The Facts Factory
Mr Gradgrind and a Government expert on education make sure that the children of Coketown have the right opinions about everything.
1854
Mr Gradgrind and a Government expert on education make sure that the children of Coketown have the right opinions about everything.
1854
Mr Gradgrind is ready to hand Coketown’s model school over to zealous Mr M’Choakumchild, fresh from teacher-training. Present on this auspicious occasion is a gentleman from the Government, who believes that the purpose of education is to mass-produce identical batches of priggish little human vials filled to the brim with State-approved Facts, and empty of everything else.
NOW, let me ask you girls and boys [said the gentleman from the Government], Would you paper a room with representations of horses?’
After a pause, one half of the children cried in chorus, ‘Yes, sir!’ Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman’s face that Yes was wrong, cried out in chorus, ‘No, sir!’ — as the custom is, in these examinations.
‘Of course, No. Why wouldn’t you?’
A pause. One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner of breathing, ventured the answer, Because he wouldn’t paper a room at all, but would paint it.
‘You must paper it,’ said the gentleman, rather warmly.
‘You must paper it,’ said Thomas Gradgrind,* ‘whether you like it or not. Don’t tell us you wouldn’t paper it. What do you mean, boy?’
‘I’ll explain to you, then,’ said the gentleman, after another and a dismal pause, ‘why you wouldn’t paper a room with representations of horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in reality — in fact? Do you?’
‘Yes, sir!’ from one half. ‘No, sir!’ from the other.
* Thomas Gradgrind, Dickens tells us, had all but retired after making his pile in hardware as a wholesaler; and now that he had built himself a substantial if darksome residence named Stone Lodge, he was now looking to be named as a candidate for election to Parliament. The school was of his own founding, intended as a model of progressive education.