Dickens As an Educator

by James L. Hughes

  CHAPTER V.

  CRAMMING.

  Although Dickens paid much more attention in his writings to the methodsof training than to the methods of teaching, he studied the methods ofteaching sufficiently to recognise some of their gravest defects. Dombeyand Son is unquestionably the greatest book ever written to expose theevils of cramming. Doctor Blimber, Cornelia, and Mr. Feeder, when closelystudied, represent in the varied phases of their work all the worst formsof cramming.

  Whenever a young gentleman was taken in hand by Doctor Blimber, he might consider himself sure of a pretty tight squeeze. The doctor only undertook the charge of ten young gentlemen, but he had always ready a supply of learning for a hundred, on the lowest estimate; it was at once the business and delight of his life to gorge the unhappy ten with it.

  In fact, Doctor Blimber's establishment was a great hothouse, in which there was a forcing apparatus incessantly at work. All the boys blew before their time. Mental green peas were produced at Christmas, and intellectual asparagus all the year round. Mathematical gooseberries (very sour ones too) were common at untimely seasons, and from mere sprouts of bushes, under Doctor Blimber's cultivation. Every description of Greek and Latin vegetable was got off the dryest twigs of boys, under the frostiest circumstances. Nature was of no consequence at all. No matter what a young gentleman was intended to bear, Doctor Blimber made him bear to pattern, somehow or other. This was all very pleasant and ingenious, but the system of forcing was attended with its usual disadvantages. There was not the right taste about the premature productions, and they didn't keep well. Moreover, one young gentleman, with a swollen nose and an excessively large head (the oldest of the ten who had "gone through" everything) suddenly left off blowing one day, and remained in the establishment a mere stalk. And people did say that the doctor had rather overdone it with young Toots, and that when he began to have whiskers he left off having brains.

  The doctor was a portly gentleman in a suit of black, with strings at his knees, and stockings below them. He had a bald head, highly polished; a deep voice, and a chin so very double that it was a wonder how he ever managed to shave into the creases. He had likewise a pair of little eyes that were always half shut up and a mouth that was always half expanded into a grin, as if he had, that moment, posed a boy, and were waiting to convict him from his own lips. Insomuch that when the doctor put his right hand into the breast of his coat, and, with his other hand behind him and a scarcely perceptible wag of his head, made the commonest observation to a nervous stranger, it was like a sentiment from the sphinx, and settled his business.

  Miss Blimber, too, although a slim and graceful maid, did no soft violence to the gravity of the house. There was no light nonsense about Miss Blimber. She kept her hair short and crisp, and wore spectacles. She was dry and sandy with working in the graves of deceased languages. None of your live languages for Miss Blimber. They must be dead--stone dead--and then Miss Blimber dug them up like a ghoul.

  As to Mr. Feeder, B. A., Dr. Blimber's assistant, he was a kind of human barrel organ, with a little list of tunes at which he was continually working, over and over again, without any variation. He might have been fitted up with a change of barrels, perhaps, in early life, if his destiny had been favourable; but it had not been; and he had only one, with which, in a monotonous round, it was his occupation to bewilder the young ideas of Dr. Blimber's young gentlemen. The young gentlemen were prematurely full of carking anxieties. They knew no rest from the pursuit of stony-hearted verbs, savage noun-substantives, inflexible syntactic passages, and ghosts of exercises that appeared to them in their dreams. Under the forcing system, a young gentleman usually took leave of his spirits in three weeks. He had all the care of the world on his head in three months. He conceived bitter sentiments against his parents or guardians in four; he was an old misanthrope in five; envied Curtius that blessed refuge in the earth in six; and at the end of the first twelvemonth had arrived at the conclusion, from which he never afterward departed, that all the fancies of the poets, and lessons of the sages, were a mere collection of words and grammar, and had no other meaning in the world.

  But he went on blow, blow, blowing, in the doctor's hothouse all the time; and the doctor's glory and reputation were great when he took his wintry growth home to his relations and friends.

  Upon the doctor's doorsteps one day, Paul stood with a fluttering heart, and with his small right hand in his father's. His other hand was locked in that of Florence. How tight the tiny pressure of that one; and how loose and cool the other!

  The doctor was sitting in his portentous study, with a globe at each knee, books all round him, Homer over the door, and Minerva on the mantelshelf. "And how do you do, sir?" he said to Mr. Dombey; "and how is my little friend?"

  "Very well I thank you, sir," returned Paul, answering the clock quite as much as the doctor.

  "Ha!" said Dr. Blimber. "Shall we make a man of him?"

  "Do you hear, Paul?" added Mr. Dombey; Paul being silent.

  "Shall we make a man of him?" repeated the doctor.

  "I had rather be a child," replied Paul.

  Paul's reply is one of the most touchingly beautiful of even Dickens'swonderful expressions--wonderful in their exquisite simplicity and theirprofound philosophy. When this book was written Dickens was beginning toget the conception of the great truth, which he illustrated at length inHard Times and other works, that it is a crime against a child to rob itof its childhood.

  When Doctor Blimber in his cold, formal manner asked Paul "why hepreferred to be a child," the little fellow was unable to answer, and asthey stared at him, he at length put his hand on the neck of Florence andburst into tears.

  "Mrs. Pipchin," said his father in a querulous manner, "I am really very sorry to see this."

  "Never mind," said the doctor blandly, nodding his head to keep Mrs. Pipchin back. "Nev-er mind; we shall substitute new cares and new impressions, Mr. Dombey, very shortly. You would still wish my little friend to acquire----"

  "Everything, if you please, doctor," returned Mr. Dombey firmly.

  "Yes," said the doctor, who, with his half-shut eyes and his usual smile, seemed to survey Paul with the sort of interest that might attach to some choice little animal he was going to stuff. "Yes, exactly. Ha! We shall impart a great variety of information to our little friend, and bring him quickly forward, I dare say. I dare say. Quite a virgin soil, I believe you said, Mr. Dombey?"

  On leaving, Mr. Dombey said to Paul:

  "You'll try and learn a great deal here, and be a clever man, won't you?"

  "I'll try," returned the child wearily.

  "And you'll soon be grown up now?" said Mr. Dombey.

  "Oh! very soon!" replied the child. Once more the old, old look passed rapidly across his features like a strange light.

  After his father and Florence had left him the doctor said to Cornelia:

  "Cornelia, Dombey will be your charge at first. Bring him on, Cornelia, bring him on. Take him round the house, Cornelia, and familiarize him with his new sphere. Go with that young lady, Dombey."

  Cornelia took him first to the schoolroom. Here there were eight young gentlemen in various stages of mental prostration, all very hard at work, and very grave indeed.

  Mr. Feeder, B. A., had his Virgil stop on, and was slowly grinding that tune to four young gentlemen. Of the remaining four, two, who grasped their foreheads convulsively, were engaged in solving mathematical problems; one, with his face like a dirty window from much crying, was endeavouring to flounder through a hopeless number of lines before dinner; and one sat looking at his task in stony stupefaction and despair--which, it seemed, had been his co
ndition ever since breakfast time.

  After being shown through the dormitories, Cornelia told him dinner wouldbe ready in fifteen minutes, and that in the meantime he had better gointo the schoolroom among his "friends."

  His friends were all dispersed about the room except the stony friend, who remained immovable. Mr. Feeder was stretching himself in his gray gown, as if, regardless of expense, he were resolved to pull the sleeves off.

  "Heigh-ho-hum!" cried Mr. Feeder, shaking himself like a cart horse "oh dear me, dear me! Ya-a-a-ah!"

  "You sleep in my room, don't you?" asked a solemn young gentleman, whose shirt collar curled up the lobes of his ears.

  "Master Briggs?" inquired Paul.

  "Tozer," said the young gentleman.

  Paul answered yes; and Tozer, pointing out the stony pupil, said that it was Briggs. Paul had already felt certain that it must be either Briggs or Tozer, though he didn't know why.

  "Is yours a strong constitution?" inquired Tozer.

  Paul said he thought not. Tozer replied that _he_ thought not also, judging from Paul's looks, and that it was a pity, for it need be. He then asked Paul if he were going to begin with Cornelia; and on Paul saying "Yes," all the young gentlemen (Briggs excepted) gave a low groan.

  At dinner no boy was allowed to speak; every one was compelled to listento the tedious discourse of Doctor Blimber on the customs of the Romans.The cramming of youth was continued with great dignity even during meals.One boy, Johnson, was unfortunate enough to choke himself by too suddenlyswallowing his water in order to catch Doctor Blimber's eye when he beganan account of the dinners of Vitellius; and to punish him for his breachof manners, Doctor Blimber said before the boys were dismissed from thetable:

  "Johnson will repeat to-morrow morning before breakfast, without book, and from the Greek Testament, the first chapter of the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Ephesians. We will resume our studies, Mr. Feeder, in half an hour."

