“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” - Aristotle. In their works, Alan Bennett and Charles Dickens explore how a narrow, purely rational education, based on facts or simply passing exams, is actually no education at all. Both writers celebrate the idea of ​​lighting a flame of passion within education by balancing the use of imagination and concrete ideas and thus establishing that “All knowledge is good knowledge.” Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Both texts raise concerns about teaching pedagogies in the education system of the time and question what knowledge should remain important. Bennett's work provides 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 evaluating student performance are what drives the principal to hire Irwin, where everything is reduced to "lumps" of relevant information. Furthermore, it can also be supported by Bennett's character, Hector, who despises the idea of ​​teaching as he "regards examinations, even for Oxford and Cambridge, as the enemy of education". He creates a direct attack on the results-oriented attitude towards education, and this can be seen through his irreverent and energetic teaching style. Hector's pedagogy summarized by Timms explains that "Mr. Hector's things are not meant for the exam / they serve to make us more complete human beings" – establishing the conflict between different teaching styles that Bennett explores in "The History Boys" . Meanwhile, the headmaster hates that Hector's approach is "unpredictable and unquantifiable", so he employs Irwin specifically to give the boys the "polish" they need to face the Oxbridge entrance exams. The satirical approach of "Hard Times" criticizes serious social, political and economic problems during the industrial revolution. The ideas that Dickens ridicules include Coketown as well as the educational principles of Mr Gradgrind and Josiah Bounderby – a man cloaked in a ridiculous personality. The juxtaposition of subjugated workers with joyous circus performers and oblivious upper classes addresses the problems of education. Through the use of anaphora, Dickens portrays Mr. Gradgrind as "square", both in appearance and character. His mechanized and monotonous attitude and appearance not only testify 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 set of scientific principles. Additionally, his pedagogy involves teaching facts and "just facts" when it comes to education and he even addresses Sissy Jupe as "girl number twenty." This alludes to the fact that Mr. Gradgrind does not attribute any individuality to his students and sees them as lacking in personality and ultimately all the same. Dickens also uses long lists of complicated topics such as "Spelling, Etymology, Syntax, and Prosody" to further satirize the education system and demonstrate that it is ridiculous to teach young children such pedagogies. Bennett's character, Irwin, acts as an obstacle for Hector and believes that education is about mastering exam techniques and to pass the kids must 'find a proposition, reverse it, then look for the evidence'. From a critical perspective, Jacobi proposed that Irwin's method issimilar to the rhetorical figures that Aristotle identified as the enthymeme, which includes devising the final premise, then gathering appropriate evidence, and finally presenting the evidence and the final premise to the audience. Throughout the play, Irwin remains a flat character despite the numerous times in which we encounter him. Bennett includes scenes that see Irwin as a historian and then as a politician, which in turn makes the audience wonder why these detailed future moments are given so much precedence. During his time as a TV historian he repeats the phrase "If you want to know 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 also that the structural device 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. Furthermore, Hector dies towards the end of the play and potentially should not be taken as an allegory of truth but rather his death could suggest that his approach to education is dying. The character of Sissy Jupe becomes the representative of "fantasy" and imagination. and operates as a hindrance to Louisa. Sissy provides great imagination and is compassionate, while Louisa is nurtured by her father's pedagogies that "prove scientifically and morally dubious" due to his "false assumption about human nature" and thus becomes a strictly rational individual who is unable to express his feelings. . In the second chapter, Sissy is bearing the brunt of Mr. Gradgrind's full educational prowess. According to her pedagogy she is a complete failure and incapable of "defining" a horse. She also states that she would wallpaper her room with representations of flowers because she "likes flowers very much" because "they would be pictures of what is very pretty and pleasant." However, in response to this “fantasy,” she is informed by teachers that “you must have no imagination/You must never fancy.” Despite this upbringing, it is important to note that Sissy develops into a young woman who is able to maintain her own principles and beliefs, unlike Bitzer or Louisa, who become warped due to their upbringing. Louisa is the product of her father's upbringing and education and when she later returns to her father's home, she recognizes that "All I know is that your [her father's] philosophy and your teaching will not save me" , but still a direct product of his father's pedagogies, feels he has no power to replace that influence. But with Sissy's help, his heart and humanity are gradually resurrected. Interestingly, Ms. Lintott is the only female teacher in Bennett's work who offers a feminist critique of the education system. Her pedagogy and role within the show is not really that of a teacher but, as she herself acknowledges, is to be "trusted from all sides" and therefore could be seen as a simple construct created by Bennett to string the plots together . She also states that "history is all about women following with a bucket", suggesting that women are often left to clean up mistakes made by powerful men. Additionally, boys also call her “Tot” or “Totty”: “totty” is defined as “Girls or women collectively considered sexually desirable,” which offers a critique of the education system and its pedagogies from a feminist perspective. . She is aware that there is no objective history or past and instead subverts her own pedagogy by critiquing history from a gender perspective. His teaching methods reveal social processes, how who holds power.