Part 15 (1/2)

All processes that attempt to educate from without inward, instead of from within outward, are in the last a.n.a.lysis cram. The selfhood must be active in going out for the new knowledge. The child must himself be originative, directive, and executive in the learning process if cram is to be avoided completely. This is the only sure way to secure perfect apperception, and without apperception the new knowledge lies dormant, if not dead, and unrelated in the memory until it disappears, as did Bitherstone's. His declensions, according to d.i.c.kens, were not likely to last out his journey from England to India.

CHAPTER VI.

FREE CHILDHOOD.

Adulthood can never be truly free till childhood is free. Perfect freedom can not be developed in a soul filled with the apperceptive experiences of tyranny. No man is fully free in the freest country in the world who wishes to dominate even his child. The practice of tyranny develops the tyrant. Guiding control is entirely different from domination.

d.i.c.kens taught the doctrine of a rich, full, free childhood from the time he wrote Nicholas Nickleby in 1839.

Even the sunburned faces of gipsy children, half naked though they be, suggest a drop of comfort. It is a pleasant thing to see that the sun has been there; to know that the air and light are on them every day; to feel that they _are_ children, and lead children's lives; that if their pillows be damp, it is with the dews of heaven, and not with tears; that the limbs of their girls are free, and that they are not crippled by distortions, imposing an unnatural and horrible penance upon their s.e.x; that their lives are spent, from day to day, at least among the waving trees, and not in the midst of dreadful engines which make young children old before they know what childhood is, and give them the exhaustion and infirmity of age, without, like age, the privilege to die. G.o.d send that old nursery tales were true, and that gipsies stole such children by the score!

If he had written nothing but this exquisite quotation from Nicholas Nickleby he would have deserved recognition as an educator. It shows a clear insight into the great principles of physical freedom, intellectual freedom, and spiritual freedom.

In The Old Curiosity Shop he made the world sympathize with a child who lived with an old man. He gives the keynote to this fundamental thought of the book in the opening chapter:

It always grieves me to contemplate the initiation of children into the ways of life when they are scarcely more than infants. It checks their confidence and simplicity--two of the best qualities that Heaven gives them--and demands that they share our sorrows before they are capable of entering into our enjoyments.

Little Nell had the sadness of a lonely childhood, though her grandfather lived with but the one aim of making her happy.

In Martin Chuzzlewit--

Tom Pinch's sister was governess in a family, a lofty family; perhaps the wealthiest bra.s.s and copper founder's family known to mankind.

They lived at Camberwell; in a house so big and fierce that its mere outside, like the outside of a giant's castle, struck terror into vulgar minds and made bold persons quail.

When Mr. Pecksniff and his daughters went to visit Miss Pinch she

was at that moment instructing her eldest pupil; to wit, a premature little woman of thirteen years old, who had already arrived at such a pitch of whalebone and education that she had nothing girlish about her, which was a source of great rejoicing to all her relations and friends.

One of the unsolved mysteries is the fact that such a large proportion of parents are so anxious to have their children grow up. The desire may be understood when poverty longs for the time when the little hands may help to win bread, but that wealthy parents should hasten the premature state of adulthood in their children is incomprehensible.

A great deal of attention is paid to the blunder of robbing children of real childhood in Dombey and Son, which is so rich in several departments of educational philosophy. Doctor Blimber regarded the young gentlemen ”as if they were born grown up.”

Paul's life and death were intended as warnings to ambitious parents.

Florence was robbed of a true childhood by her mother's death and her father's lack of sympathy. Briggs and Tozer had no childhood; they were persecuted by the ingenious and ignorantly learned adults at home during vacations, as well as by Doctor Blimber during school time; so that ”Tozer said, indeed, that choosing between two evils, he would rather stay at school than go home.”

Poor Bitherstone had no childhood. He was s.h.i.+pped away from his parents in India to the respectable h.e.l.l conducted by that widely known and highly reputed child trainer Mrs. Pipchin.

Poor little Miss Pankey spent a great deal of her time in Mrs. Pipchin's ”correctional dungeon.” What a mercy it would be if all such unfortunate children could be stolen by the gipsies!

Mrs. Pipchin's theory taught ”that it was wrong to encourage a child's mind to develop and expand itself like a young flower, but to open it by force like an oyster.”

When Doctor Blimber asked Paul, six-year-old Paul, ”if he would like them to make a man of him,” the child replied:

”I had rather be a child.”

One of d.i.c.kens's most successful hits at the common philosophy, that the desired adult characteristics must be developed in childhood in their adult forms, was made in describing Mrs. Tozer's effort to qualify Tozer for the position of a clergyman by making him wear a stiff, starched necktie while he was a boy.

When Edith upbraided her mother for practically compelling her to marry Mr. Dombey, her mother asked angrily: