Dickens As an Educator

by James L. Hughes

Physical education received due attention at Doctor Strong’s school. “We had noble games out of doors.” These outdoor sports have done more than anything else to develop the strength and energy of the British character. Thoughtful educators everywhere recognise the value of play in the development of the physical, the intellectual, and the spiritual nature as taught by Froebel. The love of play has been one of the distinctive elements of the British people.

Doctor Strong’s personal influence was good. “He was the idol of the whole school.” He was not coercive nor restrictive; he was an inspiration to effort and to manliness of conduct. “He was the kindest of men,” full of sympathy with boyhood and with individual boys. “He had a simple faith in him that might have touched the stone hearts of the very urns upon the wall.” Mr. Wickfield told David that he feared some of the boys might take advantage of his kindness and faith, but boys do not abuse the confidence of such teachers. “He appealed in everything to the honour and good faith of the boys, and avowed his intention to rely on the possession of these qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy.” David says this “worked wonders.” He had no spies in schoolroom or grounds. He trusted his boys in a frank, unconventional way, and they proved themselves worthy of trust. In such an atmosphere a boy grows to be reliable. He does not need to be hypocritical or false. “The boys all became warmly attached to the school—I am sure I did for one, and I never knew, in all my time, of any other boy being otherwise—and learned with a good will, desiring to do it credit.”

They had independent self-activity. “We had plenty of liberty.” Without this no child can reach his best growth. The boys did not abuse their privilege. They respected themselves more because they had liberty. “As I remember, we were well spoken of in the town, and rarely did any disgrace, by our appearance or manner, to the reputation of Doctor Strong and Doctor Strong’s boys.”

The community ideal was wrought into the lives of the boys by their experience in this model school. “We all felt that we had a part in the management of the place, and in sustaining its character and dignity.” The highest work of schools, colleges, and universities is to fill the lives of men and women with the apperceptive centres of the community ideal. Christian community can not be made clear by books or teaching or sermons unless its foundations are laid by experience, by “sharing in the management” of the conditions of the life of the boy, or girl, or student. Froebel pleaded for a college and university education in which students should “share in the management.” Dickens applied this high ideal.

There is another most important element in Doctor Strong’s influence. He was not “a human barrel organ,” like Mr. Feeder, “playing a little list of Greek and Latin tunes over and over again without any variation.” He was an original investigator. He was preparing a dictionary of Greek roots. He was not merely an accumulator of knowledge as it had been prepared by some one else. He was not a mere canal through which knowledge slowly flowed through artificial channels, nor a marsh in which knowledge had become confused and stagnant, nor a dead sea into which knowledge flowed, but from which there was no outlet. He was a fresh fountain from which knowledge came clear and pure. So the boys gained knowledge readily from him, but, far beyond knowledge, they learned incidentally the habit of work, and were filled with the desire to add to the store of knowledge as a basis for the progressive evolution of humanity.

What a farce it is to say that Dickens was not conscious of the pedagogic value of his work. He had great facility in learning, but he was also a hard student. No one could have written so much and so wisely about education unless he had studied carefully the thought of the most advanced educators.

David’s aunt had the wisdom to try to develop in him the characteristics of excellence that were lacking in his parents. This is a thought that is slowly making its way in the minds of educators.

“But what I want you to be, Trot,” resumed my aunt—“I don’t mean physically, but morally; you are very well physically—is a firm fellow. A fine firm fellow, with a will of your own. With resolution,” said my aunt, shaking her cap at me, and clinching her hand. “With determination. With character, Trot—with strength of character that is not to be influenced, except on good reason, by anybody, or by anything. That’s what I want you to be. That’s what your father and mother might both have been, Heaven knows, and been the better for it.”

I intimated that I hoped I should be what she described.

“That you may begin, in a small way, to have a reliance upon yourself, and to act for yourself,” said my aunt, “I shall send you upon your trip alone.”