“I have no will. That is to say,” he coloured a little, “next to none that I can put in action now. Trained by main force; broken, not bent; heavily ironed with an object on which I was never consulted and which was never mine; shipped away to the other end of the world before I was of age, and exiled there until my father’s death there, a year ago; always grinding in a mill I always hated; what is to be expected from me in middle life? Will, purpose, hope? All those lights were extinguished before I could sound the words.”“Light ’em up again!” said Mr. Meagles.“Ah! Easily said. I am the son, Mr. Meagles, of a hard father and mother. I am the only child of parents who weighed, measured, and priced everything; for whom what could not be weighed, measured, and priced had no existence. Strict people, as the phrase is, professors of a stern religion, their very religion was a gloomy sacrifice of tastes and sympathies that were never their own, offered up as a part of a bargain for the security of their possessions. Austere faces, inexorable discipline, penance in this world and terror in the next—nothing graceful or gentle anywhere, and the void in my cowed heart everywhere—this was my childhood, if I may so misuse the word as to apply it to such a beginning of life.”
“I have no will. That is to say,” he coloured a little, “next to none that I can put in action now. Trained by main force; broken, not bent; heavily ironed with an object on which I was never consulted and which was never mine; shipped away to the other end of the world before I was of age, and exiled there until my father’s death there, a year ago; always grinding in a mill I always hated; what is to be expected from me in middle life? Will, purpose, hope? All those lights were extinguished before I could sound the words.”
“Light ’em up again!” said Mr. Meagles.
“Ah! Easily said. I am the son, Mr. Meagles, of a hard father and mother. I am the only child of parents who weighed, measured, and priced everything; for whom what could not be weighed, measured, and priced had no existence. Strict people, as the phrase is, professors of a stern religion, their very religion was a gloomy sacrifice of tastes and sympathies that were never their own, offered up as a part of a bargain for the security of their possessions. Austere faces, inexorable discipline, penance in this world and terror in the next—nothing graceful or gentle anywhere, and the void in my cowed heart everywhere—this was my childhood, if I may so misuse the word as to apply it to such a beginning of life.”
When he returned to the presence of his mother, after an absence of many years in China, “the old influence of her presence, and her stern, strong voice, so gathered about her son that he felt conscious of a renewal of the timid chill and reserve of his childhood.”
It was a terrible indictment of all coercive, child-quelling, will-breaking training that Arthur made when he said to his stern mother:
“I can not say that I have been able to conform myself, in heart and spirit, to your rules; I can not say that I believe my forty years have been profitable or pleasant to myself, or any one; but I have habitually submitted, and I only ask you to remember it.”
“I can not say that I have been able to conform myself, in heart and spirit, to your rules; I can not say that I believe my forty years have been profitable or pleasant to myself, or any one; but I have habitually submitted, and I only ask you to remember it.”
Speaking of her own training, Mrs. Clennam said: “Mine were days of wholesome repression, punishment, and fear,” and she frankly avowed her deliberate purpose of “bringing Arthur up in fear and trembling.”
Those were the dreadful ideals that Dickens aimed to destroy. Repression, punishment, fear, and trembling are no longer the dominant ideals of the Christian world regarding child training. They are rapidly giving way to the new and true gospel of stimulation, happiness, freedom, and creative self-activity.
Great Expectations was a valuable contribution to the literature of child training. Mrs. Gargery was a type of repressive, coercive, unsympathetic women, who regard children as necessarily nuisances, and who are continually thankful for the fact that by the free use of “the tickler” they may be subdued and kept in a state of bearable subjection.
Mrs. Gargery had no children of her own, but she had a little brother, Pip, whom she “brought up by hand.” Her husband, Joe Gargery, was an honest, affectionate, sympathetic man, who pitied poor Pip and tried to comfort him when his wife was not present. The dear old fellow said to Pip one evening, as they sat by the fire and he beat time to his kindly thoughts with the poker:
“Your sister is given to government.”“Given to government, Joe?” I was startled, for I had some shadowy idea (and I am afraid I must add hope) that Joe had divorced her in favour of the lords of the Admiralty, or Treasury.“Given to government,” said Joe. “Which I meantersay the government of you and myself.”“Oh!”“And she ain’t over partial to having scholars on the premises,” Joe continued, “and in particular would not beover partial to my being a scholar, for fear as I might rise. Like a sort of rebel, don’t you see?”I was going to retort with an inquiry, and had got as far as “Why——” when Joe stopped me.“Stay a bit. I know what you’re a-going to say, Pip? stay a bit! I don’t deny that your sister comes the mo-gul over us, now and again. I don’t deny that she do throw us back-falls, and that she do drop down upon us heavy. At such times as when your sister is on the ram-page, Pip,” Joe sunk his voice to a whisper and glanced at the door, “candour compels fur to admit that she is a buster....“I wish it was only me that got put out, Pip; I wish there warn’t no tickler for you, old chap; I wish I could take it all on myself; but this is the up-and-down-and-straight on it, Pip, and I hope you’ll overlook shortcomings.”