  It used to be a common practice to cultivate a loving reverence for God byusing the Bible as a means of punishment. This was in harmony with the oldeducational and the old theological ideal of punishment, as the suprememeans available for guiding children properly. It was considered aperfectly appropriate use of the best book to use it for this best ofpurposes.

  The young gentlemen bowed and withdrew; Mr. Feeder did likewise. During the half hour the young gentlemen, broken into pairs, loitered arm in arm up and down a small piece of ground behind the house. But nothing happened so vulgar as play. Punctually at the appointed time the gong was sounded, and the studies, under the joint auspices of Doctor Blimber and Mr. Feeder, were resumed.

  Tea was served in a style no less polite than dinner; and after tea the young gentlemen, rising and bowing as before, withdrew to fetch up the unfinished tasks of that day or to get up the already looming tasks of to-morrow. After prayers and light refreshments at eight o'clock or so, the "young gentlemen" were sent to bed by the doctor rising and solemnly saying, "We will resume our studies at seven to-morrow"; the pupils bowed again, and went to bed.

  In the confidence of their own room upstairs, Briggs said his head ached ready to split, and that he should wish himself dead if it wasn't for his mother and a blackbird he had at home. Tozer didn't say much, but he sighed a good deal, and told Paul to look out, for his turn would come to-morrow. After uttering those prophetic words, he undressed himself moodily and got into bed. Briggs was in his bed too, and Paul in his bed too, before the weak-eyed young man appeared to take away the candle, when he wished them good-night and pleasant dreams. But his benevolent wishes were in vain as far as Briggs and Tozer were concerned; for Paul, who lay awake for a long while, and often woke afterward, found that Briggs was ridden by his lesson as a nightmare; and that Tozer, whose mind was affected in his sleep by similar causes, in a minor degree, talked unknown tongues, or scraps of Greek and Latin--it was all one to Paul--which, in the silence of night, had an inexpressibly wicked and guilty effect.

  As Paul was going downstairs in the morning Miss Blimber called him intoher room, and, pointing to a pile of new books on her table, said:

  "These are yours, Dombey."

  "All of 'em, ma'am?" said Paul.

  "Yes," returned Miss Blimber; "and Mr. Feeder will look you out some more very soon, if you are as studious as I expect you will be, Dombey."

  "Thank you, ma'am," said Paul.

  "I am going out for a constitutional," resumed Miss Blimber; "and while I am gone--that is to say, in the interval between this and breakfast, Dombey--I wish you to read over what I have marked in these books, and to tell me if you quite understand what you have got to learn. Don't lose time, Dombey, for you have none to spare, but take them downstairs, and begin directly."

  "Yes, ma'am," answered Paul.

  There were so many of them, that although Paul put one hand under the bottom book and his other hand and his chin on the top book, and hugged them all closely, the middle book slipped out before he reached the door, and then they all tumbled down on the floor. Having at last amassed the whole library and climbed into his place, he fell to work, encouraged by a remark from Tozer to the effect that he "was in for it now"; which was the only interruption he received till breakfast time. At that meal, for which he had no appetite, everything was quite as solemn and genteel as at the others; and when it was finished, he followed Miss Blimber upstairs.

  "Now, Dombey," said Miss Blimber, "how have you got on with those books?"

  They comprised a little English, and a deal of Latin--names of things, declensions of articles and substantives, exercises thereon, and preliminary rules--a trifle of orthography, a glance at ancient history, a wink or two at modern ditto, a few tables, two or three weights and measures, and a little general information. When poor Paul had spelled out number two, he found he had no idea of number one; fragments whereof afterward obtruded themselves into number three, which slided into number four, which, grafted itself on to number two. So that whether twenty Romuluses made a Remus, or hic haec hoc was troy weight, or a verb always agreed with an ancient Briton, or three times four was Taurus a bull, were open questions with him.

  "Oh, Dombey, Dombey!" said Miss Blimber, "this is very shocking."

  So Paul's cramming went on day by day. The delicate little boy, who shouldnot have been sent to school at all, was forced to memorize confusedmasses of words that had no meaning to him, but he learned to repeat thewords, and so got the credit of doing well, and because he learned easilywas driven harder and harder. The more easily he carried his burden thehigher it was piled on his back.

  It was not that Miss Blimber meant to be too hard upon him, or that Doctor Blimber meant to bear too heavily on the young gentlemen in general. Cornelia merely held the faith in which she had been bred; and the doctor, in some partial confusion of his ideas, regarded the young gentlemen as if they were all doctors, and were born grown up. Comforted by the applause of the young gentlemen's nearest relations, and urged on by their blind vanity and ill-considered haste, it would have been strange if Doctor Blimber had discovered his mistake, or trimmed his swelling sails to any other tack.

