EARLY INTERPRETATIONS OF WORKERS' EDUCATION
Patrick Keane
Some current perceptions of education for occupational
groups start with a basic level emphasizing the remediation of skill and/or
knowledge deficiencies and then progress to higher levels involving both
occupational and personal growth (Scanlan, 1985). However, the latter goal of
personal enhancement, unrelated to one's occupation, seems to attract only
token recognition, particularly for blue collar workers. Indeed, workers'
education or labor education has been defined as "the attempt to meet
workers' educational needs as they arise from participation in unions"
(Rogin, 1970, p.301). Since the majority of workers are not unionized, and even
union members have educational needs not circumscribed by such membership, one
is tempted to consider "union education" as a more appropriate label
for such activities. The academic field of labor studies has likewise been dominated
by the preparation of union leaders, although here broader ideological,
remedial, and cultural issues have also found a place in the programs. The
advent of white collar unions in professionalizing occupations has similarly
clouded the perception of who is a "worker." Other educational labels
such as "vocational," "professional," "adult,"
and "continuing" serve alternately to demarcate and to obfuscate an
enterprise interpreted by some as peripheral, and by others as central in our
modern learning society. One is, therefore, tempted to look to preindustrial and early industrial society, to search for
interpretations uncomplicated by the multiplicity of educational provision in
our fast-changing pluralistic societies. Specifically, we will consider some
interpretations spanning the period from classical Greece to the early 19th
century, using later interpretations from Britain and North America. These may
serve to identify some lost opportunities or merely to identify interpretations
constrained by time and space. Santayana contended that by ignoring the past we
are condemned to repeat it. If many workers continue to define their world with
little recourse to "workers' education," then perhaps we have not
learned from the past.
While the classical Greeks may have been exemplars of
democracy, Plato and Aristotle distinguished between a liberal education
intended for a governing class, and a vocational education or training intended
for tradespeople or slaves (Barker, 1952; Guthrie,
1956). While a class system was to be based on merit, the influence of heredity
was recognized in Plato's Republic. The rulers were born with gold in
their composition, their auxiliaries with silver, and the artisans with brass
and iron. Plato went beyond current Athenian practice in according responsibility
for education to the state and proposing equal access for women. Some class
mobility was assumed, but beyond some mention in the Laws, little
attention was devoted to what we may interpret as workers' education. Plato
wrote, "that other sort of training, which aims at the acquisition of
wealth or bodily strength, or mere cleverness apart from intelligence and
justice, is mean and illiberal, and is not worthy to be called education at
all" (England, 1921, I, p. 644). The focus was on an ideal of liberal
education for a governing class assumed to have all the intelligence of the
community. Similarly, Aristotle in his Politics, distinguished between a
liberal education suited to free citizens and an education suited to those destined
for mechanical occupations (Barker, 1952). While the rulers were to provide
their auxiliaries aged 20 to 35 with an education in mathematics, astronomy,
and logic preparatory to the study of philosophy, the workers were judged
incapable of intellectual stimulation and uninterested in the pursuit of
knowledge. Both free craftworkers (whom Aristotle
would have deprived of citizenship) and slaves were thus to receive only a
limited technical or vocational education, intended to render them efficient
producers. Such education was suited both to assumptions of their mental
capacity and to the belief that "Any employment which is pursued for the
sake of gain. . . keeps men's minds too much and too
meanly occupied" (Barker, 1952, p. 334 [Greek text VIII 1337 b. ss 5]). Greek thought thus emphasized an antithesis between
culture and utility which implied a contempt for
manual work and for the education of those who performed it. Conversely, both
Greece and Rome developed intense pride in their public and private
construction projects, and craft guilds became integral units of Roman civic
administration (Jones, 1964).