“Your sister is given to government.”
“Given to government, Joe?” I was startled, for I had some shadowy idea (and I am afraid I must add hope) that Joe had divorced her in favour of the lords of the Admiralty, or Treasury.
“Given to government,” said Joe. “Which I meantersay the government of you and myself.”
“Oh!”
“And she ain’t over partial to having scholars on the premises,” Joe continued, “and in particular would not beover partial to my being a scholar, for fear as I might rise. Like a sort of rebel, don’t you see?”
I was going to retort with an inquiry, and had got as far as “Why——” when Joe stopped me.
“Stay a bit. I know what you’re a-going to say, Pip? stay a bit! I don’t deny that your sister comes the mo-gul over us, now and again. I don’t deny that she do throw us back-falls, and that she do drop down upon us heavy. At such times as when your sister is on the ram-page, Pip,” Joe sunk his voice to a whisper and glanced at the door, “candour compels fur to admit that she is a buster....
“I wish it was only me that got put out, Pip; I wish there warn’t no tickler for you, old chap; I wish I could take it all on myself; but this is the up-and-down-and-straight on it, Pip, and I hope you’ll overlook shortcomings.”
Poor Joe! His father had been a blacksmith, but he took to drink, and, as Joe said, “Hammered at me with a wigour only to be equalled by the wigour with which he didn’t hammer at his anwil.”
Dickens gives an illustration of Mrs. Gargery’s training which reveals not only her coercive and unsympathetic tendencies, but points to other errors in training children that are yet too common. Pip was warming himself before going to bed one night, when a cannon sounded from the Hulks, or prison ships, near the Gargery home.
“Ah!” said Joe; “there’s another conwict off.”“What does that mean?” said I.Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said snappishly: “Escaped. Escaped.” Administering the definition like medicine.“There was a conwict off last night,” said Joe, aloud, “after sunset gun. And they fired warning of him. And now it appears they’re firing warning of another.”“Who’s firing?” said I.“Drat that boy,” interposed my sister, frowning at me over her work; “what a questioner he is! Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies.”It was not very polite to herself, I thought, to imply that I should be told lies by her, even if I did askquestions. But she never was polite, unless there was company.“Mrs. Joe,” said I, as a last resort, “I should like to know—if you wouldn’t much mind—where the firing comes from?”“Lord bless the boy!” exclaimed my sister, as if she didn’t quite mean that, but rather the contrary. “From the hulks!”“And please, what’s hulks?” said I.“That’s the way with this boy!” exclaimed my sister, pointing me out with her needle and thread, and shaking her head at me. “Answer him one question, and he’ll ask you a dozen directly. Hulks are prison ships, right ’cross th’ country.”“I wonder who’s put into prison ships, and why they’re put there?” said I, in a general way, and with quiet desperation.It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose. “I tell you what, young fellow,” said she, “I didn’t bring you up by hand to badger people’s lives out. It would be blame to me, and not praise, if I had. People are put in the hulks because they murder, and because they rob, and forge, and do all sorts of bad; and they always begin by asking questions. Now, you get along to bed!”I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went upstairs in the dark, with my head tingling—from Mrs. Joe’s thimble having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her last words—I felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that the hulks were handy for me. I was clearly on my way there.Pip said later: “I suppose myself to be better acquainted than any living authority with the ridgy effect of a wedding ring passing unsympathetically over the human countenance.”My sister’s bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter. Within myself, I had sustained, from my babyhood, a perpetual conflict with injustice. I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my sister,in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by the hand gave her no right to bring me up by jerks. Through all my punishments, disgraces, fasts and vigils, and other penitential performances, I had nursed this assurance; and to my communing so much with it, in a solitary and unprotected way, I in great part refer the fact that I was morally timid and very sensitive.