  Thus in the case of Paul. When Doctor Blimber said he made great progress, and was naturally clever, Mr. Dombey was more bent than ever on his being forced and crammed. In the case of Briggs, when Doctor Blimber reported that he did not make great progress yet, and was not naturally clever, Briggs senior was inexorable in the same purpose. In short, however high and false the temperature at which the doctor kept his hothouse, the owners of the plants were always ready to lend a helping hand at the bellows and to stir the fire.

  When the midsummer vacation approached, no indecent manifestati
ons of joy were exhibited by the leaden-eyed young gentlemen assembled at Doctor Blimber's. Any such violent expression as "breaking up" would have been quite inapplicable to that polite establishment. The young gentlemen oozed away, semi-annually, to their own homes; but they never broke up. They would have scorned the action.

  Tozer, who was constantly galled and tormented by a starched white cambric neckerchief, which he wore at the express desire of Mrs. Tozer, his parent, who, designing him for the Church, was of opinion that he couldn't be in that forward state of preparation too soon--Tozer said, indeed, that choosing between two evils, he thought he would rather stay where he was, than go home. However inconsistent this declaration might appear with that passage in Tozer's essay on the subject, wherein he had observed "that the thoughts of home and all its recollections awakened in his mind the most pleasing emotions of anticipation and delight," and had also likened himself to a Roman general, flushed with a recent victory over the Iceni, or laden with Carthaginian spoil, advancing within a few hours' march of the Capitol, presupposed, for the purposes of the simile, to be the dwelling place of Mrs. Tozer, still it was very sincerely made. For it seemed that Tozer had a dreadful uncle, who not only volunteered examinations of him, in the holidays, on abstruse points, but twisted innocent events and things, and wrenched them to the same fell purpose. So that if this uncle took him to the play, or, on a similar pretence of kindness, carried him to see a giant, or a dwarf, or a conjurer, or anything, Tozer knew he had read up some classical allusion to the subject beforehand, and was thrown into a state of mortal apprehension; not foreseeing where he might break out, or what authority he might not quote against him.

  As to Briggs, _his_ father made no show of artifice about it. He never would leave him alone. So numerous and severe were the mental trials of that unfortunate youth in vacation time, that the friends of the family (then resident near Bayswater, London) seldom approached the ornamental piece of water in Kensington Gardens without a vague expectation of seeing Master Briggs's hat floating on the surface and an unfinished exercise lying on the bank. Briggs, therefore, was not at all sanguine on the subject of holidays; and these two sharers of little Paul's bedroom were so fair a sample of the young gentlemen in general, that the most elastic among them contemplated the arrival of those festive periods with genteel resignation.

  Dickens did not wish to lay all the blame for the stupid process ofcramming on the teachers. He properly revealed to parents that they wereeven more to blame than the teachers, because they got what theydemanded. Doctor Blimber summed up the whole philosophy of the adulthoodof his time in regard to a child's education when he said to his daughter,"Bring him on, Cornelia! Bring him on!"

  The standard of knowledge cramming fixed by parents and school boards ischanging very slowly. Even yet a teacher's success is measured and hischances of re-engagement decided in most places by the answer to thequestion, "How does he bring the children on?"

  When asked by Doctor Blimber what he wished his little sickly son tolearn, Mr. Dombey answered, "Oh, everything."

  When Paul learned easily, his father pressed for more studies; and becauseBriggs was dull, his father demanded that he be driven harder at school,and made the poor boy's life miserable at home by tedious lessons duringthe holidays.

  The uncle who made Tozer wretched by asking him unexpected questions onall occasions is a type of an ogre who sometimes blights the lives ofchildren still.

  Dickens had a beautiful sympathy with childhood in its sufferings notmerely on account of deliberate cruelty and neglect, but because of theburdens placed upon it by adults who, with the best intentions, robbed itof its natural rights of joyousness and freedom.

  Whenever Doctor Blimber was informed that Paul was "old-fashioned" or"peculiar," he said, as he had said when Paul first came, that study woulddo much; and he also said, as he said on that occasion, "Bring him on,Cornelia! Bring him on!"

  Just before the close of the term Paul fainted and had to be carried tohis room, and after an examination the physician advised Doctor Blimber to"release the young gentleman from his books just now, the vacation beingso near at hand."

  It was so very considerate to release him from study, when he was utterlyunable to study any longer.

