The Role of Education and Skill in the British Industrial Revolution

Abstract

The prevailing view of the British Industrial Revolution has downplayed the contribution of human capital. The evidence supporting the claim of educational stagnation is thus in order so as to assess how much the direct contribution of educational improvement to economic growth can be minimized during the English Industrial Revolution. It is commonly presumed that technological advance will be skill/education-using and that capital-skill complementarity is present in production. Discussions of socializing effects of education have considered three different types: education as a means of instilling work discipline; education as a means of preventing working-class crime, strikes, and rebellions; and education as a tool for the middle- and upper-classes in imposing cultural hegemony. At a more general level, it has been argued that mass education was used by the middle- and upper-classes as a way of coping with class conflict and counteracting working-class efforts to overthrow the existing order.

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