“Ah!” said Joe; “there’s another conwict off.”
“What does that mean?” said I.
Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said snappishly: “Escaped. Escaped.” Administering the definition like medicine.
“There was a conwict off last night,” said Joe, aloud, “after sunset gun. And they fired warning of him. And now it appears they’re firing warning of another.”
“Who’s firing?” said I.
“Drat that boy,” interposed my sister, frowning at me over her work; “what a questioner he is! Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies.”
It was not very polite to herself, I thought, to imply that I should be told lies by her, even if I did askquestions. But she never was polite, unless there was company.
“Mrs. Joe,” said I, as a last resort, “I should like to know—if you wouldn’t much mind—where the firing comes from?”
“Lord bless the boy!” exclaimed my sister, as if she didn’t quite mean that, but rather the contrary. “From the hulks!”
“And please, what’s hulks?” said I.
“That’s the way with this boy!” exclaimed my sister, pointing me out with her needle and thread, and shaking her head at me. “Answer him one question, and he’ll ask you a dozen directly. Hulks are prison ships, right ’cross th’ country.”
“I wonder who’s put into prison ships, and why they’re put there?” said I, in a general way, and with quiet desperation.
It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose. “I tell you what, young fellow,” said she, “I didn’t bring you up by hand to badger people’s lives out. It would be blame to me, and not praise, if I had. People are put in the hulks because they murder, and because they rob, and forge, and do all sorts of bad; and they always begin by asking questions. Now, you get along to bed!”
I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went upstairs in the dark, with my head tingling—from Mrs. Joe’s thimble having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her last words—I felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that the hulks were handy for me. I was clearly on my way there.
Pip said later: “I suppose myself to be better acquainted than any living authority with the ridgy effect of a wedding ring passing unsympathetically over the human countenance.”
My sister’s bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter. Within myself, I had sustained, from my babyhood, a perpetual conflict with injustice. I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my sister,in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by the hand gave her no right to bring me up by jerks. Through all my punishments, disgraces, fasts and vigils, and other penitential performances, I had nursed this assurance; and to my communing so much with it, in a solitary and unprotected way, I in great part refer the fact that I was morally timid and very sensitive.
Mrs. Gargery’s training was bad because she refused to answer the boy’s questions, or abused him for asking them; and when she did condescend to answer she answered in a snappy, unsympathetic way. The cruelty of first scolding a child, then trying to terrify him from asking questions by telling him that “robbers, murderers, and all kinds of criminals began their downward career by asking questions,” then rapping him on the head, and finally sending him to bed without a light, is admirably described. All these practices are terribly unjust to children. Parents and teachers, in the picture of Mrs. Gargery, are warned against scolding, against threatening, against falsehood and misrepresentation in order to reduce children to submission, against corporal punishment with “the tickler,” against the more dastardly and more exasperating corporal punishment by snapping and rapping the head, and against sending children to bed in the dark. He was especially careful to make the retiring hour in his own home a period of joyousness and freedom from all fear. He made the crime of sending children to bed without light and without sympathy one of the practices of that model of bad training—Mrs. Pipchin; and one of the most dreaded of little Oliver Twist’s experiences was to be sent to sleep among the coffins in the dark at Sowerberry’s.
The hour of retiring is the special time when children most need the affectionate spirit of motherhood, and wise mothers try to use this sacred hour to form their closest unity with the hearts of the little ones, and to sow in their young lives the apperceptive seeds of sweetness, and joy, and faith.
The wrong of making children sensitive, and thenblaming them for being sensitive, is admirably shown in Pip’s training.
The revelation of the child’s consciousness of the sense of injustice in the treatment of those who train it is worthy of most careful study and thought by parents and teachers. There can be no doubt that infants have a clear sense of wrongs inflicted on them, even before they can speak.
The comparison of the child’s rocking-horse with the big-boned Irish hunter reveals one of the most essential lessons for adulthood: that what may appear trifling to an adult may mean much to a child. Kind but thoughtless adulthood is often most grievously unjust to childhood, because it fails to consider how things appear to the child. However kind and good such adults are, they are utterly unsympathetic with the child. Many people are very considerate for childhood who are very unsympathetic with children. Consideration can never take the place of sympathy. An ounce of true sympathy is worth a ton of consideration to a child. Adulthood has measured a child’s corn in the bushel of adulthood. Mr. Gradgrind, for instance, was a good man, and he meant to be kind and helpful to his children. He was most considerate for them, and spared no money to promote their welfare and happiness. But he did it in accordance with the tastes and opinions of adulthood, and totally ignored the fact that children have opinions and tastes, and he ruined the children whom he most loved. “The rocking-horse and the big-boned Irish hunter” suggest rich mines of child psychology.