Such attitudes were long to influence Western notions
of workers' education as a circumscribed form of training for a subordinate
social class. There were indeed some early attempts to give a new dignity to
labor and to associate it with an education which recognized the humanity of those
who performed it. St. Benedict of Nursia instituted a
6th-century monastic rule which combined labor and learning (McCann, 1952), while in 1516 Sir Thomas More's Utopia
(Book IT) idealized the same combination. Jean Jacques Rousseau, in 1762,
devoted exhaustive attention to a well-rounded and demanding education for his
prospective carpenter, Emile (Ballinger, 1965; Boyd, 1962). However, as long as
social, economic, or political conditions determined that workers' education
was to be interpreted from the standpoints of employers, consumers, or
governments, its nature was to remain circumscribed by essentially utilitarian
considerations. The importance of such education was apparent in the embracing
legislation of Elizabethan England (Statute of Apprentices, 1563) which
prescribed a mandatory period of at least seven years apprenticeship for entry
to all the skilled trades then in existence. Intended to insure competence and
provide career monopolies in fields as diverse as medicine and shipbuilding,
the legislation served also as a measure of social stability by supplementing
skill training with moral and religious supervision. Although often circumvented,
the apprenticeship system expanded and was introduced into the North American
colonies. Thus, William Penn's Frame of Government provided for all to be
"taught some useful trade or skill, to the end none may be idle, but the
poor may work to live, and the rich, if they become poor, may not want"
(Morris, 1946, p. 4). The alternative to an educated worker was thus seen as an
idle, unemployed, and probably dangerous one, hence the many aphorisms on
utility in 18th-century almanacs. The value of educated workers was evident in
the competing British and colonial policies toward their migration, and in the
colonies' success in their aggressive recruitment. Thus, in 1768 the army
commander, Major General Thomas Gage, lamented that while many of them
"embark for America [we] can't discover where they land" (Morris,
1946, p. 24).
The educational component of apprenticeship was very
uneven, with many early agreements stressing practical, on-the-job instruction,
rather than literacy or numeracy. However, such practical instruction was
supplemented by formal schooling in medicine as early as Hellenistic Greece
(Marrou, 1982), in law in 3rd century A.D. Rome (Marrou, 1982), and in
architecture and engineering in 4th century A.D. Rome (Barlow, 1967). Indeed,
in the later Roman Empire, "surveyors (geometra),
engineers (mechanici) and architects were
also professional men belonging to the upper ranks of society" (Jones, 1964,
p. 1013). When the Emperor Constantine offered scholarships
to prospective architects, "he stipulated that candidates should be of
about 18 years of age and should already have received a liberal
education" (Jones, 1964, p. 1013). This enhanced interpretation of
educational needs applied only to a select number of professionalizing
occupations which were deemed to require a theoretical knowledge base beyond
that provided in the apprenticeship system. Even apprenticeship to other highly
skilled trades was long to be regarded as a privilege limited to parents
possessing a certain amount of property and able to pay a substantial premium
for the education imparted. However, in balancing the
preservation of the status quo with the needs of their economies, "the
colonies differed from the mother country in their refusal to impose property
qualifications" for apprenticeship training (Morris, 1946, p. 22).
They seem to have differed also in showing a greater readiness to identify some
general education in that training. Thus, John Maisters
of York County, Maine was fortunate that his 1674 apprenticeship agreement
provided that:
The said maister his sd apprentice shall teach and instruct in the trade of a
carpenter, to the best of his skill, according to what his apprentice is
capable of, and alsoe doe promiss
to teach him to write and siffer if hee bee capable [spellings sic]. (Morris, 1946, p. 366)
Even
early trade schools did not necessarily identify any general education in their
curriculum. Thus, Bishop Laval opened such schools in Quebec City and nearby
St. Joachim in 1668. Their program was identified as cabinetmaking, carpentry,
masonry, roofing, shoemaking, tailoring, and "sculpture and painting was
both a trade and an art" (Phillips, 1957, p. 20). Instruction in
agriculture was given also to boys on a model farm at nearby Cap Tourmente, while girls were enabled to learn domestic
spinning, weaving, and household skills. Similarly, in 1757 the Moravian Church
established a trade school in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. In it, instruction in the
3Rs supplemented a curriculum of blacksmithing, gunsmithing,
locksmithing, weaving, carpentry, and masonry. Its
educational philosophy was reflected in its assignment of church members,
"automatically and dogmatically" to learn these trades (Bridenbaugh, 1964, p. 131). Stronger ties with traditional
education were reflected in the endowment funds of some English grammar
schools. Here students had the option of applying for either college tuition
scholarships or apprenticeship fees on completion of their schooling (Carlisle,
1818, I). This educational model emphasized the scope of opportunities
available to a favored few who entered the work force. It also highlighted the
inadequacies of the often nominal instruction given to male and female, pauper
or orphaned apprentices in British industrial towns, Southern tobacco centers,
or Upper Canadian frontier districts. One study has, concluded that "south
of Philadelphia, less stress was placed on general education for
apprentices" (Morris, 1946, p. 381). There were, however, the growing
opportunities provided by evening lectures and evening schools, which served
the double function of not interfering with the working day and not
highlighting the educational limitations of many employers. Thus, in 18th
century Britain, a host of new ventures was launched to popularize the new
scientific knowledge. These included not only short courses of public lectures
but "evening classes for mechanics and craftsmen," in such cities as Salford, Newcastle, and London (Hans, 1951, p. 158). In
London in 1789 Peter Nicholson, an architect, "established an evening
school for carpenters and mechanics, where he taught applied mathematics and
published textbooks for carpenters and builders" (Hans, 1951, p. 158).
