Dickens' view of the conflict of Fact and Fancy in children's education. When Dickens was a very young child, he would think about anything a normal child would think about

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David Smith,

English,

Literature.

Dickens’ view of the conflict of Fact and Fancy in children’s education.

When Dickens was a very young child, he would think about anything a normal child would think about. E.g. castles and dragons, this is the world of fancy, but this is also in conflict with, his education at school, the world of fact.

The world of fact is a name for how the children of those times were taught; they wouldn’t talk about anything to do with the world of fancy, only facts were useful for their future job so only facts were taught.

In Dickens’ book Hard Times he describes this method of teaching as having one part of their "tender young imaginations" replaced by a "grim mechanical substitute." This also relates to the title of the chapter, 'Murdering the Innocents'

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Thomas Gradgrind also numbers his pupils, "Girl number twenty" like machinery, computer 1 and computer 2.Again, Dickens shows how Gradgrind’s style of education turns the children into an object rater than a person by giving them numbers.

At the end of Chapter 1 he referred to the children as vessels "then and they’re arranged in order," he must have been referring to this numbering system. In modern times in the army, a solider in training is referred to as a “jarhead”, an empty “vessel” that is filled only with useful information (fact) and is emptied of all useless information ...

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