This chapter considers how creativity was a key discourse within criticisms of state education at the turn of the twentieth century. Through a close reading of some of the theorists who were associated with the ‘new education’ movement, the chapter illustrates how Romanticism informed the fact/fancy binary which manifested in late 19th century and early 20th century education debates. Within these representations, state education was represented as the mechanical, rational and calculating celebration of Fact; while creativity was associated with the affective, subjective and innocent celebration of fancy. The chapter explores this fact/fancy binary within Dickens’ novel Hard Times, where creativity is conceived as the epistemologically-subversive critique of the limits of rational thought. Within radical strands of the New Education movement, children’s innate creativity is aligned to the celebration of nature as the manifestation of pre-social perfection which should be ‘fostered’, but not interfered with. The chapter ends by questioning these accounts through the work of Dickens and Dewey, as well as through more socially-aware strands within ‘New Education’. The chapter illustrates how these approaches valued children’s creativity but rejected the radical epistemology within the celebration of children’s natural creative essence. Instead they saw ‘fancy’ as a path to reason; not a road around it.