The pernicious habit of so many adults who fill the imaginations of children with bogies and terrors of an abnormal kind in order to keep them in the path of rectitude by falsehood, is exposed in Mrs. Gargery’s method of stopping Pip’s questions by telling him that asking questions was the first step in a career of crime. This habit leads parents insensibly into a most dishonest attitude toward their children. It leads, too, in due time, to a lack of reverence for adulthood. Falseness is certain to lead to the disrespect it deserves. Parents who makeuntruthfulness a basis for terror should not be surprised at the irreverence or the scepticism of their children.
In The Schoolboy’s Story, old Cheeseman was brought to school by a woman who was always taking snuff and shaking him.
There is a great deal of pedagogical thought in Dombey and Son. At the period of its issue (1846-48) Dickens appears to have devoted more attention to the study of wrong methods of teaching than at any other time, so in Dr. Blimber, Cornelia Blimber, and Mr. Feeder he gave his best illustrations of what in his opinion should be condemned in the popular methods of teaching. But while this was evidently his chief educational purpose in writing the book, he gave a good deal of attention to wrong methods of training, especially to the most awful doctrine of the ages—that children must be coerced, and repressed, and checked, and subdued. He evidently accepted as his supreme duty the responsibility for securing a free childhood for children. Mrs. Pipchin is an admirable delineation of the worst features of what was regarded as respectable child training. Her training is treated at length in Chapter XI. It is sufficient here to deal with her coerciveness, and recall the epithet “child-queller” which Dickens applied to her. No more expressive term was ever used to describe the wickedness of the coercionists. It means more than most volumes. It has new meaning every day as our reverence for the divinity in the child grows stronger, and the absolute need of the development of his selfhood by his own self-activity becomes clearer. It reveals a perfect charnel house full of dwarfed souls and blighted selfhood, and weak characters that should have been strong, and false characters that should have been true, and wailings that should have been music, and tears that should have been laughter, and darkness that should have been light, and wickedness that should have been a blessing. The one awful word “child-queller” means all of evil that can result from daring to stand between the child and God in our self-satisfied ignorance to check the free, natural output of its selfhood which God meant to be wrought out with increasingpower throughout its life. Our work is to change the direction of the outflowing selfhood when it is wrong, to direct it to new and better interest centres, but never to stop it or turn it back upon itself.
There are thousands of child-quellers teaching still. Would that they could see truly the dwarfed souls they have blighted, and the ghosts of the selfhood they have sacrificed on the altar of what they call discipline!
The term child-queller was the creation of genius.
Mrs. Pipchin disdained the idea of reasoning with children. “Hoity-toity!” 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 substitute 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.”
“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 ofspirits 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.
“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 ofspirits 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 assault 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.
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 foryou, 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.”
“You’re a nice young gentleman!” said Mr. Carker, shaking his head at him. “There’s hemp-seed sown foryou, 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.
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 illustration 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. Nobody taught her, nobody stepped forward to help her, nobody cared for her.”“Nobody!” 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.”
“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. Nobody taught her, nobody stepped forward to help her, nobody cared for her.”
“Nobody!” 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 Dickens 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’Choakumchild (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. Dickens 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.
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 thecoarsely 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 whatIcall education.”
“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 thecoarsely 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 whatIcall education.”
In his last book—Edwin Drood—Dickens 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 class 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) bumping them into the paths of peace.
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) bumping 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.”
“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 class, or even servile individuals, can never have a true conception of his own freedom.
Dickens was not satisfied with his numerous and sustained attacks on the more violent forms of coercion andrepression. 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 surpass 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.”
“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 changemymind!”
“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 changemymind!”
Dickens 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 circumstances 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, constitutional liberty has changed in harmony with the educationalrevelations 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 passive 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. Passive submission was required as the full duty of the citizen, and passive obedience was the desired product of the school. But the new ideal of government is rule by the people through their representatives, and national citizenship 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 theimmediate 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,passive 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 God in whose image man was created.
