"With careful attention to 2-3 episodes in Hard Times, show how Dickens presents and criticises the Gradgrindian view of education".

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“With careful attention to 2-3 episodes in Hard Times, show how Dickens presents and criticises the Gradgrindian view of education”.

“Now what I want is facts… Facts alone are wanted in life… This is the principles on which I bring up my own children.”

In the opening paragraph of the novel Thomas Gradgrind gives us an uncompromising and utilitarian view of what education and childhood should be. Dickens shows us that by the end of the novel the idea of education has flaws and causes grief and heartache to Gradgrind and his family.

The two main characters that promote this system of education are Mr Bounderdy and Mr Gradgrind. “Square forefinger… square wall of a forehead… square coat, square legs, square shoulders… Squarely pointing with his square forefinger” this humorous exaggerated description of Mr Gradgrind by Dickens in the first two chapters of the novel gives a view of the person that mainly installs this system of education.

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“I was born with inflammation of the lungs, and of everything else… everybody of all ages knocked me about and starved me”.

Mr Bounderby is not as demanding but boastful and more extreme about his view and how he grew up. This gives a perfect team to run the system of education. From the irony and exaggeration used in the description of both the two leaders way of looking at the school children “looking into all the little vessels ranged before him, on after another, to see what thy contained” it seams that this view will cause problems as the ...

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