The Cream of the Crop

The purpose of an education is to provide students with a knowledge base that will enable them to achieve their goals. Education is one of the most important things in the world today. I have witness some great individuals work with a degree under their belts. Education should better society as a whole, but what happens if the education being taught is one that "feeds the mind, but starves the soul and sprit?" The goal of this essay is to describe the educational system in Hard Times.

The school is set in Coketown. The name Coketown gives the impression of a school surrounded by pollution and darkness due to the ash from the factories. The school is described as plain, containing no imagination or decoration, just straight to the point as if it was built purely of facts. Dickens describes the classroom as "plain, bare monotonous vault of a school-room." The word vault, gives the notion of the classroom being like a prison cell, where the children are like prisoners who must follow strict rules under the watchful eye of Thomas Gradgrind and his associations.

Thomas Gradgrind is the enforcer of this dull education style. Dickens describes Mr. Gradgrind as being forceful, having high standards, and boring. Mr. Gradgrind wanted his scholars to be as smart as he was and that was his main goal when he built the educational system based on facts. When Mr. Gradgrind said "facts forbid," instead of heaven forbid, it showed Gradgrind is so obsessed by facts they are his heaven. He worships facts just like a priest would worship his God. He places facts on a higher level and anything that cannot be measured or weighed by using a universal equation is not worthy to be taught. Therefore, intangibles like imagination, emotion, and compassion are exterminated from the curriculum. All knowledge being taught must be verified by using deduction reason, analysis, or by calculation.

"We hope to have, before long a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact and nothing but fact. You must discard the word Fancy altogether." This shows that it is not just Gradgrind that is obsessed with facts, it is the whole school, implying the whole education system is like this. They value facts more than anything else and this concept must be "forced" because people are still in a fancy mind set. Mr M'Choakumchild plays an imperative role in making sure this theory is carried out. He is very similar to Thomas Gradgrind in the way education should be taught. He values fact system just like Thomas Gradgrind and he teaches the strict curriculum with a firm hand.

Ð''Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the