servile instead of free, conscious of weakness instead of power, defect shunners instead of triumphant creative representatives of the G.o.d in whose image man was created.