Every agency that robs a child of his originality and freedom and prevents the spontaneous output of his creative self-activity destroys the image of God in him. Man is most like God when he is freely working out the plans of his own creative selfhood for good purposes. Coercion has been the greatest destroyer of the image of God in the child, and anarchy is the product of the perversion of the very powers that should have made man hopefully constructive. The seeds of anarchy are sown in the child’s life, when his selfhood is blighted and checked. The fountain that finds free outlet for its waters forms a pure stream that remains always a blessing, but the fountain that is obstructed forms a noisome marsh, wasting the good land it should have watered and destroying the plant life it should have nourished.
The great salt seas and lakes and marshes of the world have been formed by the checking of beautiful fresh-water streams and rivers and the prevention of their outflow to the ocean they should have reached. So when the outflow of the soul of the child is checked the powers that should have ennobled his own life and enriched the lives of others turn to evil instead of good, and make a dangerous instead of a helpful character. So far as coercion can influence selfhood it destroys its power for good and makes it a menace to civilization, instead of a beneficent agency in the accomplishment of high purposes. The reason that coercion does not more effectively blight and dwarf the child is that childhood is not under the direct influence of adulthood all the time. The blessed hours of freedom in play and work have saved the race.
The absurd idea that “anarchy will result from giving true freedom to the child” persists in the minds of so many people, partly through the strength of the raceconception of the need of coercion, from which we have not yet been able fully to free ourselves; partly from a terrible misconception regarding the true function of law; partly through gross ignorance of the child and lack of reverence for him; and partly from failure to understand our own higher powers for guiding the child properly, or the vital relationships of adulthood to childhood.
The child should recognise law as a beneficent guide in the accomplishment of his own plans. In Froebel’s wonderful kindergarten system the child is always guided by law, but he is always perfectly free to work out his own designs, and in doing so he is aided by law, not kept back or down by law. Law is, to the truly trained child, a revealer of right outlets for power, and the supreme duties of adulthood in training childhood are to change the centre of its interest when from lack of wisdom its interest centre is wrong, and to reveal to it in logical sequence the laws of nature, of beauty, of harmony, and of life. With such training life and law will always be in harmony, and the seeds of anarchy will find no soil in human hearts or minds in which to take root.
Dickens uses the French Revolution, in A Tale of Two Cities, to show that anarchy results from coercion, from the unreasoning subordination of a lower to a higher or ruling class. Against the reasoning of wisdom the Marquis said: “Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend, will keep the dogs obedient to the whip as long as this roof shuts out the sky.” The roof came off one wild night—burned off by an infuriated mob of the dogs who had been repressed and whipped into anarchy. Yet the aristocracy of France claimed, as coercionist educators claim, that the anarchy was the result of insufficient coercion, instead of the natural harvest of the seed they had sown.
It was too much the way of monseigneur under his reverses as a refugee, and it was much too much the way of native British orthodoxy, to talk of this terrible revolution as if it were the one only harvest ever known under the skies that had not been sown—as if nothing had ever been done that had led to it—as if the observers of the wretchedmillions in France, and of the misused and perverted resources that should have made them prosperous, had not seen it inevitably coming, years before, and had not in plain words recorded what they saw.
It was too much the way of monseigneur under his reverses as a refugee, and it was much too much the way of native British orthodoxy, to talk of this terrible revolution as if it were the one only harvest ever known under the skies that had not been sown—as if nothing had ever been done that had led to it—as if the observers of the wretchedmillions in France, and of the misused and perverted resources that should have made them prosperous, had not seen it inevitably coming, years before, and had not in plain words recorded what they saw.
When the Revolution was at its fearful height, and the repressed dogs were having their wild carnival of revenge, Dickens says:
Along the Paris streets the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrels carry the day’s wine to la guillotine. All the devouring and insatiate monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, are fused in the one realization, guillotine. And yet there is not in France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.Six tumbrels roll along the streets. Change these back again to what they were, thou powerful enchanter, Time, and they shall be seen to be the carriages of absolute monarchs, the equipages of feudal nobles, the toilets of flaring Jezebels, the churches that are not My Father’s house but dens of thieves, and huts of millions of starving peasants!
Along the Paris streets the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrels carry the day’s wine to la guillotine. All the devouring and insatiate monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, are fused in the one realization, guillotine. And yet there is not in France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.
Six tumbrels roll along the streets. Change these back again to what they were, thou powerful enchanter, Time, and they shall be seen to be the carriages of absolute monarchs, the equipages of feudal nobles, the toilets of flaring Jezebels, the churches that are not My Father’s house but dens of thieves, and huts of millions of starving peasants!
