Description

BRIAN SIMON is a well-known educationist and author of a number of
studies on the subject. In this new book
he traces the emergence of modern edu-
cation from the first enthusiastic efforts
of the scientific societies in the 178os”
up-to the soCuring of universal education
with the Act of 1870.The ideas for model schools of such prominent reformers as James Mill and Jeremy Bentham are expounded in detail,together with the early attempts at working people’s self-education, the struggle for leadership of the Mechanics’ Institutes, and Robert Owen’s movement for communal education. Reform of the universities and of the public and grammar schools is shown as part of the changeover of political power from the landed aristocracy to the industrial middle class. The Chartists are seen striving
for working-class education, and the
power of the trade unions finally enters
to carry through the 1870 Act.This volume will be of great value to all interested in education. It will be especially welcomed by those who see
our historyas a continuous interweaving of men’s struggle for a better material existence with their conscious need for greater and wider enlightenment.In the closing decades of the eighteenth century a new interest in education arose among forward-looking industrialists and professional men in the chief manufacturing centres of the Midlands and northern England, most notably in Birmingham and Manchester. The
projects advanced were primarily those of a class which was experiencing at first-hand the potentialities and effects of a now rapidly developing capitalist industry; both as concerned the integration of science with production, which brought revolutionary developments in industrial techniques, and in relation to the rapid expansion of
urban communities, resulting in a variety of new civic problems and responsibilities. As a preliminary to discussing their educational ideas
and activities, therefore, it is worth examining briefly who these men
were and some of the influences at work which sharply differentiated
the leading citizens of Birmingham and Manchester from the England of Whig and Tory, parson and squire, Established Church and traditional universities.