“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be.” Charles Dickens wrote to not only entertain but also to teach important morals to his audience. In the novel Great Expectations, the social issue of education during the 1800’s arises. Dickens expresses his thoughts on this subject through the main character Pip and his journey in becoming a gentleman during this time. Clearly by the characterization and actions of Pip, Dickens believed education was very important but was unfairly distributed among social classes. It is only when Pip rises to success that he is properly schooled. Today we still face this same issue, and people who are more fortunate, are accessible to a better …show more content…
“Low social class puts children far behind from the start” (epi.org). Low class poses major obstacles to young kids when learning material in school. “Initial academic skills are correlated with the home environment, where low literacy environments and chronic stress negatively affect a child’s pre academic skills” (apa.org). Growing up in poverty tends to set back students due to their home lives. Not just being a money issue, many people are not fortunate of a steady education due to an unstable family. “In a nationwide study of American kindergarten children, 36 percent of parents in the lowest-income quintile read to their children on a daily basis, compared with 62 percent of parents from the highest-income quintile” (apa.org). Children's ability to read at a young age corresponds to home literacy environment, and how much time parents put into helping their children learn. Whether is is a negative attitude towards their child's education, or just lack of time, children of the lower class are put to a disadvantage from the start due to less educational attention. Dickens would not approve of how society has still not changed, in the way that education is still closely related to social class. “Charles Dickens took an intense interest in education and particularly in those charities and institutions that catered for pauper children” (dickens.port.ac.uk). He believed that, “education had the potential to rescue working-class children from the ravages of industrialisation and from the dangers that lurked in the sprawling city” (dickens.port.ac.uk). Because he felt this way, and had a desire to fix the injustice, he would not approve of how the lower class is still given less opportunity to become