Mr. Punch's History of Modern England, Vol. 4 (of 4).—1892-1914Graves, Charles L. (Charles Larcom)
History
Mr. Punch's History of Modern England, Vol. 4 (of 4).—1892-1914
Graves, Charles L. (Charles Larcom)
Great Britain -- History -- Victoria, 1837-1901 -- Humor
The passing of the old order in Education had for its chief landmark
the Act of 1871, but the change admits of endless illustrations.
Many of these lie outside the scope of our survey; but no treatise
on the Modern Child would be complete which did not take account
of _Punch's_ contributions to this engrossing problem. To take one
example, the precocious representatives of the "younger generation" in
Leech's pictures are almost invariably shown as the "sedulous apes"
of their elders as men of the world. In the period under review in
this volume imitation gives place to independence. The precocious
child of both sexes--Leech's precocious children were almost without
exception boys--is sometimes pedantic, but the distinctive note is
one of scepticism and revolt. The young iconoclast has "found out all
about Santa Claus and is now going to look into this Robinson Crusoe
business." When the Rector asks Molly would she rather be beautiful or
good, Molly audaciously replies: "I'd rather be beautiful and repent."
Another version of the same retort is illustrated in Mr. Shepperson's
charming picture. And when Uncle George, shocked by his little
niece's declaration that she hated all her lessons, asks appealingly,
"Come, now, you don't mean to say you hate history?" he receives the
blunt answer: "Yes, I do. To tell you the truth, Uncle, I don't care
a bit what anybody ever did." In this magnificent declaration of
independence _Punch_ sought to reduce to an absurdity the new doctrine
of "self-expression" as adopted by the nursery. _Punch's_ love of
children was beyond question, but he remained in substantial accord
with the Greek sage who said that the roots of education were bitter
but the fruit sweet; that to avoid or evade the discipline of parents
and teachers was to forgo learning and virtue. The modern and already
fashionable inversion of the old method, by which education was to be
"brightened" and sweetened at the outset, and every study turned into
a game, seemed to _Punch_ subversive of what was not merely an old but
an inevitable order, and the new science of psychological "Pædology"
found in him an invariably hostile critic. Passing over a burlesque
article on the "Scientific Investigation of Infancy" based on a paper
in the _Fortnightly_ in 1895, I may note the first of his rejoinders
to those austere educationists who have made war on Wonderland. In
that year Mr. Holman, an inspector of schools, in an address delivered
before the College of Preceptors, declared that "the race has outgrown
fairy-tales, and to use them for early education is practically to
bring about a reversion to type. They express the ideas of a profoundly
ignorant primitive man. The hero has more often than not to lie, steal
and cheat and to be an ingrate to accomplish his ends." A mass meeting
of fairy-tale heroes and heroines, convoked by _Punch_, carried by
acclamation a resolution of protest against this heresy, which, by
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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