  At the close of the school party when he was leaving--

  Cornelia, taking both Paul's hands in hers, said, "Dombey, Dombey, you have always been my favourite pupil. God bless you!" And it showed, Paul thought, how easily one might do injustice to a person; for Miss Blimber meant it--though she _was_ a Forcer.

  Paul never returned to school. His life was sacrificed to his father'sdesire to have him "learn everything."

  In a brief look at the results of Doctor Blimber's teaching, Dickenstersely outlines three common results of cramming:

  Mr. Tozer, now a young man of lofty stature, in Wellington boots, was so extremely full of antiquity as to be nearly on a par with a genuine ancient Roman in his knowledge of English; a triumph that affected his good parents with the tenderest emotions, and caused the father and mother of Mr. Briggs (whose learning, like an ill-arranged luggage, was so tightly packed that he couldn't get at anything he wanted) to hide their diminished heads. The fruit laboriously gathered from the tree of knowledge by this latter young gentleman, in fact, had been subjected to so much pressure, that it had become a kind of intellectual Norfolk Biffin, and had nothing of its original form or flavour remaining. Master Bitherstone now, on whom the forcing system had the happier and not uncommon effect of leaving no impression whatever, when the forcing apparatus ceased to work was in a much more comfortable plight; and being then on shipboard, bound for Bengal, found himself forgetting with such admirable rapidity, that it was doubtful whether his declensions of noun-substantives would hold out to the end of the voyage.

  Dickens, in his very able description of Doctor Blimber's school, directsattention to nearly every phase of the evils of cramming. Toots is anillustration of the destruction of mental power by the "hard mathematics"and other subjects, when they are taught improperly. It is a seriousresult of an educational system, when the brightest young men "cease tohave brains when they begin to have whiskers."

  Paul's experience is used to show the terrible physical evils of crammingin any life, especially in the life of a delicate child. Paul was killedby his father and Doctor Blimber. He should have lived.

  Cornelia's aversion to live languages and her delight in "digging up thedead languages like a ghoul," and the address presented to Doctor Blimber"which contained very little of the mother tongue, but fifteen quotationsfrom the Latin and seven from the Greek," were intended as a protestagainst paying too much attention to the classics to the neglect of otherstudies. He returned to this subject again in Bleak House. RichardCarstone "could make Latin verses," but although his powers were naturallyexcellent he was a complete failure in life. He was not educated properly,notwithstanding his ability to make Latin verses.

  Mr. Feeder is the perfect type of a mechanical crammer, "a sort of barrelorgan with a little list of tunes at which he was continually working,over and over again, without any variation." What suggestiveness there isin the sentence "Mr. Feeder had his Virgil stop on, and was grinding thattune to four young gentlemen"!

  "Bewilder the young ideas of Doctor Blimber's young gentlemen," used to beconsidered too strong a criticism, but modern psychology fully sustainsDickens in his view. "Arrested development" is well understood now toresult from too much grinding at any one subject or department of asubject, from the monotonous drill of the crammer, or from directing thechild's attention too much to any one study.

  The influence of uninteresting study on the spirits was clear to Dickens.There is inspiration and physical advantage of a decided character in thesuccessful study of an interesting subject--interesting to the child, ofcourse--i
f the process of study includes the true self-activity of thechild. There is blight, and nervous irritation, and "carking anxiety," ifthe child works under compulsion at the dead matter of study. No wonderthe young gentlemen at Doctor Blimber's took leave of their spirits inthree weeks, and passed through the subsequent stages of deeper gloomdescribed by Dickens. They had none of the joy of living interest in theirstudy, none of the vital enthusiasm connected with independent thought,none of the health that comes from pleasant occupation, none of thehappiness that is found in self-activity alone.

  One of the best criticisms of wrong methods of teaching done by Mr. Feederis the criticism of the method of teaching literature. "At the end of thefirst twelvemonth the boys had arrived at the conclusion, from which theynever afterward departed, that all the fancies of the poets, and thelessons of the sages, were a mere collection of words and grammar, and hadno other meaning in the world." There are high schools yet in which moreattention is paid to the "words and grammar" than to the sacred andinspiring thought of the author.

  A professor in one of the leading educational institutions of Americatravelled in Scotland with his daughters. They were graduates of a highschool. He observed with deep regret that they visited the mountains, andvalleys, and rivers, and islands, and battlefields, and cathedrals of theland, that to him had been filled with sacred interests by the writings ofScott, and saw them all without emotion. One day he said to them: "Why areyou not interested here? To me every foot of ground here is full of livingmemories. Scott describes it in The Lady of the Lake." One of themexplained the reason. "Oh!" she said, "we're sick of Scott; we had enoughof him in the high school."

