Dons and Workers 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 twentieth 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 twentieth-century socialism. Lawrence Goldman considers the political divisions within working-class adult education, and assesses the influence of this educational tradition on the development of the labour movement. Dons and Workers is thus 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.
- ISBN10 0198205759
- ISBN13 9780198205753
- Publish Date 14 December 1995
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Oxford University Press
- Imprint Clarendon Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 376
- Language English