This is a short extract from Charles Dickens' novel Hard Times. It contains what is perhaps the most famous 'school scene' in all English literature and we would like to invite you to read it and discuss it here in our Reading Group. These are some questions that you may want to consider - just to kick off the discussion :)
- What characters impress you most?
- What do you consider the main themes and issues in this extract?
- Can you make any connections with your own experiences either as a student or as a teacher?
Looking forward to reading your comments and reactions to the story.
Cheers - Chris
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Hello All,
Wish everyone a Happy New Year!
This extract from Dickens is misleading. Dickens is such a master of parody that we can easily forget the 'fact' that facts are also important in studies- not to the extent that Bitzer shows perhaps, but, nevertheless important. An interesting thing about facts is that they are unchanging, something stable in an ever changing world. We can rest on a fact. Perhaps another name for fact is 'truth'? A quotation from Henry David Thoreau is relevant- Rather than love, than wealth, than fame give me truth for that alone wears well. There's also an interesting essay by Sophia Skoufaki called "Is creativity suppressed by knowledge?" which discusses the advantages and disadvantages of a creative approach to teaching and the old fashioned method of byhearting or memorising reams of facts.
Hi Chris and All Readers
Thanks a lot for this relevant literary pick. It really incorporates much food for thought...
Impressive piece of writing indeed. Charles Dickens at his best, portraying education as a "factory", a mechanized system, reminding us of the Industrial Revolution society.
Deeply ironical this point by the character THOMAS GRADGRIND: "... with a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature..."
Mr M'Choakumchild, another schoolmaster, so well characterized by his encyclopaedic knowledge, and "...turned at the same time, in the same factory, on the same principles like so many pianoforte legs". Also very interesting this comparison/simile. It might convey strength, inflexibility. That was an educaion only based on Facts, figures, numbers, and all coldness inherent to it... with no acquiescence from the schoolmasters.
A chilling atmosphere we have never experienced in such a high degree... some decades ago as a student. Despite having had a slight sample of it by then, when it came to the point of "knowing all the rivers and mountains, and all the productions..."
As a teacher, the scenes we have experienced were of a "Humanising language teaching", very much inspired by the renowned language expert ,Mario Rinvolucri. Then practised in our way before the daily contexts... always taking into account the diversity of students around us, calling them by their names, respectfully accepting their affective names, and never humiliating students both inside and outside the classroom.
Cheers
Maria
Dear Readers,
I think we should clap hands before such mastery of story telling Charles Dickens shows here. From a classroom setting he was able to bring the "Hard Times", the complexity of what"Fancy" is a simple setting- the classroom. And his excellence in decribing physical and psychological attitudes of characters, putting them each at their "factually" accurate positions (of teachers, students...), sharing feelings with readers. "Hard Times" were for the student number Twenty, also for the students who were to bring "Facts" for satisfying the teachers´s demands. It was also Hard Times for Mr. M'Choakumchild as "He went to work in this preparatory lesson...looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained" but it sounds as all the work can sometimes be in vain, looking at the way the writer ends the story: "When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by-and-by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within - or sometimes only maim him and distort him!" It sounds to me as if he was saying that "even after "your" hard preparatory work that teacher should wait for different gains from diffferent students, be prepared and patient.
Tanguene
Hello everyone!
It´s good to start a new year with such a provoking opening of Charles Dickens´Hard Times. In relation to creativity and education, this extract reminds me of Jorge Luis Borges´ -the Argentinian writer- comment about school. He said that he stopped learning when he started school. This is quite a strong statement! However, the teacher in Hard Times is a good "mirror" where teachers may look at themselves and reflect to what extent they teach the way Mr Gradgrind does.
In connection with this extract I would like to quote some parts from a short essay by Sydney Harris called "What True Education Should Do". In this essay, Harris states that "When most people think of the word "education", they think of a pupil as a sort of animate sausage casing (and that) into this empty casing , the teachers are supposed to stuff "education"". This is the view of education you see in the classroom scene in Hard Times. Harris continues to quote Socrates saying that "genuine education" is not inserting the stuffings of information into a person, but rather eliciting knowledge from him; it is the drawing out of what is in the mind." "Education, to have any meaning beyond the purpose of creating well-informed dunces, must elicit from the pupil what is latent in every human being -the rules of reason, the inner knowledge of what is proper for men to be and do, the ability to sift evidence and come to conclusions that can generally be assented to by all open minds and warm hearts.
