The true reverence for individual selfhood is shown in Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, Our Mutual Friend, and Edwin Drood.
The wisdom of studying the subject of nutrition as one of the most important subjects connected with the development of children physically, intellectually, and morally, and the meanness or carelessness too frequently shown in feeding children, were taught in Oliver Twist, Old Curiosity Shop, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Great Expectations, Edwin Drood, Christmas Stories, and American Notes.
Play as an essential factor in education is treated in Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, and American Notes.
The folly of the old practice of attempting to educate by polishing the surface of the character, of training from without instead of from within, is revealed in Bleak House and Little Dorrit.
Bleak House discusses the contents of children’s minds and the need of early experiences to form apperceptive centres of feeling and thought in a comprehensive and suggestive manner.
The need of practising the fundamental law of co-operation and the sharing of responsibilities and duties, as the foundation for the true comprehension of the law of community, is shown in Barnaby Rudge, David Copperfield, Dombey and Son, and Little Dorrit.
The need of child study is suggested in David Copperfield and Bleak House.
The value of joyousness in the development of true, strong character is discussed in Nicholas Nickleby, Barnaby Rudge, Old Curiosity Shop, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, Great Expectations, and Edwin Drood.
Dickens was one of the first Englishmen to see the need of normal schools to train teachers, and to advocate the abolition of uninspected private schools and the establishment of national schools. He taught these ideals in the preface to Nicholas Nickleby, issued in 1839, so that he very early caught the spirit of Mann and Barnard in America, and saw the wisdom of their efforts to establish schools supported, controlled, and directed by the state.
He says, in his preface to Nicholas Nickleby: