Sissy Jupe and Bitzer are very important characters because they portray the two extremes of education. Sissy Jupe, who is described to be a ‘dark-eyed and dark-haired’ girl who receives a lustrous colour from the sun, has been brought up in the circus. Her father specializes in horses and therefore, due to experience, she clearly knows the most about them than any other class member. She goes against everything Gradgrind stands for and when asked to ‘give a definition of a horse’ she is unable to, because of the ridiculousness of the question. Gradgrind immediately asks the same question to Bitzer, gives a monotonous list about horses. He shows no real understanding about horses and has clearly never come in close contact with one, yet despite this his response is clearly favoured by Gradgrind.
Towards to end of the second chapter the reader is able to understand more about Dickens’ views on education. This is primarily through Sissy Jupe. She is clearly a very free willed child, who feels able to speak her mind and will not be easily suppressed. She claims that because she is ‘very fond of flowers’, she would carpet her room with pictures of them. M’Choakumchild is stunned by this response and tells Sissy that she must not be fond of anything and that she is ‘never to fancy’. By emphasising how strongly these two teachers are against the use of imagination, Dickens is once again, able to show that he doesn’t agree with this. It is possible to assume that the reason Gradgrind and M’Choakumchild dislike flowers so much is because they are part of nature, which is one of the few things that man cannot control.
Bitzer is a ‘light-eyed and light-haired’ boy, who ‘[looks] as though, if he were cut, he would bleed white’. His skin is ‘unwholesomely deficient’ and is therefore clearly lacking something. The graphic description of Bitzer is very relevant to Dickens’s views on education. When considering that Bitzer is Gradgrind’s ideal student it is possible to assume that he is lacking individuality and imagination. Bitzer’s abnormal characteristics emphasise the effect Gradgrind’s educational system has on his pupils. By understanding about Bitzer the reader understands more about Gradgrind’s teaching the strange effect it has on children. In this section Dickens uses Bitzer and Sissy, who no only differ in appearance but also in educational views, to show how ridiculous he find Gradgrind and his teaching methods.
In Gradgrind’s classroom all his pupils are passive ‘vessels’ who only answer to please him. Dickens very subtly puts his point of view across in the way that he writes his novel because he is cleverly controlling the reader’s views. He intentionally makes the reader sympathise with Sissy Jupe and in this way indicates that he disagrees with Gradgrind and everything he stands for. Throughout the beginning to the novel, Dickens doesn’t actually present his personal views on education, but they become quite clear through his constant insulting and mockery of Gradgrind and his educational views.
M’Choakumchild, who is another schoolmaster, is described to be a ‘pugilist’. From this simple statement it becomes clear that Dickens views this man to be forceful, destructive and abusive. It can be seen as amusing that Dickens has chosen to compare a schoolteacher to a boxer. This is a great indication that in the eyes of Dickens, M’Choakumchild has no qualities to make him excel in teaching young children. His name implies that his intentions are to choke the children of their individuality and their imagination. He stifles their true selves and doesn’t allow them to have any individual opinions and ‘fancies’. This bizarre teaching methods used by both Gradgrind and M’Choakumchild indicates how such an unnatural educational system is forced on the children. It also highlights Dickens’ use of satire in order to portray his own feelings on education.
Dickens’ clever and amusing use of comments in parenthesis are key to portraying his true feelings about the forms of education in the novel. The children are told that they must use ‘combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures’. By including the bracketed section of this sentence Dickens is able to highlight the lack of imagination that these teachers have. He mocks them and suggests that they would never use any colours but the three primary ones because other ones involve mixing and imagination in order to be created. M’Choakumchild qualified as a teacher in the ‘same factory’ and on the ‘same principles’ as ‘one hundred and forty other schoolmasters’. Dickens compares him them to pianoforte legs, which suggest that he is simply a manufactured product. M’Choakumchild appears to be very informed in a number of subjects including ‘etymology, syntax and prosody’, all of which are impressive including his knowledge of the ‘water sheds of all the world’, but of no use when teaching young children. His ‘chilled fingers’ emphasise his lack of emotion and without directly saying it, Dickens makes it clear that M’Choakumchild is unqualified to teach young children.
Dickens claims that if M’Choakumchild ‘had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more’. This clever use of a direct authorial comment enables Dickens to bluntly state how he feels about M’Choakumchild’s irrelevant knowledge. This frank statement allows the reader an insight into Dickens’ thoughts.
Dickens compares Gradgrind’s way of teaching to the way in which Morgiana handled the forty thieves in the book. This suggests that Dickens believes Gradgrind will eventually kill the children by pouring facts into them. Throughout Dickens questions Gradgrind’s method of suppressing the children’s imagination. He wonders whether even if Gradgrind can ‘fill’ each child brim full with facts, he be able to ‘kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within’ the children or only ‘maim him and distort him’. The sheer importance of this statement can be understood by the biblical tone employed. The use of a rhetorical question warns that imagination cannot be destroyed and indicates that the rest of the novel is based on the consequences of Gradgrind's need to abolish any means of thought or imagination.
Throughout the beginning of his novel, Dickens gives few direct indications of his views on the form of education depicted, however through the use of satire, he is able to suggest how he feels about certain aspects of Gradgrind’s educational system. It becomes very apparent that he is not at all in favour of it and that he disagrees with Gradgrind’s ridiculous hatred of ‘Fancy’ and imagination. Towards the end of the second chapter Dickens expresses these views much more openly by writing comments in parenthesis and with the use of direct authorial comments.