  There are Feeders yet who profane the temple of literature; who neverconnect the souls of their pupils with the soul life of the authors theystudy. Very few of the graduates of high schools have learned the high artof loving literature for its beauty and ennobling thought, fewer stillhave learned how to dig successfully in the rich mines of wealth thatliterature contains, and even a smaller number have learned to transmutethe revelations of literature into character and new revelations in lifeor richer literature for the happiness and culture of coming generations.We may yet learn from Dickens.

  Tozer became an antique pedant, learned but not educated.

  Briggs grew to be dull and heavy-witted, and had his "knowledge so tightlypacked that he couldn't get at anything he wanted."

  Bitherstone was one of the few fortunate fellows who are gifted withnatural power to pass through the cramming system without being affectedseriously in any way. They get little, if any, good, and they speedilyforget the wrongs inflicted upon them and the learning with which theirteachers attempted to cram them.

  Briggs showed the evil effects of cramming in the destruction ofindividuality. "His fruit had nothing of its original flavour remaining."This is one of the general charges made against Doctor Blimber's forcingestablishment, or hothouse. "Nature was of no consequence at all. Nomatter what a young gentleman was intended to bear, Doctor Blimber madehim bear to pattern somehow or other." The destruction of selfhood was thegreat evil of the old system of teaching.

  Another important criticism made by Dickens of the hothouse system isworthy of special attention by educators. He recognised the evil effectsof giving any study or work to children, that is naturally adapted to alater stage of their development. The development of children is alwaysarrested when the work of a higher stage is forced into a lower stage oftheir growth. The true evolution of the child consists in a growth througha series of progressive and interdependent stages. This was not recognisedin the educational system Dickens desired to improve. It is not yetrecognised to a very large extent in practice. "All the boys blew beforetheir time," in Doctor Blimber's school. "The doctor, in some partialconfusion of ideas, regarded the young gentlemen as if they were alldoctors, and were born grown up."

  Dickens was so careful to make his names and terms express volumes ofmeaning that he probably meant the phrase "mathematical gooseberries" tobe especially significant. The fact that they were grown on "mere sproutsof bushes," and as a consequence were "very sour ones, too," reveals thephilosophy since made so clear by Doctor Harris, that early "drilling" inarithmetic has been one of the prolific causes of arrested development inchildren. The appeal against the common practice of growing "everydescription of Greek and Latin vegetable" _from_ "_dry twigs of boys_" wascomprehensive and timely. They were not merely twigs, but dry twigs inwhom the sap had not begun to circulate freely. No expressions, novolumes, could state the evil of untimely cramming more clearly than thisgroup of phrases used by Dickens in describing Doctor Blimber's school.

  "The frostiest circumstances" is another of the thought-laden phrases,which was evidently intended to warn teachers against the mistake oftrying to produce any intellectual fruit at untimely periods of thechild's development. "Wintry growth" means unseasonable or untimelydevelopment.

  The condemnation of the feeling shown by Paul in parting from Florence,and the Doctor's cold-blooded observation, "Never mind; we shallsubstitute new cares and new impressions, Mr. Dombey, very shortly," wereintended to show how utterly the knowledge cramming ideal had preventedthe recognition of the fundamental fact that feeling is the basis and thebattery power of intellectual force and energy. The same principle istaught by Cornelia's shock at Paul's affection for old Glubb, and herfather's summary settlement of the case, when he realized that the littlechild was intensely affectionate and sympathetic. "Ha!" said the Doctor,shaking his head, "this--is--bad, but study will do much."

  Dickens deals in a most thorough manner with the absolute wickedness ofneglecting, or attempting to smother feeling in the training and educationof children in Hard Times. He undoubtedly received his clear conceptionsrelating to the intellectual value of feeling from Froebel's writings.

  The bad effects of cramming on the physical constitution of children arepointed out in "the convulsive grasping of their foreheads" by the twoboys engaged in solving mathematical problems. Nervous exhaustion is hereplainly indicated. They were "very feverish," too, and poor Briggs was ineven a worse condition, for "he was in a state of stupefaction and wasflabby and quite cold." Both Briggs and Tozer frightened Paul the firstnight he tried to sleep in their room by talking Latin and Greek in theirdreams. Paul thought they were swearing. Education should never interferewith a child's sleep, either with its soundness or its duration. Even theboys told Paul on the first day of his school life that he would need agood constitution to withstand the strain at Doctor Blimber's.