Pupils are more like oysters than sausages. The job of teaching is not to stuff them and then seal them up, but to help them open and reveal the riches withing.There are pearls in each of us, if only we knew how to cultivate them with ardor and persistence." Evidently, Mr Gradgrind would have censored this passage if he had read it at that time. Fortunately, teacher education has changed for the better and students in most part of the world as seen like "oysters". There are, however, some teachers who should rethink their practices for the benefit of their students´learning.
I think Mr Gradgrind would have a seizure if he read Ruben's metaphor of what education should/shouldn't be. Fancy comparing people to sausages and oysters!! We should know that a human being is 'a man, woman or child, of the species Homo sapiens, distinguished from other animals by superior mental development, power of aticulate speech and upright stance' ( Oxford Dictionary Online).
Thanks for the brilliant metaphor Rubens! :)
Your comments here make me wonder what exactly are the 'facts' that Sundaresh also considers so important. When I was at school is was a 'fact' that our solar system had 9 planets - now it is a 'fact' that it has 8. It is a fact that water freezes at 0 degrees - but only if you consider the Celsius scale; otherwise, it is a fact that it freezes at 32 degrees!
I am not saying that there are no observable phonomena; what I am saying is that 'facts' depend a lot on the means of observation, current knowledge and ways of measuring them that are available to particular individuals at a particular historical and cultural context. 'Facts' do exist, but are always temporary and open to future challenge. If we only stuff students with Facts and rule out imagination and critical thinking, we will be indeed creating 'empty vials' that are not able to think creatively and advance knowledge.
By the way, is it a fact that we cannot split an infinitive? Or can we linguistically boldly go? :)
Looking forward to your replies.
Chris
Hi Everyone
I was thinking about how ways of addressing the pupils in the text can be quite interesting:
'Girl number twenty,' said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, 'I don't know that girl. Who is that girl?'
'Sissy Jupe, sir,' explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.
'Sissy is not a name,' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'Don't call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.'
What does Dickens tell us here about identity??
Chris
Hi Chris and Everyone
In our view, on calling the students by their numbers, Mr. Gradgrind is represented as a teacher who is not truly interested to know about his students' personality, character, feelings, interests, discoveries. He gives priority to "the facts" his learners are supposed to be stuffed with... It's in accordance with that type of education we have already referred to before.
Students' identity here is relegated to a second plan. "Sissi is not a name," said Mr Gradgrind. "... Call yourself Cecilia." We think we all should be more respectful and careful when it comes to the tone and words used while addressing students' names (even any people's...)
Authority is necessary, of course, rather than authoritarian attitudes.
Maria
I agree with both Maria and Chris on their comments on how Mr Gradgrind addresses his pupils. Of course, nowadays, this attitude is unconceivable. The concept of intercultural students and the respecting different cultures in our classrooms has been now set up in the everyday teaching practices so Mr Gradgrind´s attitude is the counter-example of what we do today. When attending one of Michael Byram´s lectures in Argentina, he said that even every home has its own culture. In Hard Times, Sissy was called like that probably because of a family way of naming her affectively. But, of course, for Mr Gradgrind affection (or Krashen´s affective filter!) was not even in his language or attitude.
My wife, who is from Argentina, when attending an English language course in England was asked to change her name in the class! She is called Sandra, and the teacher insisted on calling her Susan and that she had to call herself Susan in the course. This took place in 1985, so I guess the situation is different now with most teachers.
This is a good issue to research when observing classes.
Ruben
Hi Ruben
Interesting you mentioned your wife's story. Things have changed but not entirely... Although, nowadays I cannot think of a teacher asking a student to change her name from Sandra to Susan, it is still quite normal for some teachers to ask their Chinese or Korean atudents to choose an English name for themselves. The reason is probably because it may be a bit hard for a Western teacher to remember and/or pronounce them. I have never asked my students to do so, but the practice is so common that most of them already arrive in class saying 'Call me Karen' (!!) I always imagine how I would hate it if one day I went to teach in China and someone asked me to choose a Chinese name for myself.
Cheers - Chris
Dear All
Dickens' extract made me start thinking of how teachers are representend in literature and also in films.
I wanted to find a film depicting a teacher with a completely different approach to that of Mr Gradgrind and the first one that came to my mind was Mr Keating in Dead Poets Society.
Check this video of scene 2: Dead Poets Society Part 2
Any comments? Do know other films where teachers are the main characters?
Cheers - Chris