One night, in their study den,
Louisa had been overheard to begin a conversation with her brother by saying, “Tom, I wonder—” upon which Mr. Gradgrind, who was the person overhearing, stepped forth into the light, and said, “Louisa, never wonder!”
Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and affections. Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division settle everything somehow, and never wonder. “Bring to me,” says Mr. M’Choakumchild, “yonder baby just able to walk, and I will engage that it will never wonder.”
Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. M’Choakumchild deliberately planned, as a result of a false psychology, to destroy all foolish dreamings and imaginings and wonderings by the children. This same wonder power is the mightiest stimulus to mental and spiritual effort, the source of all true interest, man’s leader in his work of productive investigation.
Wonder power should increase throughout the life of the child. Unfortunately, the Gradgrind philosophy is practised by many educators. The child’s natural wonder power is dwarfed, and an unnatural interest is substituted for it. Teachers kill the natural interest, and then try to galvanize its dead body into temporary activity. The child who was made a wonderer and a problem finder by God is made a problem solver by teachers. His dreamings and fancies have been stopped, and he has been stored with facts and made “practical.”
Mr. Gradgrind was much exercised by the fact that the people of Coketown did not read the scientific and mathematical books in the library so much as poetry and fiction. It was a melancholy fact that after working for fifteen hours a day “they sat down to read mere fables about men and women more or less like themselves, and about children more or less like their own. They took De Foe to their bosoms instead of Euclid, and seemed to be, on the whole, more comforted by Goldsmith than by Cocker.” This was very discouraging to Mr. Gradgrind.
One night Louisa and Tom were sitting alone conversing about themselves and the way they were being trained by their father. In the course of their conversation Tom said:
“I am sick of my life, Loo; I hate it altogether, and I hate everybody except you. As to me, I am a donkey, that’s what I am. I am as obstinate as one, I am more stupid than one, I get as much pleasure as one, and I should like to kick like one.”
“Not me, I hope, Tom.”
“No, Loo, I wouldn’t hurt you. I made an exception of you at first. I don’t know what this—jolly old—jaundiced jail”—Tom had paused to find a sufficiently complimentary and expressive name for the parental roof, and seemed to relieve his mind for a moment by the strong alliteration of this one—“would be without you.”