  The exhaustive and exasperating practice of piling up arrears of work, sonaturally connected with cramming--in fact, so essential a part of theunnatural process--comes in for its share of condemnation, too. One of theboys, "whose face was like a dirty window, from much crying, wasendeavouring to flounder through a hopeless number of lines." The friendsof Briggs were constantly in terror "lest they should find his hatfloating on a pond and an unfinished exercise on the bank."

  The same practice of charging up arrears of work is condemned in DavidCopperfield by associating it with the hateful Murdstones.

  The crammer's absolute indifference and contempt for any semblance ofcorrelation in studies is revealed by Cornelia's action in giving him acollection of books on his first morning before school with instructionsto study them at the places she had marked for him. No wonder that "whenpoor Paul had spelled out number two he found he had no idea of numberone; fragments whereof afterward obtruded themselves into number three,which sidled into number four, which grafted itself on to number two--sothat whether twenty Romuluses made a Remus, or hic haec hoc was troyweight, or a verb always agreed with an ancient Briton, or three timesfour was Taurus, a bull, were open questions with him."

  Whenever words are given before thought, or as a substitute for thought,and without definite relationship to the thought already in the mind, theylie in the mind as unrelated, and therefore unavailable knowledge.

  A boy in London had received considerable historical
teaching, and hismind had made a certain kind of unity out of the confused mass. When askedat his final examination "What he knew about Cromwell," he answered:"Cromwell interfered with the Irish, and he was put in prison. When he wasin prison he wrote the Pilgrim's Progress, and he afterward married Mrs.O'Shea."

  This was equalled by the other boy who wrote at an examination: "Wolseywas a famous general who fought in the Crimean War, and who, after beingdecapitated several times, said to Cromwell: 'If I had served you as youhave served me I would not have been deserted in my old age.'"

  Paul's studies were always dark and crooked to him till Florence boughtcopies of his books and studied them, and by patient sympathy made allthat had been dark light, and all that had been crooked straight.

  The habit of giving definitions of abstractions to children, and expectingthe definitions alone to be comprehended by children, is held up todeserved ridicule in the explanation of the word "analysis" to Paul, whenCornelia proposed to read the analysis of his character.

  "If my recollection serves me, the word analysis, as opposed to synthesis,is thus defined by Walker: 'The resolution of an object, whether of thesenses or of the intellect, into its first elements.' As opposed tosynthesis, you observe. _Now_ you know what analysis is, Dombey."

  How perfectly simple and clear and expanding this would be to a child'smind! Dickens says: "Dombey didn't seem absolutely blinded by the lightlet in upon his intellect, but he made Miss Blimber a little bow."

  What loose habits of thought, and how much hypocrisy and mental vaguenessare caused by using words instead of realities in the early teaching ofchildren, and then asking them if they understand what we have beentelling them! The "little bow" has usually a demoralizing effect.

  It is a mere farce to call the committing to memory of definitions"education."

  Whatever the subjects, it is a dwarfing process, whether the definitionsare memorized at home or at school, silently, by oral repetition, or bysinging them. All definition learning as the origin of thought is certainto destroy interest and arrest development and lead to inaccuracy ofthought. Miss Le Row's collection of blunders made by children could neverhave been made if the children had been taught properly.

  Such mistakes as "The body is mostly composed of water, and about one halfof avaricious tissue" or "Parasite, a kind of umbrella," or "Emphasis,putting more distress on one word than on another," should suggest toteachers the absurdity of committing definitions to memory. It is one ofthe weakest forms of cramming, and is most ridiculous and least usefulwhen the memorizing is done by simultaneous oral repetition.

  Hard Times exposes the evils of cramming in the teaching practised in thenormal school in which Mr. M'Choakumchild was trained, and in thedefinition repetition as given by Bitzer, and so highly praised by Mr.Gradgrind:

  "Bitzer, your definition of a horse:"

  "Quadruped, graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely, twenty-four grinders, four eyeteeth, and twelve incisors. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth."

  How clear this would make the conception of a horse to a man who had neverseen one! Sissy Jupe, too, is used to show the failure of cramming toeducate a girl of quick intellect and strong emotions. She could not becrammed.

  M'Choakumchild reported that she had a very dense head for figures; that, once possessed with a general idea of the globe, she took the smallest conceivable interest in its exact measurements; that she was extremely slow in the acquisition of dates, unless some pitiful incident happened to be connected therewith; that she would burst into tears on being required (by the mental process) immediately to name the cost of two hundred and forty-seven muslin caps at fourteenpence half-penny; that she was as low down in the school as low as could be; that after eight weeks of induction into the elements of political economy, she had only yesterday been set right by a prattler three feet high, for returning to the question, "What is the first principle of this science?" the absurd answer, "To do unto others as I would that they should do unto me."

