Hard Times – Charles Dickens

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, pl...

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...ildren’s education. The grim pursuit of facts is contrasted with the

colourful and rich life of the imagination as experienced by the

circus folk. When one of them is subjected to the rigours of

Gradgrind’s educational philosophy her human nature naturally rejects

the attacks made on it: Sissy Jupe leans nothing from the artificially

imposed educative processes familiar in the Gradgrind household. Nut,

as we see later in the novel, her own essential goodness is

instrumental in educating those suffering from the inadequacies of the

Gradgrind philosophy.

The children are denied the natural pursuits of childhood such as

play, fantasy, fun and entertainment. They are ‘dead’ as children and

are forced, by Gradgrind’s system, to become unnatural children. They

are therefore without essential qualities needed in adulthood and as

of this they become in humane.