Fact and Fancy
Liz Henry

A person cannot live a meaningful life as long as he or she gives into any form of fancy or whim, or so says Mr. Gradgrind in Hard Times. Charles Dickens opens his novel drilling into his audience that fact is the only important aspect of a person’s life. “‘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’” (Dickens, 1). Mr. Gradgrind makes it known very clearly that his life is dictated by fact, his children are taught and raised by fact alone, and reasonable, rational human being should be ordered by fact as well.

However, Gradgrind’s life is not nearly complete as Sissy Jupe’s life by the end of the novel. It is through Sissy Jupe that Dickens makes the very obvious point that a person cannot live his or her life by fact alone. To be a well adjusted, balanced person, there has to be a mix of fact and fancy in the education of the individual. Unfortunately, the system of education, representative of the Victorian era, symbolized in Hard Times does not lean very readily toward much fancy in the classroom. Regrettably, the education system in most schools across the United States in this modern era enforce the idea of facts and testing, without much emphasis on the creativity, or fancy, of the children.

Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, a man of fact from Coketown, England, is a well-to-do man that owns a school in his town that focuses primarily on educating children to the facts that are needed to succeed in life. He has spent his life dedicated to facts as well as to educating his children with fact. “He would probably have described himself…as an ‘eminently practical’ father,” dedicated to furthering the education of his children, as well as the children under his care at his school (9). The teaching styles used in the schools in Hard Times are very direct teaching approaches. The children are seen as empty vessels that need to be filled with information and drained of any prior knowledge that conflicts with the facts which they are presented. The teacher stands at the front of the room, lectures on subjects that he or she finds appropriate or is told is appropriate, and expects the children to retain this knowledge.

In this modern era, studies have proven over and over that rote memorization and lecturing on the part of the instructor is not the most effective form of teaching because students do not retain the information that is conveyed. Sissy Jupe characterizes this lack of retention, even going so far as to call herself “stupid.” She tells Louisa, Mr. Gradgrind’s daughter, “‘[y]ou don’t know…what a stupid girl I am. All through school hours I make mistakes. Mr. and Mrs. M’Choakumchild call me up, over and over again, regularly to make mistakes. I can’t help them. They seem to come natural to me” (50). Louisa, as well as the audience, knows that Sissy is not a stupid girl because she knows the ways of caring for other people and for taking care of herself. She simply cannot retain all of the facts that Gradgrind is trying to drill into her head. Perhaps the way that M’Choakumchild is presenting the information is the hindrance, or perhaps it is because Sissy is allowed no creativity in her learning process.

The school systems in the twenty-first century are greatly better than they were in the nineteenth century. Creativity and wonder are incorporated into the curricula of today’s school, while they were eliminated from Gradgrind’s lessons. A key foundation of Gradgrind’s school is to never express wonder at any subject: “By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder. Bring to me, says M’Choakumchild [the school master], yonder baby just able to walk, and I will engage that it shall never wonder” (43). Though there is creativity and wonder encouraged in schools today, teachers are still using direct instruction as their primary means of conveying their information and knowledge. Along with direct instruction, teachers and administrators rely heavily on standardized testing to determine how much children have learned and progressed in their education.

In 2002, George W. Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind act which attempts to hold schools responsible for their students’ education, especially reading skills, through standardized testing. Alas, this format for learning and testing has resulted in many cases of the teacher in a classroom teaching to the standardized test. If students perform well on these tests, teachers are commended and the schools receive more federal funding than those schools that are failing these tests. In Hard Times, Gradgrind was so focused on teaching the children fact and only fact that he seemed to overlook the children’s well being, including teaching to the whole child. Unfortunately, in many schools across America today, teachers and administrators are so focused on receiving improved marks on standardized tests and more federal funding, that they, too, are overlooking the importance of educating the whole child.

As an up and coming educator, I have learned many methods and styles for teaching young children the information that they need to learn while in school. I have learned the importance of direct instruction, which is the teacher standing in front of the class, lecturing about the material that needs to be learned, as well as the value of indirect instruction, including group work and students working through their own questions about subject matter to gain knowledge. With all of these new theories and studies that are available to new teachers, it is obvious to me that children need a variety of learning styles in the classroom to really become well rounded individuals. Students do need to learn the facts that will help them further their education and help them to make something of their lives, but they also need to entertain their wonders and fancies. Without their wonders and fancies, children will never be able to imagine themselves in a higher station in life or even imagine a society that has changed to become more just.

Even Mr. Bounderby had to entertain his fanciful and wondering thoughts as some point in his life. Mr. Bounderby was “a rich man: banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what not…a man made out of a coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much of him…a man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself as a self-made man” (12). If Bounderby would have in fact been a self made man, he would have had to give in to his thoughts of fancy so he could imagine himself in a position higher than where he began. However, he lied about his upbringing, meaning that he really had to have an imagination to concoct the story of himself rising out of a water filled ditch at the start of his life. It seems that even those who live their lives by the rigid fact let fancy and wonder creep in somewhere.

Upon reading this book and reflecting on my education thus far, I have come to realize that a balance of fact and fancy is necessary for children to become well-rounded, responsible adults. Dickens illustrates this necessary balance in his portrayal of the characters at the end of the novel. Tom Gradgrind had to leave his family, never to see them again. Louisa was never going to see herself become a wife or mother, “lovingly watchful of her children, ever careful that they should have a childhood of the mind no less than a childhood of the body. But, happy Sissy’s happy children loving her: all children loving her; she, grown learned in childish lore; thinking no innocent and pretty fancy ever to be despised” (267). Louisa and Tom, children of fact and fact alone, lead lives of misery. They are social inept and feel like they are missing something from their lives. Even Mr. Gradgrind realizes the error of living with only fact because he cannot have the relationship with his children that most parents do have. He is not happy in the way that his life ended, despite the massive amount of fact that ruled his life. The only person that seems to be socially well adjusted, even “normal,” is Sissy Jupe. She had a mixture of the circus and of strict education, creating within her the balance that is necessary, according to Dickens.

After reflecting and absorbing all of this information, I know that I will consciously try to incorporate fact and fancy into my pupils’ minds. Exploring the creativity of children is something that should be done on a daily basis, not neglected by anyone. Teachers and parents are the people that are most responsible for educating children, therefore, they should understand better than anyone that children need to wonder and create and explore for them to actually retain the knowledge that they will need later in life. True, children must memorize facts sometimes because there is really no other way to learn some material, but if students feel the need to be creative in their educational setting, that urge should not be stifled. The balance between fact and fancy must be carefully cultivated in these children so they can grow to become responsible, reasonable adults.

* Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. London: Everyman’s Library, 1974.

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