Similarly, in late 18th century Halifax, Nova Scotia, apprentices were
encouraged to enroll in evening schools offering instruction in "reading,
writing, arithmetic, architecture, bookkeeping, dialing, gauging, mathematics
and navigation." By 1805 this selection had increased to include also
"geography with the use of globes, geometry, trigonometry, altimetry, longimetry, mensuration,
surveying on a modern and highly improved plan. . . gnomics, natural philosophy, astronomy, elocution,
composition, etc." (Keane, 1975, p. 258). In the
United States, research suggests that the early growth of evening schools was
largely attributable to educational needs and interests which could not be met
within the apprenticeship system (Seybolt, 1971).
Here, particularly in the north, colonial indentures came to specify attendance
at evening school, and to identify whether the employer or parent was
responsible for payment of the school fees.
While colonial workers were able to profit socially
and economically from a relative scarcity of skilled labor, British workers
were more susceptible to long-standing, upper-class inhibitions about educating
"the lower orders." Attitudes, of course, differed widely, as between
the aristocratic seigniorial class of Quebec, the merchant class of
cosmopolitan and prosperous Philadelphia, or the gentry of the southern planting
colonies. Constraints were readily apparent in such matters as gender or race.
Thus, in both North America and Britain, such trades as weaving or spinning
were open to women, in addition to the traditional sewing, knitting, and
housewifery. Less traditional female occupations were often the result of
widows inheriting their husband's business or, as with Benjamin Franklin, an
absent husband's trade being plied temporarily by a wife. Indians and blacks
seem to have been often apprenticed in New England and New York, with the
knowledge gained serving as a "transitional stage to complete
emancipation" for the latter. In the South, both slaves and free blacks
might be apprenticed, with the system being judged "an important factor in
the economic life of the free Negro in the antebellum South" (Morris,
1946, p. 388). The particular scrutiny of the education and training provided
for those most disadvantaged workers emphasized that economic considerations
played only one part in determining the scope of such education. On either side
of the Atlantic, views of workers and their education tended to be influenced
substantially by preindustrial concepts of
"rank" or "estate" of education being appropriate to one's
"station in life" (Hobsbawn, 1984, Ch.2).
Thus, tories in London or New York would doubtless
have commiserated with Dr. Thomas Cadwalader, when in
1744 he told Dr. Alexander Hamilton that the New Jersey House of Assembly was
full of "mechanics and ignorant wretches, obstinate to the last degree"
(Bridenbaugh, 1964, p. 155). The American Board of
Customs Commissioners similarly complained in 1768 of town meetings at which
"the lowest mechanics discuss upon the most important points of government,
with the utmost freedom" (Morris, 1946, p. 52). The views of skilled
workers who joined the Baltimore Whig Club led a critic in 1777 to ask "how
a man who was only fit to patch a shoe could have the temerity to attempt to
patch the state" (Morris, 1946, p. 53). That some interpreted the education
of workers as suiting them only "to patch a shoe" reflected the
centuries-old distinction between liberal education and vocational education.
It also ignored the fact that many workers had identified and met educational needs
beyond those interpreted by their employers. Such aspirations were influenced
by the opportunities for upward mobility. Beyond those who sought the security
of independent farming, the ranks descended from skilled free artisans hoping
to become small employers, to the unskilled free workers and, in America, the
skilled and unskilled indentured workers, and the skilled and unskilled slaves.
Attributions of ignorance, obstinacy, and temerity were particularly resented
by the economically privileged but socially underprivileged skilled workers,
generically termed "mechanics."
Such
social distinctions influenced the separate development of medical, legal, and
theological education, even under a continuing apprenticeship tradition in
colonial North America (Chroust, 1965; Shewmaker, 1921; Shryock, 1960).
