Paper Summary:

This paper explores the ways in which the public educational system in Europe and the United States has remained essentially unchanged from the publication of Charles Dickens' "Hard Times" in 1854 until today. The paper considers a different way of thinking about education, the Montessori method, as a possible alternative to the continuing problems of the educational system.

From the Paper:

"In his 1854 novel, "Hard Times", author Charles Dickens takes a cynical stand toward the educational system in Britain. In making his protagonist, Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy merchant who espouses a view of the world based only in pure fact, Dickens comments on the state of education as a matter of leaning by rote, or strict memorization. No interpretation, imagination, or opinion is valued in this form of education. Approximately one hundred and fifty years later, in 2001, John Gatto argued that the educational system of the Western world remains much the same. Writing from the perspective of a retired United States schoolteacher, Gatto..."

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