Charles Dickens Schooling Conditions

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Before the victorian period, schooling was flawed and mostly for the rich children who could afford it. With the ruling of Queen Victoria, changes were made to schooling to in order to make it more suitable. However, even then it had it problems. Many time classes were overcrowded and many teacher had to learn the material while on the job; they had to learn the lesson right before teaching it. In Hard Times, by Charles Dickens, the idea of schooling being flawed is brought up constantly. Along with the idea that schools without imagination, and based solely on fact, creates robots to work in the factories. A lack of imagination and creativity will cause a person to lose emotion and become robotic.
Schooling Conditions
“Many schools were …show more content…

Louisa is a person who was raised in the victorian education system. Throughout the book she is fighting with herself whether she should continue being who she was raised to be or if she should change and be someone who isn’t reliant on pure fact. When Louisa is apart of the education system, she is emotionless. The only person she has emotion for is Tom, her brother. Louisa is even willing to marry Bounderby, whom she doesn’t like, to stick with the way she is raised. As the book progresses, Louisa starts to detach herself from this lifestyle and that is when She starts to become human. She even has a breakdown around her dad, showing him her opinion on Bounderby and how she feel about the whole marriage. Later in the book she chooses to become fully separate from the way she was raised and from the victorian schooling system. As Louisa is detaching herself from this, she is becoming more human and less robotic. This helps support that the victorian schooling system and the lack of creativity creates unemotional robotic people.
Thomas Gradgrind Thomas Gradgrind is a man of fact. The name Gradgrind derives from the fact that he is grinding facts into children’s minds. This is commonly seen in the Victorian Era. Teachers would force children to repeat facts and statement over and over until that statement was said

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