However, even lower-ranking workers on both sides of the Atlantic had
demonstrated an interest in an education not circumscribed by its economic
utility. Much of this was gained informally in coffee houses and clubs, or derived
from newspapers and books by a relatively affluent
elite of skilled-trades people and mechanics. They were better able to identify
common interests than the mass of the illiterate and unskilled laboring poor. Indeed,
this small elite were often as anxious to interpret
their rank in relation to the unskilled workers as to their employers. A
confidence in their own abilities saw a group of London weavers establish the Spitalfields Mathematical Society as early as 1717 (Cawthorne, 1929). Based on the principle of "friends
educating each other," they established a collection of apparatus and
decided to embark on a study of the new scientific discoveries, for which
established educational institutions were making little if any provision. Ten
years later, Benjamin Franklin initiated a comparable venture in Philadelphia,
with his Junto (Labaree et al., 1964). This time, a group,
largely of skilled workers, undertook to define and implement their own
educational program, ranging over the fields of morals, politics, and natural
philosophy. Both groups and many others who followed their lead in North
America and Britain testified to a commitment to a broader interpretation of
workers' education than their social superiors considered appropriate.
By the early 19th century the twin impact of science
and democracy highlighted the constraints of earlier interpretations of
workers' education. Britain's early Industrial Revolution had created
opportunities for innovation and advancement that all but overwhelmed the
traditional apprenticeship system, while creating social and political tensions
that invited reform or revolution. In revolutionary America it had become fashionable
to idealize the "virtuous mechanic," and indeed the Declaration of
Independence included the signatures of Benjamin Franklin, printer; George
Walton, carpenter; and Roger Sherman, cordwainer.
Nevertheless, Thomas Jefferson was to describe "artificers as the panders
of vice, and the instruments by which the liberties of the country are
generally overturned" (Rayback, 1959, p. 64). Even
in Jacksonian America, labor leaders baulked at continuing
references to "the 'swinish multitude,' 'the lower classes,' 'the mob,'
and 'all the baser epithets'" (Pessen, 1967 p.
115). Workers, whether British or North American, grew increasingly resentful
of the imputations of ignorance, and tended to accord education a definite role
in their plans for social, economic, and political reform. Self-help to
transform the conditions of life and learning was apparent among new settlers
in Upper Canada in 1800. At Niagara they had resolved to contribute $4 annually,
"sensible how much we are at a loss in this new and remote country for
every kind of useful knowledge, and convinced that nothing would be of more use
to diffuse knowledge among us and our offspring than a library. . ." (Hardy, 1912, p. 27). Self-help was equally apparent among
British weavers in Lancashire and Yorkshire, of whom E. P. Thompson (1968)
concluded that:
There was certainly a leaven.
. . of self educated and articulate men of considerable attainments. Every
weaving district had its weaver poets, biologists, mathematicians, musicians,
geologists, botanists. . . weavers in isolated villages who taught themselves
geometry by chalking on their flagstones, and who were eager to discuss the
differential calculus. . . a book could actually be propped on the loom and
read at work. (p. 322)
In the Philadelphia Workingmen's Party of 1828, and others
that followed it, free and universal education was demanded, including an
improved curriculum, less reliance on rote learning, and better qualified and
paid teachers (Jackson, 1942). While concerned mainly with the education of the
next generation, some labor leaders went on to urge self-improvement among
their members. Indeed, such New York labor leaders as George Henry Evans and
Robert Dale Owen even placed education at the top of their reform agenda (Pessen, 1967). Such agendas were debated widely, as at the
1830 New York Working Men's Party Convention, which even attracted delegates
from Ontario (Pessen, 1967). Owen agreed with Frances
Wright, the vigorous champion of women's rights, that "until equality be
planted in the mind, in the habits, in the manners, in the feelings, think not
it ever can be in the conditions" (Pessen, 1967,
p. 70). Education for self-fulfillment or empowerment marked a significant
departure from the moral and vocational interpretations of the apprenticeship
system. Skilled workers might continue to argue for better and stricter
apprenticeships and indeed that system continued to prosper, formally and
informally, in some trades (Mulligan, 1986). Nevertheless, their horizons had
long since broadened beyond skill training, and as in Cincinnati, they were now
also seeking "improvements in the arts and sciences" (Pessen, 1967, p. 22). However, even in the factory system
eulogized by Harriet Martineau and others at the
Lowell textile mills, the labor leader Seth Luther argued that their 13-hour
day rendered it "impossible to attend to education among children, or even to improvement among adults" (Luther,
1836, p. 17). Such "improvement" was however an integral part of many
workers' aspirations, even if its nature had yet to be determined with any
precision.
