https://phdessay.com/a-utilitarian-education/, Utalitarian Principle in Charles Dickens Hard Times, Comparison Between Hard Times and Communist Manifesto, Failure of Thomas Gradgrind (Hard Times by Charles Dickens). The means are the practices that sustain the virtues of … Yet the motive behind all this was to utilize education … Just by her presence, her goodness rubs off on the people around her, although it is too late for most of them. How do we go about assigning a value to life or to art? Consider the question of child labour. ” A perfect example of a product of utilitarian education, Bitzer defines a horse off the top of his head in a split second. The circus people could be called the total opposite of utilitarianism. Copyright © 2020 Times of Malta. The utilitarian perspective is tradi- tionally presented as being in favor of immigration, but different arguments attack the main thesis that immigration is beneficial for the welfare of individuals. This is just a sample. For the pragmatist, both the means and ends change with time; there is no essence that must remain constant. Utilitarianism. The working class. These people are hated by Gradgrind, Bounderby and other utilitarians because they represent everything that is shunned in utilitarianism such as love, imagination, and humor. Everybody knows that an individual's character is formed by the environment in which he lives, and which gives him his language skills, tastes and morals. Blackpool was told that he could not divorce his wife because it would be against the laws of England. Google Chrome How can Ms Cauchi speak of education solely in terms of employability when the same educational institutions she speaks of have been undermined, not only by advertisers and propagandists but also by the passing of the inner-directed, ruggedly idiosyncratic scholar (perhaps odd, querulous and vain but unmercenary and passionately committed to ideas), and his replacement by the smooth, other-directed, fund-raising and empire-building academic executive, who chooses his opinions, stances and morals as he does his friends: that is, in accordance with their usefulness to his career? The utilitarians ultimately ended with a great downfall because their narrow-minds could not endure the pressures that life can impose on oneself. Dickens paints a vivid picture of this inequality between social classes and shows he does not care much for it. Dickens provides three vivid examples of this utilitarian logic in Hard Times. In May 2012, Harvard forced dozens of students in a Government class to leave in its largest cheating scandal in memory, but the institution would not address assertions that the blame rested partly with a professor and his teaching assistants. Mr. James Harthouse, a young, good looking guy, is attracted to Louisa and deceivingly draws her attraction to him. She does not know what to do since she has never had feelings of her own before. Please read: a personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales Read now Close The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search For. UTILITARIANISM PERSPECTIVE 2 Utilitarian The utilitarian perspective is right that social and religious customs act as a barrier to achieving happiness. In essence, therefore, the premises of utilitarianism can be referred to as a variation or extension of the philosophy of consequentialism. The circus people are simple, open-minded human beings whose goal in life is to make people laugh. It is fairly easy to see that Dickens holds a contempt for Bounderby and the utilitarian philosophy he carries. This is the real meaning of "education" and therefore there can be no real education without a proper assessment of an individual's entire environment. Mozilla Firefox. "For education is a lifetime pursuit. The people who knew the factual information, (utilitarians) were successful, while those who did not were reduced to working in the factories of the utilitarians. Gradgrinds two oldest children, Tom and Louisa, are examples of how this utilitarian method failed miserably. He has successfully incorporated this belief into the school system of Coketown, and has tried his best to do so with his own children. First, the utilitarian calculation requires that we assign values to the benefits and harms resulting from our actions and compare them with the benefits and harms that might result from other actions. PhDessay is an educational resource where over 1,000,000 free essays are collected. Piling buzzword upon buzzword, repeating shopworn exhortations until they ring with the force of truth, and sailing home on a current of neutered, PR-approved copy, these platitudes act as agents of mental pollution by powering down the thought process and bypassing all of the reader's critical faculties. A rights-based perspective might say that it is wrong to hire children to do difficult labour, such as working in a factory or in a cotton field. Thomas Gradgrind Sr. a father of five children, has lived his life by the book and never strayed from his philosophy that life is nothing more than facts and statistics. The goal of reducing personal harm while increasing happiness is something that every person pursues at some point in their life. Thomas Gradgrind is a man bereft of any imagination or fancy, and perhaps that is why he is a staunch believer in the practicality of the education system. Utilitarianism in Education - Treating all staff and students fairly. You may accept this as an unfortunate consequence of a terrible situation, but it may be a problem for a moral theory if it fails to recognise or respect a person’s most sincere and deepest convictions. Utilitarianism is one of the best known and most influential moral theories. If one element of the book stands out in my mind, it would be this one. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Her father never gave her the opportunity to think for herself, or even love someone. She has always been told what to do and what is 'right", and now even her father is stumped. Peter Albert David Singer AC (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher.He is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and a Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne.He specialises in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a secular, utilitarian perspective. Marketing utilitarian goods and marketing hedonic goods needs a vastly different approach. Utilitarianism holds that what’s ethical (or moral) is whatever maximizes total happiness while minimizing total pain. She could certainly benefit from the advice found in Don Quixote's prologue: "Study to explain your thoughts, and set them in their truest light, labouring as much as possible, not to leave them dark nor intricate, but clear and intelligible," meaning of course that it would be best for her to stop referring to "education" when what she really means is "meal ticket and parasitic portfolio of money-making skills". For the Aristotelian, on the other hand, the ends are fairly constant as are the means, for the means cannot be separated from the ends. First, it provides the ability to recognize the life of the mother and the child and weigh the options. Dickens provides three vivid examples of this utilitarian logic in Hard Times. Am I to believe that my utility and the very quality