Today we explored the wider context of educational ideas in the Victorian era, focussing on John Stuart Mill, Cardinal Newman, Charles Dickens and finally Matthew Arnold. His poem about the student who absconded from Oxford University to find a deeper truth to life’s questions still sits with us today as a powerfully relevant poem. The…
Tag: Charles Dickens
Hard Times Continued…..
We had great fun this morning exploring the way Thomas Gradgrind (Sir!) introduces himself in his own mind to the classroom full of little pitchers. Here he accosts Sissy Jupe for her lack of factual knowledge about horses and praises wonderful Bitzer for his “bitzy” factual knowledge of a horse. Thank you Angelina and Steph…
Moving into the Victorian Age with Dickens and others.
Blog Topics galore!!!! *Today we tapped into Dickens’ challenge to the educational systems of his day. *How effective do you think he was in pointing to the heart of the problem with contemporary education? *Have we learned anything since his day? *Write a short piece that expresses your sense of the value of Dickens’ educational…
Charles Dickens Hard Times- Week 6
Hello All, well I am hoping that Dickens’ core message about the ailments plaguing 19thC England and about his vision of a cure, are becoming clearer to you now that we have listened hard to voice of Mt Thleary and have heard what poor Louisa had to endure under her father’s care. Now we begin…
Victorianism and Charles Dickens
What a fabulous week to be able to jump in and explore all those amazing connections between the Victorian Age and Sydney our home city: The Queen Victoria Building, Victoria Road, Albert Road, The Palace Gardens… the list goes on. And it is important to stress that Sydney actually grew into a city exactly in…
Education of the inner self: Dickens, Mill, Arnold, Newman
The Nineteenth Century was as “distracted from distraction by distraction“as we all are in the early years of the Twenty First Century. The messages sent to us by the “poets” of the inner-self in Victorian England (Dickens, Arnold, Newman … and others) are as relevant to us now as they were then. Matthew Arnold had…
Shakespeare/ Victorianism & Charles Dickens – Week 6
Thomas Carlyle the great Victorian historian, close friend of Charles Dickens wrote these wonderful words which have been carved in stone in the foyer to the Mitchell ( State Library) in Sydney. This is where many of us visited the Shakespeare Room this week. But for those of studying Charles Dickens and Victorianism, these words…
Best WordPress ePortfolios for Autumn 2015: Shakespeare and the Nineteenth Century
These students have been blogging as they have been studying Nineteenth Century Literature and The Age of Shakespeare. Some of these students have been doing both courses. They each had to showcase their best blogs and also write a Summative Comment explaining what they have learned from the course and how the content still has…
Thomas Carlyle’s Wonderful Words Celebrating the Continuing Importance of the Printed Word
At the State Library Today, we also genuflected in front of these amazing words from that extraordinary 19th Century wordsmith, the historian Charles (to whom Dickens dedicated his Hard Times). To anyone who still reads and benefits from the written word, these words carved in Sydney sandstone inside the vestibule to the Mitchell Library will have a…
Queen Victoria’s Railway Carriage and Charles Dickens’ Challenge!
This is where Queen Victoria sat in her carriage- a gold plated dunny, with decor matching the carriage as a whole: It is no wonder that Dickens and artists concerned with the “Condition of England” were disturbed at the discrepancy between such opulence and the conditions that 9/10ths of the English population had to endure…
Michael Griffith: Home Page- Literature and Life Autumn 2022 
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