Starving vs Cramming: Children's Education and Upbringing in Charles Dickens and Herbert Spencer

At beginning of twentieth century a Canadian inspector of schools, James L. Hughes, proclaimed Dickens England's greatest educational reformer. According to Hughes, novelist's views were widespread and influential because he chose to express them in engaging language of fiction rather than in dull language of treatises (1). There is a touch of exaggeration in Hughes's statement, as Philip Collins notes in Dickens and Education. Collins believes that Dickens was not original and innovative: as a matter of fact Many of ideas or formulations he expresses were very much in air (211), and belonged to a debate on education current in British society at time. One should remember that Herbert Spencer's Essays on Education were published in 1850s, in well-known and prestigious magazines, such as North British Review, then in book form in 1861. In same decade Friedrich Frobel's innovative theories and practice about infant education were also widely publicized in Household Words. In 1855, for example, Dickens published Henry Morley's account of Frobel's kindergartens, a follow-up to a piece year before in which Morley described how a fictional Doctor Quemaribus posted as a basic rule in his imaginary college proposition that children should be considered good, beings so created by Divine Wisdom, as to be wonderfully teachable (Morley 501). Hughes is correct, however, when he says that Dickens's fiction had a greater influence on public opinion than either theoretical works or articles in press could have--witness outcome of his denunciation of Yorkshire schools in Nicholas Nickleby--also because, as Collins notes, his ideas came out of his wide experience of visiting and working for various kinds of educational establishments(3) (1). One of Dickens's campaigns exposed or forcing system in schools. Hard Times is, of course, most outstanding and well-known example. The opening chapters show absurdity of a pedagogy which filled children's brains notions unconnected real life: names of headmaster and of teacher--respectively Gradgrind and M' Choakumchild--allude ironically to ways and results of their teaching. The whole of story highlights evil consequences of Gradgrind's of facts and attacks Utilitarian principles supporting it. This system was connected partly inheritance of monitorial schools and partly misconception about standards of knowledge required to pass exams and inspections. Matthew Arnold, who worked as a school inspector, states reason more clearly in his Report for 1852, where he writes that he has been struck with utter disproportion between great amount of positive information and low degree of mental culture and intelligence in students at end of their apprenticeship (26). There were still complaints of this kind in 1860s: a reporter who had visited an elementary school for artisans commented ironically on the full force of cramming system which taxed schoolboys' powers of memory to an unnatural extent(Gosden 30). Another reporter remarked that schoolboys were underfed: ounces of sop bread for breakfast, four ounces of bread and butter for supper, and dinner in proportion is not enough. And his knowledge, he added, was from personal experience (Gosden 49). In an essay on Children's Books, published in Quarterly Review in 1844, Elizabeth Rigby uses metaphor of feeding to point out the stunted mental state of pupils who have been plied a greater quantity of nourishment than mind had strength or time to digest (cited in Hunt 19). Curiously great paradox in teaching of children in Britain at time was that more their brains were stuffed information, less food went into their stomachs. And this did not happen only in schools for destitute children, like notorious Yorkshire academies. …

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