Utilitarian Education and the Youth

Utilitarian Education and The Youth

In Charles Dickens’ 1854 novel Hard Times, the author sets up a fictional industrial town in England called Coketown. Through the guise of fiction Dickens writes a strong indictment against the existing social order. The novel delivers one of his most effective moral messages. Dickens expresses his frustration with the method of education for the youth of England in the 1800s through the sad fates of his children, which directly contrasts the choices in curriculum as exemplified in President Obama’s own choice for his children in a different country at a different time.

Dickens opens the novel with a scene of Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, proprietor of the school, delivering what amounts to a sermon to his students. This speech embodies the principles of utilitarianism. “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.” (Dickens 9) Dickens sought to expose the moral emptiness of the school of fact in Hard Times. He distrusted this individualistic moral and social philosophy used in education. Children were taught to know their place in society and act within the guidelines set up by higher authority. “Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don’t see in fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don’t have in fact. What is called Taste, is only another name for Fact” (Dickens 13) Such utilitarian thought was responsible for the distinguishing of fancy and imagination within the youth of the English population.

Gradgrind’s system of education embodied that of his own calculating self-interest. He believed that “what you must always appeal to, is a person’s self-interest. It’s your only hold” (Dickens 287). To the prodigies of such schooling, there was no other appeal except self-interest. Gradgrind’s very physique illustrates these principles he espouses. He had an “obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs,...