The scariest thing about Gradgrind’s school is how closely the caricature resembles the
reality of that day. According to historian David Craig, “The first two chapters of the novel
are an almost straight copy of the teaching system in schools run by the two societies for ed-
ucating the poor. In the Manchester Lancasterian School a thousand children were taught in
one huge room, controlled by a kind of military drill with monitors and a monitor-general....
Groups of facts, mechanically classified, were drummed in by methods that might have been
meant to squash forever the children’s urge to find out or understand anything for them-
selves” (Dickens, 1973, p. 22).
This “mechanical system of education” was developed by John Lancaster who also pro-
vided an “elaborate code of rewards and punishments” including “ ‘the log’, a piece of wood
weighing four to six pounds, which was fixed to the neck of the child guilty of his (or her)
first talking offence.... More serious offences found their appropriate punishment in the
Lancasterian code; handcuffs, the ‘caravan,’ the pillory and stocks, and ‘the cage.’ The latter
was a sack or basket in which more serious offenders were suspended from the ceiling”
(Dickens, 1973, p. 23). British public opinion solidly approved of this system, which was dis-
cussed and praised in the British House of Commons and in academic journals. However,
Craig also cited a school inspector who complained that the “elaborate methods for destroy-
ing meaning” caused the children’s “faculties” to be “stunted in their growth, and they sink
into inert listlessness.”
Despite these horrific images, the Lancaster–Gradgrind approach to pedagogy remains
with us today. Although it continues to be satirized, for example, in the movieFerris Bueller’s
Day Off(1986), it is also championed by prominent educators such as William Bennett
(Bennett, Finn, & Cribb, 1996), Chester Finn and Diane Ravitch (1987), and E. D. Hirsch (1987,
1996). They have written widely promoting lists of facts to be memorized by children at dif-
ferent age levels and in different grades and have received government support for their
proposals. In one of her books, Ravitch (2000) launched a savage assault on “progressive ed-
ucation” and the Deweyian movement to educate children for understanding and participa-
tion in democratic society.
One argument for the Lancaster–Gradgrind approach to teaching (especially in schools
for youth from immigrant, non-English-speaking, working-class, and poor families) is that the
supposed ends—cultural literacy, higher scores on standardized exams, and better behaved
children—justify the means—oppressive classrooms and the rote learning of decontextual-
ized information.
It is difficult to respond to their claims to a miracle cure for what ails education other
than by saying that, based on my experience as a student and classroom teacher, I know it
will not work. The French philosopher Albert Camus (1956/1991) offers a more intellectual
way of looking at “reforms” that ignore means in the name of a higher good, a utopian ideal
that will be achieved in the future. Camus argues that ends can never be known in advance,
so suspension of judgment on means is never justified. In fact, the means that we experience
are the only things we can evaluate.
I truly believe there is no magic pill that will make you a better teacher or simple solution
that will improve education and our schools. Being an effective teacher means engaging in a
long-term struggle to convince students that your goals for the class make sense and are
worth examining and that your means (your approach to teaching or pedagogy) will treat
them with dignity as thinking human beings and feeling members of a classroom community.
As a concluding chapter, this chapter on struggle discusses the politics of education (e.g.,
standards debates), schools we want, and how teachers can be involved in building them. It
concludes with an essay that discusses support groups, professional organizations, and site-
254 CHAPTER 10