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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 every-
thing 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!
Charles Dickens, Hard Times
Thus, under the chapter heading, “The One Thing Needful,” does
Thomas Gradgrind pronounce his pedagogical philosophy, to begin
Dickens’s novel, Hard Times. Gradgrind, described as a person who
himself “seemed a kind of canon loaded to the muzzle with facts”
(Dickens 1958 , 5 ), concludes his pontifications to his colleague, edu-
cation Head and school “warden,” McChoakumchild, by emphasiz-
ing, “In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!”
(Dickens 1958 , 4 ).
Dickens’s satirical portrayal shows how an overemphasis on facts
warps personalities, diminishes enthusiasm, and crushes the soul out
of human life. I begin with Dickens’s beginning to Hard Times be-
cause I believe it helps shed light on a contemporary problem in the
anthropological engagement with a particular strain of anthropol-
ogy emphasizing the discipline should be only about the collection
of facts. Of course, Dickens’s Hard Times is a novel, which makes it
literature, which places it in the humanities. Anthropologists, who
emphasize fact collection, might also dismiss a reference to a work
To Be the Good Ethnographer or the
Good Bad Ethnographer
16. Dancing Lessons from God
millie creighton