  Mr. Gradgrind observed, shaking his head, that all this was very bad; that it showed the necessity of infinite grinding at the mill of knowledge as per system, schedule, blue book, report, and tabular statements A to Z; and that Jupe "must be kept to it." So Jupe was kept to it, and became low-spirited, but no wiser.

  Dickens makes the artist in Somebody's Luggage say:

  "Who are you passing every day at your competitive excruciations? The fortunate candidates whose heads and livers you have turned upside down for life? Not you, you are really passing the crammers and coaches."

  And Jemmy Lirriper, in describing his teacher, said: "Oh, he was a Tartar!Keeping the boys up to the mark, holding examinations once a month,lecturing upon all sorts of subjects at all sorts of times, and knowingeverything in the world out of a book."

  Dickens saw the evils of competitive examinations more clearly than manyeducators do two generations after him.

  When educators in schools, colleges, and universities learn a better wayto promote pupils, to classify men and women and to rank them atgraduation, than by holding promotion and graduation examinations crammingwill be of no use, and there shall be no more cramming.

  Dickens was right as usual. The crammers and coaches are those who aretested by "competitive excruciations"; and how those who force throughmost students boast and strut and lord it over the less successfulcrammers and coaches on commencement days and other public occasions! Whata misleading mockery examinations are as tests of power and character!

  Few even of Dickens's phrases contain such a condensation of fact andphilosophy as the phrase "whose heads and livers you have turned upsidedown for life." Few phrases deserve more careful consideration fromeducators.

  Dickens makes the effect on the head still more startling by thedescription of Miss Wozenham's brother in Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy. "MissWozenham out of her small income had to support a brother that had had themisfortune to soften his brain against the hard mathematics."

  In the same story he laughs at the practical results of language crammingusually done in the schools:

  And the way in which Jemmy spoke his French was a real charm. It was often wanted of him, for whenever anybody spoke a syllable to me I says "Noncomprenny, you're very kind but it's no use--Now Jemmy!" and then Jemmy he fires away at 'em lovely, the only thing wanting in Jemmy's French being as it appeared to me that he hardly ever understood a word of what they said to him, which made it scarcely of the use it might have been.

  Dickens attempted to picture the feelings of a boy toward his teachers inthe days when cramming was almost universally practised in the story ofLieutenant-Colonel Robin Redforth, aged nine. When the Latin master wascaptured, he was saved by Captain Boldheart from the punishment of deathto which he was condemned by the crew of The Beauty. Captain Boldheart hadbeen one of his pupils, and he said: "Without taking your life, I must yetforever deprive you of the power of spiting other boys. I shall turn youadrift in this boat. You will find in her two oars, a compass, a bottle ofrum, a small cask of water, a piece of pork, a bag of biscuit, and myLatin grammar. Go! and spite the natives if you can find any."

  When he afterward released him from the savages who were about to eat him,he granted him his life for the second time on condition:

  "1. That he should never under any circumstances presume to teach any boyanything any more.

  "2. That, if taken back to England, he should pass his life in travellingto find out boys who wanted their exercises done, and should do theirexercises for nothing, and never say a word about it."

  When it finally became necessary to hang the Latin master, Boldheart"impressively pointed out to him that this is what spiters come to."

  There are many kinds of cram that yet pass as fairly respectable inschools and universities. When the teachers or the profe
ssors give notesto be copied by the pupils and memorized, they are cramming. When teachersare storing the memories of children with facts, tables, dates, etc., tobe used at some future time, they are cramming. All memorizing byrepetition of words, even if they are understood, is cram, if the pupilcan work the thought into his life by repetition of process or ofoperation. Words can never take the place of self-activity, nor even ofactivity.

  So long as knowledge storing is placed above character development,examinations by "examiners" will retain their power for evil, and so longas such examinations are held cramming will continue.

  All processes that attempt to educate from without inward, instead of fromwithin outward, are in the last analysis cram. The selfhood must be activein going out for the new knowledge. The child must himself be originative,directive, and executive in the learning process if cram is to be avoidedcompletely. This is the only sure way to secure perfect apperception, andwithout apperception the new knowledge lies dormant, if not dead, andunrelated in the memory until it disappears, as did Bitherstone's. Hisdeclensions, according to Dickens, were not likely to last out his journeyfrom England to India.