It was partly in reaction to workers' interests that
a major international education movement was launched under middle-class
auspices. This was the mechanics' institute movement that originated in the
early 19th century and found a congenial home in Britain, the United States,
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Its initial primary purpose was to graft
onto the essentially practical instruction received by skilled workers a
knowledge of the emerging sciences, so as to render the workers more efficient
and inventive. London Mechanics' Institution, which was to serve as something
of an international model, specified that "the object proposed is the
instruction of the members in the principles of the arts they practice, and in
the various branches of science and useful knowledge" (Place, 1823, p.
269). Beyond this explicit objective lay the heated controversies among early
promoters. Radicals had sought a program exclusively determined by, and
financed by, workers themselves, but had been outmaneuvered by others who
accepted the proclaimed community of interests with employers. Implicit in the
final objective was, therefore, an adherence to the prevailing middle-class
ethic of frugality, temperance, disciplined hard work, and utility, rather than
the support of an artisan culture recognizing diversity, conflict, and social
pluralism. Even a utilitarian education for skilled workers was a compromise
among the establishment. To some conservative fears that any systematic
educational programs would prove seditious were added religious misgivings that
a secular and scientific education lacked the moral context of apprenticeship training.
Thus, in St. John, New Brunswick, one lecturer felt obligated to refute the
charge that institutes were "degenerating into mere training schools for
revolutionary democrats and proving [to be] the hotbeds of infidelity"
(Galloway, 1844, p. 7). While the impact of these programs was to be as varied
as local resources and constraints would allow, the fundamental interpretations
of their promoters showed the continuing influence of Plato and Aristotle.
In this sense, the evening schools of the 18th
century had anticipated the mechanics' institutes, although the pace and public
awareness of scientific and technological change had since increased
substantially. Workers in both Britain and North America had demonstrated a
growing interest in the "marvels of science," although often for more
discursive reasons than immediate practical application. Such reasons formed
part of their evolving concern with social, economic, and political reform, in
which education was already perceived as potentially supportive or potentially
restrictive. Indeed, it has been argued that "American labor thought was
so akin to English radicalism of the period, it would
appear that the old notion of American uniqueness would have to be modified, at
least for the Jacksonian era" (Pessen, 1967, p. 197). Thus, while the unskilled poor on
both sides of the Atlantic responded hesitantly to the proffered literacy
programs, the skilled workers and apprentices showed much initial enthusiasm for
the more ambitious programs of the mechanics' institutes. The depth and breadth
of long unmet needs and interests were reflected in their attraction to
programs embracing a library, a museum, scientific demonstrations and
experiments, lectures, and evening classes on subjects ranging from
architecture to chemistry, bookkeeping to mathematics, and modern languages to
technical drawing. The story was repeated from Glasgow, Scotland to Montreal, Quebec;
from Boston, Massachusetts to San Francisco, California. However, some labor
leaders resented the institutes' general exclusion of politics and economics
from their programs, arguing that the education of workers should reflect their
multiple roles in society, not simply that of being producers or employees. The
radical editors of the London Mechanics' Magazine contended in 1823
that:
Men had better be without education than be educated by their rulers; for then education is but the mere breaking in of the steer to the yoke; the mere discipline of the hunting dog. (Robertson, pp. 99-102)
Some conservative reformers were likewise to
criticize the narrow equation of workers' education with 'useful knowledge.'
Thus, Dr. Thomas Arnold urged institute members:
Let us not delude ourselves into supposing that the diffusion
of useful knowledge is genuine adult education. Neither science nor literature alone
can instruct the judgement--only moral and religious
knowledge can do this. (Arnold, 1845, p. 423)
Yet another mechanics' institute president, Charles
Dickens, wrote scathingly of attempts to delimit workers' education in terms of
their employment, rather than their broader personal interests in the wider
world. He illustrated the point by reference to a fictional institute library
with its:
painfully apologetic return of 62 offenders who had
read Travels, Popular Biography, and mere Fiction descriptive of the
aspirations of the hearts and souls of mere human creatures like themselves;
and such an elaborate parade of 2 bright examples who had had down Euclid after
the day's occupation and confinement; and 3 who had had down Metaphysics after
ditto; and 1 who had had down Theology after ditto; and 4 who had worried
Grammar, Political Economy, Botany and Logarithms all at once after ditto; that
I suspected the boasted class to be one man, who had been hired to it.
