Hard Times - Charles Dickens: 'Discuss the theme of education in Hard Times'

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Hard Times – Charles Dickens

‘Discuss the theme of education in Hard Times

Charles Dickens was a great author of the 19th Century and his books are recognised and loved nation wide. Many people understand the meaning to his books, as they are not just plain fiction. In the novel Hard Times Dickens intensely criticises the British system of education and how it has evolved over the years: the 19th Century philosophy of ‘Utilitarianism’. Dickens believed this system was a failure, as it changed children’s minds and morals, and it is this novel that he attempts to show the horrors that this system has created.

        A principle was formed by Jeremy Bentham, the eighteenth century philosopher, calculating ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’. This theory explained that self-interest was the primary motivating force behind all human conduct; people strived for pleasure and tried in vain to avoid pain. Bentham advocated a system of calculation known as ‘moral arithmetic’. This was used whenever a decision had to be made about a particular choice of action, be it an individual deed or a law affecting million. The equation was a simple one: pleasure vs. pain. If all the factors fell in the direction of pleasure for the greatest number then the appropriate course of action was adopted. However, it failed to take account of the happiness and well-being of those who did not belong to the greatest number. It also presumed that every human being on earth prized nothing but material values. The catastrophes that this pathetic philosophy caused are explored and criticised by Dickens in the novel Hard Times.

        The philosophy also emphasised the practical usefulness of things. This meant that art, imagination, play and entertainment were not valued because they had no practical use. The philosophy therefore encouraged cold calculation and reason over all the things that make human beings diverse and interesting; it erodes peoples’ ability to imagine and feel.

           Dickens feared that the factory system, geared only to productivity and profit, was reducing people to mere machines-like entities, devoid of feeling and imagination. This is explored in Dickens’ description of Gradgrind’s school where ‘fancy’ is outlawed, where children are referred to as ‘reasonable animals’ and ‘little pitchers’ to be filled up with ‘facts’, and identified by numbers. Bitzer, and the two Gradgrind children, Tom and Louise, are standard products of this philosophy. Bitzer, for example, is able to define and classify facts about a horse, but is unfamiliar with the reality of one. He stands in direct contrast to Sissy Jupe, who is unable to define one but has a practical knowledge and experience of them and, unlike the other children in the novel, she is able to feel for those not in the ‘greatest number’; she possesses a capacity to feel and imagine.

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        Dickens was not the only person who shared this view, however, as his good friend and fellow philosopher, Thomas Carlyle, felt ever so strongly about the damaging effect utilitarianism was having on people. He felt that society was threatened by the industrialisation of England.

        In 1829 Carlyle wrote Signs of the Times, which criticises the effects of industrialisation. Carlyle argued that people were being reduced to mere machines and that their individual identities were being eroded. He wrote:

        It is the age of machinery in every outwards and inward sense of that word. Nothing is now done directly or by ...

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