and character of my existence on earth turns upon the impermanence of my stock of "useful knowledge" and the frantic pace at which I am forced to pursue it? The utilitarian perspective has been used for many years around the world as a formal schooling basis, with the intention of benefiting the elite and wealthy families and individuals. - Creating an inclusive culture for all staff and students and develop it to their full potential. Even today Mill's essay "Utilitarianism," which was published in 1861, remains one of the most widely taught expositions of the doctrine. Utilitarianism The utilitarian would feel that checking the status of their application could help more than just themselves, but their family and friends who have been waiting in eager anticipation to see if they were accepted. The utilitarian approach, also called utilitarianism, is essentially a moral principle that asserts that morally correct actions are those that provide the greatest volume of benefits over harms for the majority of people. Remember. Jane is not spoken of much until the end of the book but I like the way Dickens showed the effects of the utilitarian lifestyle as opposed to the non-utilitarian lifestyle. ", How populist and meretricious. It is based on factuality and leaves little room for imagination. Generally, those who were not well-educated did not have any money, while the well-educated ones such as Bounderby and Gradgrind were wealthy. Support Times of Malta for the price of a coffee. This is why Louisa goes frantic and ends up crying in her fathers lap. Take the famous May 4th Movement as an example. One must think that he is beginning to doubt his philosophy after seeing it backfire in his face more than once. Dickens titles the books. It is based on factuality and leaves little room for imagination. His method was somewhat indirect in the sense that he worked backwards to get his point across, but turned out to be very effective as the story progressed. The word total is important here: if you act ethically according to utilitarianism, you’re not maximizing yourhappiness, but the total happiness of the whole human race. By creating a society which places more value on actions that bring happiness, we could create a place where there is more common ground to be found. We don’t want to live in misery all of the time, even if pessimism is the star of every thought that we have. Now, after watching his life fall apart, maybe he wishes he were in the circus. custom paper from our expert writers, A Utilitarian Education. The purpose of this paper is not to give a definitionof aesthetic education or identify the ways in which it is understood in arts education. It is the only moral … The utilitarian perspective is perhaps best understood when examined in contrast to rights-based perspectives. The first; Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, one of the main characters in the book, was the principal of a school in Coketown. Rather they adopt a utilitarian perspective of cultural-historical activity theory to demonstrate when traditional knowledge is considered science and when it is not considered science, for the purposes of evaluating what should be included in U.S. science education curricula. Like other forms of consequentialism, its core idea is that whether actions are morally right or wrong depends on their effects. This chapter compares and contrasts rule-utilitarian and Kantian thinking about what moral rules should be accepted and what exceptions they should allow. Dickens portrays them as a step up from the "Hands" but still close to the bottom in the social structure. It is a form of consequentialism. If the utilitarian calculation suggests that he must shoot one of the prisoners then he must shoot with no regard to any compromising of his integrity and self-identity. on. or W e shall offer a short Confucian style education was condemned and abandoned. He is one of the wealthiest people in Coketown; owning a bank and a factory, but is not really a likable person. The final section of the paper would give arguments by various critiques that accentuate that the concepts of utilitarianism cannot be inclusive in education. Most of these social and religious customs limit what people can do as they dictate what is acceptable and not. I do like how Dickens structures the book to make one ask obvious questions such as these. Josiah Bounderby is another prime example of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that determines right from wrong by focusing on outcomes. Don't use plagiarized sources. 1. " A perfect example of a product of utilitarian education, Bitzer defines a horse off the top of his head in a split second. Mr. Bounderby maintained throughout the story his utilitarian views, which basically stated that nothing else is important besides profit. Get Your Custom Essay The Sexual Utilitarian has led many young people to view relationships only from the perspective of what they can get out of them, not for what they give to them. For example in Australia education is considered a necessity whereas some other cultures don’t have the same opportunities that we do here and therefore education is considered a luxury. Later in the book, Bounderby divorces his wife. When one of his workers, Stephen Blackpool came to Bounderby"s house asking for advice about his bad marriage, he was treated as inferior just because of his social status. But it's often difficult, if not impossible, to measure and compare the values of certain benefits and costs. Louisa, unlike Tom, does get along with her father. INTRODUCTION Utilitarianism is the assumption that human beings act in a way that highlights their own self interest. The utilitarian perspective of education focuses on producing students who will be able to fit into society at an elite level and contribute as a productive citizen. She is representative of the circus people with her innocence and free-will, qualities which are lacking in the lives of the people around her. The people that did not fall victim to the utilitarian trap were able to live their lives happily and freely, able to love, laugh, and use their imagination; which is the way life ought to be lived. Definition of Utilitarianism Utilitarianism, at its most basic, states that something is moral, or good when it produces the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. Dickens wrote on the people of the Industrial Revolution and on truth and realism. You can get your Charles Dickens one of the greatest authors of all time. In promoting 2010's Learning Expo, Ms Cauchi lobs a live grenade over our heads without offering an exit strategy on its implications: "Education is all about maximising on our human capital, the one true resource we fall back on as a nation. It almost seemed like they would not even take him seriously because he was such. PART SIX: Effective Education: International and American Perspectives 445 Chapter 15 International Education 446 Chapter 16 School Effectiveness and Reform in the United States 471 Glossary 509 Index I-1. And leaves little room for imagination eye-teeth, and now even her.! As these how do we go about assigning a Value to life or to art the. Philosophy after seeing it backfire in his face more than once way that their... 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