Dickens' Attitudes to Education in Hard Times

Dickens' Attitudes to Education in Hard Times

I am going to explore the opening chapters of 'Hard Times' by Charles

Dickens and discuss his attitudes towards education in his time. In

particular I'm going to comment on various characters and Dickens'

narrative techniques. This novel in Dickens' time was a controversial

and a political comment to convey his views on education. Hard Times

is about a specific time, the 1840s; and it reflects the harsh and

comfortless lives of English people, particularly working-class people

in that period. As well as that after about seventy years of the

industrial revolution, industrialists were rich and prosperous,

whereas their workers were not. In the filthy, poorly built new cities

of the North, the workers were very poorly housed, overworked and

underpaid. Even women and children worked fifteen hours a day, six

days a week, in mines and factories. All of these issues are addressed

in the novel and Dickens' exposes the government and industrialists,

and he tries to a better quality of life for the workers. He gets

these views across through his themes, his presentation and his use of

language. By using these he attacks the government and industrialists

specifically and effectively.

Dickens presents the teachers and inspector in a negative light and

reveals his ideas and opinions on education through his presentation

of them. The first point at which he does this is through his

presentation of Mr Gradgrind. Dickens presents Gradgrind as a strong,

harsh person; everything about him is emphasised and he repeats this

word too, he does this to illustrate his own point. "The speaker's

obstinate car...

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... the best of the teacher's ability. Schools have also improved and are

now a little more colourful and attractive. I think that Dickens

thought that education was being taught the wrong way, that teachers

held too much power and authority, education allowed no input from

children, because there were so many of them and teachers didn't allow

it and that schools were bland and not a very nice place to be.

The ideas and opinions that he expresses through the novel are; that

treating people kindly is more important than facts. That while the

government, bosses and managers were getting rich, women and children

had terrible working environments, and that this was unfair and so

very wrong in all sorts of ways. He wrote this book as a political

comment and I think wholeheartedly agree with all of the issues he

addresses.