Merry Christmas! Every year, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is one of a few books I make a point of reading during the holiday season. This year, audiences can also see it on stage at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis or at the Castle Co Theatre in Lakeville through Dec. 28.
Often interpreted as a call for broad social reform, I find that a closer reading of this novella reveals enduring lessons about education policy that remain relevant today, particularly in their emphasis on personal responsibility, moral renewal, and flexible systems that allow multiple pathways for learning. Below are a few thoughts.
Role of parents
There are a handful of examples where I believe Dickens consistently places moral learning in the home. Think of the Crotchet family: materially poor, but rich in love, discipline, faith, and example. Their children learn generosity, resilience, and gratitude through daily life. Characters like Scrooge (before his transformation) who outsource responsibility for others are morally stunted despite wealth and social status.
Public education institutions are supposed to support learning, but they cannot replace the formative role of parents and extended family. While Dickens criticizes neglect and exploitation, he also shows how moral guidance often comes from personal relationships rather than formal institutions. From a policy perspective, this suggests education systems should respect parental authority rather than attempting to overwrite them. School choice, local control, and pluralism in education reflect a Dickensian realism: Children are formed first in their families and communities, and that schools work best when they support — rather than override — parents’ role in moral and cultural development.
One size doesn’t fit all
I also believe A Christmas Carol illustrates how rigid systems can do the greatest harm to the most vulnerable. Scrooge’s early worldview reduces people to categories, and it is only when he learns to see them as individuals rather than abstractions that he recognizes how deeply wrong his assumptions have been. One lesson is that systems must be flexible enough to respond to human needs. From an education policy perspective, this cautions against one-size-fits-all approaches and implies the need for flexibility, differentiated instruction, and an openness to alternative pathways for learning.
(Dickens returns to this idea in his other work, suggesting that large, centralized systems often struggle to meet the diverse needs of students. His fictional schools are often rigid, joyless, and indifferent to individual needs.)
Personal responsibility
In a A Christmas Carol, it’s not an institution that redeems Scrooge — it’s encounters with people, memory, family, and personal responsibility. Scrooge is not excused from the harm he has caused, nor is he spared the hard truths about his choices and their consequences; yet, he is also not written off as irredeemable. An education system inspired by this view would reflect the same balance. It would maintain discipline and high expectations for conduct and achievement, recognizing that young people need clear boundaries in order to grow. At the same time, it would resist approaches that foreclose the possibility of improvement.
As we enter a new year, may the lessons shared here from A Christmas Carol help guide our state’s decisions in education policy and other areas. Policies that prioritize human development over bureaucracy ultimately serve both children and society more faithfully.
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