Dons and Workers

Abstract

Abstract This book is a history of university adult education since its origins in the mid-Victorian period. It focuses on the University of Oxford, which came to lead the movement for adult and working-class education, and which imprinted it with a distinctive set of social and political objectives in the early years of the 20th century. It is also a study of the relationship between intellectuals and the working class, for it has been through the adult education movement that many of the leading figures in liberal and socialist thought have made contact with workers and their institutions over the last century and a half. The effect of adult education on such figures as T. H. Green, Arnold Toynbee, R. H. Tawney, G. D. H. Cole, William Temple, and Raymond Williams gives us an insight into the evolution of ideas from late-Victorian liberalism to 20th-century socialism. The book considers the political divisions within working-class adult education, and assesses the influence of this educational tradition on the development of the labour movement. The book is a contribution to the intellectual and political history of modern England, and one that presents an unfamiliar portrait of ‘elitist’ Oxford and its influence in the nation.

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