This article sifts the historical and philosophical soil out of which the comprehensive ideal in education has sprung. England's national school system emerged in the nineteenth century imbued with ruling-class assumptions about the education required for each supposed type of child destined to take his or her place in one of the three broad…

This paper examines the intergenerational effects of deindustrialisation on the processes and experiences of education at 'Lillydown Primary', a state primary school in a former mining community in the north of England. Complicating Avery Gordon's notion of 'haunting', and drawing on conceptualisations of affect and community 'being-ness', it…

This paper considers gender and social class in relation to teacher education through an episodic study of the development of adult educational institutions in Huddersfield. It briefly discusses nineteenth-century mechanics' institutes in the town before moving to a consideration of school teacher training college students in the twentieth…

This paper is both a careful analysis of a seminal piece of work in the sociology of education, as well as a passionate plea to revisit with renewed urgency, the way in which education continues to fail unacceptably large numbers of working-class children. Through closely examining the work of Dennis Marsden (with his colleague Brian Jackson) in…

In this essay Malott traces his journey to critical pedagogy focusing on a significant element of his family's ethnic and class background and its connection to his own educational experiences from public schooling to university. Drawing on Marx's historical discussions at the end of Volume 1 of "Capital" Malott traces his own…

This article asks why classical music in the UK, which is consumed and practiced by the middle and upper classes, is being used as a social action program for working-class children in British music education schemes inspired by El Sistema. Through exploring the discourse of the social benefits of classical music in the late nineteenth century, a…

Historians and educationalists have often assumed that working-class adult education emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century with the introduction of state-funded technical colleges. This was not the case. In 1823, the Glasgow Mechanics' Institute was opened and within a few years similar institutions were being established across the…

Recent decades have witnessed the waning fortunes of social class as a historical category of analysis. In particular working-class education is rarely discussed in historiography although there has been significant work done in this area, particularly in adult education and literacy. A reassessment of these studies allows us to examine the ways…

From 1952 onwards, following the approval of the "Second Five-year Plan," a series of profound changes took place in the Argentinean national curriculum and in its schoolbooks. Some authors have pointed out that such changes implied the use of the educational system as an "agency for indoctrination." Other authors have…

States that the International Working Men's Association (IWMA) presented itself as an association wanting to implement a new type of society that was classless and socialist. Explains that education was a topic addressed by IWMA and explores the topic of education at the IWMA general congresses. (CMK)

This article examines the efforts and impact of New South reformers to use the examples of industrial training developed at Tuskegee and Hampton Institutes, which were designed to uplift African-Americans, as models of appropriate education for poor Whites. (IAH)

Explores the range of the French syndicalist movement's educational project that encompassed student-worker groups, model schools and camps, youth groups, teacher syndicates, and most importantly, the Bourses du Travail (labor exchanges). Analyzes whether the project was an effective means to achieving syndicalist political goals. (CMK)

Examines background factors of nineteenth-century education, especially the development of systematic training for elementary school mistresses, and social class. Concentrates on Whitelands College's recruitment of future teachers with reference to their social class. (NH)

Shows that despite moves during the 1840s in England to use teacher training to raise working-class members into the lower levels of white-collar society, elementary teaching was dominated by the lower middle class. Provides evidence from a sample of pupil teachers in Birmingham during the years 1850 through 1900. (DSK)