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Introduction: Something About the Way We Live Now

Introduction: Something About the Way We Live Now Utopia & Education Figure used with kind permission of Pie: The Search for Utopia (http://pieonedotzero.wordpress.com). Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor I. The Allegory of the Circus Charles Dickens's Hard Times is not a novel that typically springs to mind in the context of discussions of education in utopia or dystopia. But maybe it should be. Hard Times stages a fierce debate between utopic and dystopic visions of nineteenth-century Britain and the future that it prepares its children for. On one side: Mr. Gradgrind and his school, with a sclerotic curriculum of "Facts, facts, facts" that hardens the heart and the mind and stamps out any spark of imagination. Gradgrind "manufactures," like identical widgets, model citizens in the form of the apathetic Bitzer. On the other side: Mr. Sleary and his traveling circus, with an endlessly inventive but also skills-oriented curriculum. The circus regards the associative knowledge that imagination makes possible as more valuable than the discrete facts and supposedly objective truths that rationality provides. Learning takes place in the heart, in the ring, and on the road, not in the rigid rows of seats in a dull classroom devoid of amusements or free spaces. Gradgrind's school turns out--like sticks of furniture--automatons http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Utopian Studies Penn State University Press

Introduction: Something About the Way We Live Now

Wagner-Lawlor, Jennifer A.
Utopian Studies , Volume 23 (2) – Nov 25, 2012
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Penn State University Press
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Copyright © Society for Utopian Studies
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2154-9648
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Abstract

Utopia & Education Figure used with kind permission of Pie: The Search for Utopia (http://pieonedotzero.wordpress.com). Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor I. The Allegory of the Circus Charles Dickens's Hard Times is not a novel that typically springs to mind in the context of discussions of education in utopia or dystopia. But maybe it should be. Hard Times stages a fierce debate between utopic and dystopic visions of nineteenth-century Britain and the future that it prepares its children for. On one side: Mr. Gradgrind and his school, with a sclerotic curriculum of "Facts, facts, facts" that hardens the heart and the mind and stamps out any spark of imagination. Gradgrind "manufactures," like identical widgets, model citizens in the form of the apathetic Bitzer. On the other side: Mr. Sleary and his traveling circus, with an endlessly inventive but also skills-oriented curriculum. The circus regards the associative knowledge that imagination makes possible as more valuable than the discrete facts and supposedly objective truths that rationality provides. Learning takes place in the heart, in the ring, and on the road, not in the rigid rows of seats in a dull classroom devoid of amusements or free spaces. Gradgrind's school turns out--like sticks of furniture--automatons

Journal

Utopian Studies – Penn State University Press

Published: Nov 25, 2012

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