This is the most profound and most ably written exposition of the philosophy of anarchy.
“But by coercion I can make the child do right, and in this way I can form habits of doing right that will control the child when he grows up.”
The habit that is really formed by coercion is the habit of submission, of passive yielding to authority, of subordination, and, in the last analysis, this means the degradation and enslavement of the soul. Two habits are thus wrought into the child’s nature by coercion: the habit of doing things because ordered to do them, which is slavery; and the habit of doing things he does not like or wish to do, which is the basis of hypocrisy. The meanest products that can be made from beingscreated in God’s image are slaves and hypocrites. One of the remarkable facts regarding coercionists is that they blame God for creating the monstrosities they have themselves produced by false methods of training.
“We should break the child’s will, if it is wrong, to set it right, just as we should break a crooked leg to make it straight.”
This is a statement that betrays a lack of modern surgical knowledge, and a carelessness of psychological thought. Modern treatment for the cure of deformity of body avoids harsh treatment whenever it is possible to do so. It has been found that many deformities of body may be cured by proper exercise of the undeveloped part or parts, and with wider knowledge of Nature’s laws will come a wiser use of the law of self-transformation, and a smaller and smaller use of the severer methods of treatment. But no good child psychologist now doubts that a child’s will possesses the power of self-development and self-adjustment under proper guidance, nor should any one be ignorant of the fact that all true will development comes from within outward.
It is only necessary that man should study the child more thoroughly, and learn how to change his interest centres from wrong to right, and how to surround him with an environment suitable to his progressive stages of development, in order to keep his own will in operation along productive lines of self-reformation and self-regulation by creative self-activity. Thus the will can be set to work truly with undiminished power. When a will is broken, however, it can never regain its full power; the breaking process blights it forever. More rational processes retain its tendency to act and its energy of action while changing the purpose and direction of its action.
One of the interesting anomalies of our language is the marvellous fact that the term “self-willed” should ever have been considered a term of reproach or a description of a defect in character. The child with strongest self-will may become the greatest champion for righteousness if properly trained. He needs a wise andsympathetic trainer, who will be reverently grateful for his strong self-will, and whose reverence will prevent him from doing anything that would weaken the strength or selfhood of the will. The attempt to break his will may make him a destroying force instead of a leader for truth and progress. If a strangled will ever regains vitality it rarely acts truly. There is perhaps no other relic of the theories of barbaric ignorance concerning child training still left that is so baneful and so illogical as the theory that justifies will breaking.
“But God punishes the child. The child who touches the fire gets burned, and therefore it is right that coercive punishment should be used by adulthood in dealing with the child.”
The punishments referred to are the revelation of natural laws. There is no personal element of the punishing agency manifest to the child. God does not appear to the child as a punisher, and it is an astounding error in training to reveal such a consciousness of God to the child. Responsibility for the consequences of their acts is a law of which all children approve. This appeals to their sense of justice, and there is no other sense to which we can appeal with success so universally in children as the sense of justice. “Squareness” is the highest quality named in the lexicon of childhood. A boy would rather be deemed “square” than receive praise for any other characteristic or accomplishment. So he recognises the justice of being held accountable for the directly resulting consequences of his acts quite as readily as he accepts the fact, without blaming any one else, that he will be burned if he touches fire. There is no element of coercion in the law of consequences. It is a just and universal law in harmony with his moral responsibility; therefore he will respect it. Coercion is directly contrary to the fundamental laws of his happiness and his true growth, and therefore he naturally and properly dislikes and disapproves of it, and of the individual who outrages justice by using it.
The wonderful stories of Dickens set the world thinking by first arousing the strongest feelings of sympathyfor the child and then developing sentiment and thought against every form of coercion, more especially coercion by corporal punishment. The awakening has been most satisfactory in its results. When Dickens began his writing against corporal punishment the rod was the almost universal remedy for all defects in animals or human beings. Whatever the defect, the superior in the eyes of the law used the one agency to overcome it. Mothers used the rod to subdue their children. Husbands used the rod to keep their children and wives in order. Men whipped their horses with impunity, as they did their children or wives. They owned them, and their right to punish them as they chose was unquestioned. Men trained animals to perform tricks in menageries by beating them, and they trained dancing, or performing, or learning girls and boys quite as inhumanly. Ownership or subordination justified unspeakable cruelty. The weakness of the child, the helplessness of the animal, appealed to the hardness of human nature, and not to its chivalry or sympathy. Even the poor feeble-minded and idiotic, who were confined in asylums, were terribly flogged by the most advanced philanthropists of the highest Christian civilization. They were weak. It was the duty of the authorities to control them, and “stripes and bruises” were regarded as the only true agencies for securing obedience. The rod was the highest controlling and directing force in the world.
