Adult Education and Social Mobility in Nineteenth Century Britain: A Case Study

• Autores: Mark Freeman
• Localización: History of education researcher, ISSN 1740-2433, Nº. 93, 2014, págs. 4-11
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • This paper examines a group of men who attended some of the earliest adult education classes in York in the late 1850s and early 1860s, and considers the impact this may have had on their subsequent careers. Using a surviving membership list, together with the census enumerators’ books for 1861 and 1881, the study investigates the extent of social mobility among groups of men who did and did not take part in organised adult education activities during this period, by comparing their occupational status when at the school with that which they achieved two decades later. Although the sample is small and relates only to a limited geographical area, the findings suggest some tentative conclusions about the limited opportunities for upward social mobility that were available to young working-class men in the mid- to late nineteenth century, and the method could yield further results with other available sources.