Explore how Charles Dickens presents the theme of education in the opening chapters of 'Hard Times'.

Again Dickens attacks education but this time by portraying it as morbid, cold and impersonal, this is shown by “The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom”, this is how Dickens describes Mr Gradgrind’s schoolroom, and the room reflects the personality of Mr Gradgrind and also helps drain the imagination out of the pupils, because the room feels depressing, and if a child has nothing to look at to spark their imagination like colour then they shall begin to lose it.

In ‘Hard Times’ the pupils are not taught they are told, there is evidence to back up this statement such as when the pupils are referred to as “little vessels” and then shortly after when it says “ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim”. That quote proves that the students and the teachers would not interact unless the teacher asked for the definition of something, other wise the teacher would stand at the head of the class and tell the students facts and nothing else and the students would have to listen to these facts and learn them.

 Also the children are taught in manner in which it takes away their individuality, such as when Mr Gradgrind refers to Sissy Jupe as “Girl number twenty”. A great example of how Mr Gradgrind wears away at his students is the comparison between Sissy Jupe who is a new student that has just arrived, and Bitzer who has been it Mr Gradgrind’s class his whole schooling life, for the description of Sissy it reads “the girl was so dark eyed and dark haired, that she seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous colour from the sun, when it shone upon her”, yet Bitzer is the complete opposite “the boy was so light eyed and light haired that the self same rays appeared to draw out of him what little colour he ever possessed”, it then continues to describe Bitzer and says “His cold eyes would hardly have been eyes, but not for the short ends of lashes which, by bringing them into contrast with something paler than themselves, expressed their form”, it then continues to say “His short cropped hair might have been a mere continuation of the sandy freckles on his forehead and face. His skin was unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge, that he looked as though, if he were cut, he would bleed white.” The comparison between Sissy Jupe and Bitzer shows that Mr Gradgrind bleeds every ounce of emotion; compassion and feeling out of them until they act almost like a machine. Dickens uses this contrast to show that education drowned out the individually of students and made them almost lifeless.

In the novel there is another important comparison, that between the circus folk and Mr Gradgrind. A quote describing the circus folk shows that they were not at all clever or did they have any respectability among others, “they were not very tidy in there private dresses, they were not at all orderly in their domestic arrangements, and combined literature of the whole company would have produced but a poor letter on any subject”, also in that quote there is a sign that maybe people in the circus were not faithful. Then just after this there is a quote which shows even though the circus folk are not as knowledgeable as Mr Gradgrind they was better off in the sense that they pulled together as if they one big family in a dilemma and had a innocence about them, “there was a remarkable gentleness and childishness about these people, a special inaptitude for any kind of sharp practice, and an untiring readiness to help and pity one another, deserving often of as much respect, and always of as much generous construction, as the every-day virtues of any class of people in the world”. All of this, what these quotes prove we know that it is the opposite of which Mr Grad grind does and believes in.

In the novel Dickens uses repetition to show just how important facts were then for example in the first paragraph of the novel Mr Gradgrind continually repeats the word ‘Facts’ and continually says how important they are. Dickens also uses exaggeration such as when he says that Mr Gradgrind is always “With a rule a pair of scales, and a multiplication table always in his pocket”. Also Dickens uses similes like when he is describing Mr Gradgrind’s head “like the crust of a plum pie”. Furthermore Dickens uses metaphors as well such as the quote “The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels,” he is writing about the students when it says “little vessels” as if they are just that but we know that they are not.