What a change has been wrought! Horses and children and wives are protected from brutal treatment now by law. The insane are not flogged to make them sane in any well-conducted institutions. More than half the children in the schools of the civilized world are free from the terror and degradation of corporal punishment by law, or by the higher consciousness of more intelligent teachers. Parenthood everywhere is studying the child and trying to become conscious of its own higher powers of guiding character so that it may be able to train the children in truer and more productive and less dangerous ways than formerly. And Charles Dickens was the great apostle of these grand reforms.
We shudder now as we read of the outrages practised on helpless children and on the insane half a century ago not by the heathen, but by earnest, conscientious Christians. The men who live half a century hence will shudder when they read that in some schools at the close of the nineteenth century children who were partially or temporarily insane from hereditary taint, or imperfect nutrition, or cruel treatment, or anger, or from some other removable or remediable cause were whipped, and that men, some of whom occupied respectable positions, advocated the breaking of children’s wills! If these “will-breaking” educators were in charge of asylums they would resurrect the straitjacket and the whipping post for the insane.
The few who advocate corporal punishment openly claim that they have the authority of the Bible for their faith in the rod. They should remember that good men have stood with Bibles in their hands misrepresenting God and attempting to stop the progress of every great movement toward freedom and reform. Galileo was imprisoned by the Church because he taught that the earth turns round. Men had no difficulty in showing that the Bible approved of slavery, or that it prohibited woman from the exercise of the right or the performance of the duties of responsible individuality. So men still quote Solomon to show that corporal punishment is approved by God, though such a conclusion would be rejected by the highest interpreters.
“Whipping makes strong characters.” No, it makes hard characters, and hardness is but one element of strength, and not the best element of strength. The strength of the English character has not been developed, as is claimed by some, by the whipping done in English schools and homes. It comes partly by race heredity from the sturdiness of the Saxon and Norman founders of the race, partly from the general practice of working hard from youth up, and largely from the fact that the English playgrounds are so universally used, and are the scenes of the severest struggles for supremacy in skill and power that are witnessed in any part of the world. The winning half inch or half length,the valorous struggle for leadership on track or river—these are the things that have preserved and developed English force and bravery, in spite of the fact that England in her schools and homes has done fully her share of whipping. A boy or girl who spends as much time in free strong play as the English boy, works out the effects of a great many evils from his or her life. When men see the futility of dependence on flogging for developing energetic strength of character they will study the influence of play to the great advantage of racial vigour, and courage, and moral energy.
Corporal punishment, like all other forms of coercion, robs the child of joyousness, and joyousness is one of the most essential elements in the true growth of a child. Corporal punishment affects the nervous systems of children injuriously, and when applied to certain parts of the body it stimulates prematurely the action of the sexual nature, and leads to one of the worst forms of depravity.
Corporal punishment is ineffective as a disciplinary agency. In one American city during the generation after Dickens began his great crusade against corporal punishment it was the practice to whip with a rawhide all children who came late, but the lateness steadily increased in defiance of the rawhide. It was reduced to less than one one-hundredth part of its former proportion when whipping for lateness was entirely abolished and more rational means adopted.
The order and co-operation of pupils is best in those schools in which no corporal punishment is used. If in any school only one teacher relies on the rod as a stimulator to work and a restrainer of evil, her class is sure to be the most disorderly, the least co-operative, and the most defective in original power in the school. As the children throughout the school come from the same homes, play with the same companions, attend the same churches, and are subject to the same general influences, it is perfectly clear that the whipping is the distinctive feature of character training that deforms the children. They will become normal, reasonable children when they reach the nextroom. This illustration assumes that all the teachers are possessed of good natural ability to direct the child properly. The one who uses corporal punishment fails because she has been dwarfed by her faith in corporal punishment. She has believed in it so fully that she has not sought to understand higher and better means. She has studied neither the child nor her own powers of child guidance.
Dickens taught the inefficiency of coercion to accomplish what men hoped to accomplish by it in his criticism of the revolting use of capital punishment in former times. In A Tale of Two Cities he says: