I am reading (listening to ) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, narrated by Frank Mueller. For the link, click here. Love it. Narration is awesome.
Pip is an uneducated waif living with his domineering sister (whose claws are always out) and her husband, Joe. Joe is a sweet soul, a patient blacksmith who is illiterate.
School is a big deal. Getting the chance to be educated is very big to these characters. I can see the remnants of feudal life cast upon this social structure and the big caste division between the gentry and the not.
It got me thinking about education and today.
I wonder if this mindset of today of the need for 'formal' education is in part because of the history of the caste systems in western civilization?
Poor Pip would receive no education at home. His 'family' was so busy trying to scratch a living and he was treated so poorly that education could hardly be found in his home. His sister and relatives treated him more like a stupid slave with no expectations of greater things. Respect was nil. I think this was widespread and Charles Dickens wrote many novels to bring it into the light.
Charlotte Mason had a lot to work with when she came long 150 years later in England. Wow, how they abominably they treated children back then.
But, today in a typical homeschooling home, children receive a cornucopia of good stuff. As matter of course they have:
-respect
-love
-materials for learning
-interested parents (mentor/tutors)
-safe, warm house, food and no need to work
Is that all an education really is? And the need to be 'sent away' either to daily school or boarding school is really just a remment of the old days when learning at home was impossible?
Maybe current great expectations of school are really just outdated thought? And many homes could provide wonderful education as well if they weren't so 'busy' and made time for children?
3 comments:
Wow! Cindy, there's a lot to think about in that post.
I love the connection between the Dickens book and our school set-up nowadays. I think in some ways that the caste system is alive and well in the US, and that the public school system perpetuates it: "you need to have schooling to have a good job, career, life etc."
Hi Willa-
I think you are right. It was funny, that in the Dicken's book it was all-encompassing. Those without education were doomed to a bad a fate. There was a fine line between a gentleman and not.
But, as the book wore on a deeper truth seemed to appear for me. You have probably read it, knowing your vast literary background..:) So wonder if you agree?
Joe turned out to be the most beautitful charcter in the novel to me. And he was not 'educated', but was a tradesman, so could earn a living. Illiterate, a simple man, he had joy. And he showed such great kindness to Pip- actually in my mind showed Pip the meaning of happiness (beyond great 'expectations'), that it confirmed for me that education was not the end all and be all then.
However, if one was uneducated back then, which also I gather meant you were poor and of ill-means, then you could possibly be in a lifetime trap. You were treated badly. People did not value children. It was as if you could make it through childhood in one piece and make your way, then you might garner some respect.
So, the importance of homelife was essential. If you had a good home life, you could learn the lessons of Joe. Pip had it all. The shrewish sister who beat him down as a child, then Joe, who lifted him up- then the chance at education/gentility.
Like today, it is that life in the formative years that can make or break. I think it really is all about respect. Valuing the child.
In Dicken's age the medal of honor was link to a lordly family. Today it is a Harvard MBA?
And both can produce some pretty unsavory and unhappy people.
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