Hard Times

"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. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!" - C. Dickens


I am reading Dickens' "Hard Times" in the car. I love hearing books on tape while driving around, doing errands, waiting at stop signs. Sometimes, when listening to NPR, I go a little nuts, because the news is often so bad or they pick some little piece of news to its infinity (such as water rights and the court process, which I'm sure is very important, but on a Thursday night, with a day full of making little mouths behave, this is the last thing you can use to focus your attention.)

I don't generally like reading Dickens, but in an audio book, he is very entertaining. Take, for instance the paragraph above, which is the opening paragraph of the book. It is funny to me, but it is funny-sad too, because that is the exact educational philosophy of many people. It seems that sometimes people want education to be put in a nice little box that can be measured and weighed and categorized. They want that, but they also want creative thinkers and people who will think great thoughts and design new products. New products and great thought will not be produced by students who are fed only facts and have sentimentality and wonder beaten out of them.

One of the reasons that I like Victorian books is that they vocabulary is so rich and varied. They use words like attachment, continence, and honorable. They make value judgments about their characters and they have a good, although usually slow plot.

I found this book on cds at the public library. Yeah for the public library! I might just "read" more Dickens if they are all as good as this one!