EDUCATION (in Alice in Wonderland)

par · 7 janvier 2022

Answers

1) Read the website article: identify the main points about 

The Victorian Society

  • educating children with morals = standards of behaviour; principles of right and wrong.
  • rules of the Victorian period
  • narrow-minded Victorians (lack of imagination).
  • Useless education?
  • In traditional public schools = Greek and Latin are emphasized/ improving character/ ‘moulding’ the pupils into young Christian ladies or gentlemen.

Lewis Carroll’s ideas about education

  • Children lacked imagination: “These books did not have any imagination” and is too narrow-minded.
  • The “rules of the Victorian period” are absurd/ ‘nonsense’ and lack logic.
  • Victorian education can be useless or even absurd or wrong.
  • A child’s imagination has value.

2) Read the extract from Alice in Wonderland, and explain why it illustrates the points mentioned in the website article

The extract mocks Alice’s education and wrong knowledge about things > Carroll uses Alice to mock Victorian society:

Alice tries to use her knowledge to guess what is going to happen to her: `I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think–‘  But her knowledge is wrong and her reasoning seems ridiculous:

  • the comment: “(for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom…..)” is mocking, sarcastic, ironic.
  • Alice uses words but doesn’t know their meanings:“(Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.)”;
  • She believes she can go through the Earth which reveals that she has no geological knowledge!
  • She believes that people in the southern hemisphere are walking on their heads (because they would live upside down!!), which is very childish and absurd.
  • She says “Antipathies” instead of “Antipodes” = she confuses the two words!

👩🏼‍🏫 To conclude, Carroll mocks Alice’s ignorance “what an ignorant little girl”, and reveals that her education proves to be useless in the situation in which she is!

3. Describe the picture (quite precisely) and then, develop the link between the visual document and the texts.

This is a classroom in the Victorian era:

  • we can see a portrait of Queen Victorian on the wall.
  • The teacher (a woman) looks severe, stern, austere. She is using a stick or rod to show the pupils what she has written on the blackboard.
  • there is a date: 15th January 1897 (= the end of the Victorian era).
  • the pupils are wearing uniforms. They are sitting at their desks and writing the lesson on their slates.
  • the classroom seems very quiet: you probably only hear the crackling of the fire.
  • the pupils seem to be well-behaved/ obedient/ respectful/ docile.

👩🏼‍🏫 To conclude, this picture shows (and questions) the rigidity and sternness, the lack of fantasy of Victorian classes. Pupils are not learning how to cope in life, they learn to obey and comply with the Victorian rules. Morals and obedience are more important than experience, knowledge, imagination and fantasy.

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