“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all. » - Aristotle. In their work, Alan Bennett and Charles Dickens explore how a purely rational education, based on facts or simply passing exams, is in reality "no education at all". Both authors celebrate the idea of ​​igniting a flame of passion within education by balancing the use of imagination and factual ideas and thereby establishing that “all knowledge is good knowledge”. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayBoth texts raise concerns about teaching pedagogies in the education system of the time and question what knowledge should remain important. Bennett's play constitutes a satirical attack on the profound influence of Margaret Thatcher and John Major on education, including the introduction of a national curriculum and league tables, which compared exam results across schools. This has led to a crisis in educational ideology and critic Jacobi explains how rankings that assess student performance are what drive the principal to employ Irwin, where everything is reduced to "cups" of relevant information. Furthermore, this can also be supported by Bennett's character Hector, who despises the idea of ​​teaching as he "considers examinations, even for Oxford and Cambridge, to be the enemy of education". He creates a direct attack on the results-oriented attitude towards education, and this is evident through his irreverent and energetic teaching style. Hector's pedagogy summarized by Timms explains that "Mr. Hector's stuff isn't for the exam/It's to make us more well-rounded human beings" - establishing the conflict between different teaching styles that Bennett explores in “The History Boys.” Meanwhile, the director hates that Hector's approach is "unpredictable and unquantifiable." So he employs Irwin specifically to give the boys the 'varnish' they need to pass their Oxbridge entrance exams. Hard Times' satirical approach critiques serious social, political, and economic issues throughout the year. the industrial revolution. The ideas that Dickens ridicules include Coketown as well as the educational principles of Mr. Gradgrind and Josiah Bounderby – a man masked by a ridiculous character. The juxtapositions of submissive factory workers, joyous circus performers, and oblivious upper classes confront the problems of education. Through anaphora, Dickens depicts Mr. Gradgrind as "square", both in appearance and character. His mechanized, monotonous attitude and appearance speaks not only to the Industrial Revolution – the era in which Dickens wrote this novel – but also to the treatment of people as machines that can be reduced to a number of scientific principles. Additionally, his pedagogy involves teaching facts and "just facts" in education and even addresses Sissy Jupe as "girl number twenty." This alludes to the fact that Mr. Gradgrind gives no individuality to his students and considers them to have no personality and ultimately they are all the same. Dickens also uses long lists of complicated topics like "spelling, etymology, syntax, and prosody" to further satirize the education system and show that it is ridiculous to teach such pedagogies to young children. Bennett's character, Irwin, acts as a foil to Hector and believes that education is aboutmastery of examination techniques and to pass, boys must “find a proposition, reverse it, then look for evidence”. From the perspective of critics, Jacobi proposed that Irwin's method is akin to the rhetorical figures that Aristotle identified as the enthymeme, which involves devising the final premise, then collecting appropriate evidence, and finally present the evidence and final premise to an audience. Throughout the play, Irwin remains a very flat character despite the many times we meet him. Bennett includes scenes involving Irwinen's view as a historian and then a politician, leading the audience to wonder why these detailed future moments are given so much priority. When he was a television historian, he repeated the following phrase: "If you want to know about Stalin/Mrs. Thatcher/Hollywood, study Henry VIII." Bennett includes this repetition not only to suggest that Irwin, unlike Dakin and Rudge, was unable to escape the past, but that the structural device also undermines Irwin's pedagogy. He has not progressed or grown as a character and therefore undermines his approach to education because it does not lead to any personal growth. Additionally, Hector dies near the end of the play and should potentially not be seen as an allegory of truth but rather a death suggesting that his approach to education is dying. The character of Sissy Jupe becomes the representative of “fantasy” and imagination. and functions as a foil for Louisa. Sissy shows great imagination and compassion, while Louisa is nurtured by her father's pedagogy which "proves scientifically and morally dubious" due to his "false assumption about human nature" and thus becomes a person strictly rational who is incapable of expressing his feelings. . In chapter two, Sissy bears the brunt of all of Mr. Gradgrind's educational prowess. Under her teaching, she is a complete failure and incapable of “defining” a horse. She also claims that she would paper her room with depictions of flowers because she "loves flowers very much" because "they would be pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant." However, in response to this "fantasy", she is informed by the teachers that she "must not want/You must never want". Despite this upbringing, it is important to note that Sissy becomes a young woman capable of maintaining her own principles and beliefs, unlike Bitzer or Louisa, who become lost due to their upbringing. Louisa is the product of her father's upbringing and education and when she later returns to her father's house, she recognizes that "All I know is that your [her father's] philosophy ] and your teaching will not save me", but yet as a direct product. of her father's pedagogies, she believes that she has no power to replace this influence. But with Sissy's help, his heart and humanity are gradually resurrected. Interestingly, Ms. Lintott is the only teacher in Bennett's play who offers a feminist critique of the education system. Her pedagogy and her role in the play are not really teachers but, as she herself acknowledges, must be "entrusted by all parties" and therefore could be seen as simply a construct created by Bennett to bring the plots together. She also states that "history is just women following with a bucket", suggesting that women often have to fix the mistakes made by powerful men. Furthermore, she is also called “Tot” or “Totty” by boys: “totty” being defined as “girls or women collectively considered sexually desirable.