(Dickens, p. 123)
The notions that workers were entitled to an education
calculated to "instruct the judgement" or
recognize "the aspirations of (others) . . . like themselves" clearly
conflicted with many contemporary interpretations. The latter emphasized the
charitable sponsorship of an essentially limited commodity for an
underprivileged group--something that the radicals, anticipating Paulo Freire, regarded as a form of domestication. Thus, the
English socialist Thomas Hodgskin was to write in
1825 that workers enrolled in the mechanics' institutes:
may care nothing about the
curious researches of the geologist, or the elaborate classifications of the
botanist, but they will assuredly ascertain why they, of all classes of
society, have been involved in poverty and distress. (p. 101)
For Jacksonian workers it
has been suggested that such radicalism "was not congenial to opportunistic
Americans" and that their goals were "not to achieve utopia or
doctrinaire political goals but improvement in the economic position of skilled
journeymen" (Pessen, 1967, pp. 33,51). The American Journal of Education noted in 1826
that already the British mechanics' institutes were leading "the wealthy
and the highly educated to feel uneasy for their rank" (1826, January,
Vol. 1, p. 6). However, despite the high hopes that had followed Independence,
such unease was not lacking in the American scene. In both countries, the term
"workers" was becoming unwieldy, being claimed by both
masters/small employers and journeymen/ employees, in addition to their
apprentices and the unskilled. Such mechanics' institutes as proclaimed their
management and policy being determined by "mechanics," were usually a
reflection of the interests of the small or large employers, coupled often with
the support of middle-class professionals. Thus, the much eulogized David Bell,
"mechanic president of the Buffalo Mechanics' Institute" in the 1840s
was a major employer and a builder of locomotives and steamboats ("Our
First Big Fair," 1899, n.p.). A comparable
situation existed in Canada, with institute presidents such as the publisher,
John Neilson, in Quebec City or John Redpath, a
banker and industrialist, in Montreal. Despite prevailing ambitions to succeed
in like manner to such self-made entrepreneurs, labor displayed early
misgivings at having them interpret its educational needs. Thus, cordial
relations between organized labor and a mechanics' institute might exist, as in
New York, but a preference was also expressed by the former to have such
ventures under its own control (Curoe, 1926).
Conversely, as in York (Toronto) in 1830, at first the skilled worker largely
ignored the new institute, preferring instead another pioneer foundation, a
trade union. Workers in fact were coming to resent "Workers'
education," the "education of mechanics," or other labels
implying that the repositories of, interpreters of, and providers of, education
were the middle classes. Thus, Timothy Claxton, the self-educated founder of
Boston Mechanics' Institute in 1826, was an early critic of the dependence by
working-class students on middle-class lecturers. For him, the principle of 'mutual-improvement'
or of 'friends educating each other' was both possible and necessary to insure
the viability and integrity of such ventures. He spoke of 'mutual improvement'
as enabling students to "acquire a habit of doing their own studying and
speaking, and consequently of calling into exercise the faculties of their own
minds" (Claxton, 1839, p. 137).
As the first major attempt to redefine workers'
education since the hallowed system of apprenticeship, the mechanics'
institutes were to serve the unintended purpose of discovering the nature and
scope of some workers' own interests, as well as the feasibility of meeting
such interests. Despite varying degrees of public and private funding, these
institutes were to depend increasingly on members' fees. This fact was to give
members slightly more scope for the exercise of that autonomy and judgment now
increasingly denied them amid the exploitation and alienation of the industrial
work place. Typically, it involved conflict, with middle-class administrations
condemning many workers for not participating in existing institute
programs--in effect for not sharing in the dominant ideology of a community of
interests which implied social and economic mobility for those who persevered in
their assigned studies. Although American society seemed to offer workers more
tangible material rewards than did British society, the workers' response to
institute programs was remarkably similar on both sides of the Atlantic. The
spectrum ranged from initial enthusiasm for "useful knowledge" to a
more selective participation, and then to demands for liberal and recreational
features. Whatever the response to the latter, there was a fairly unanimous
rebuff to attempts to go even further and include controversial political and
economic issues. The workers' response to institute programs may thus be
interpreted as part of that broader response to seek "as much autonomy and
control as possible over their work lives and their leisure-time worlds"
(Stephenson & Asher, 1986, p. 1). Having tolerated the traditional
constraints of apprenticeship only to witness the des killing that was
accompanying the division of labor, adult workers were
to seek an education that addressed questions beyond technical competence. Even
by the 1830s their situation differed widely among trades and among geographic
locations, with craft consciousness ebbing before the advent of class consciousness.
Accordingly, their own interpretation of educational needs was at best
fragmented and often purely reactive. Some wholeheartedly accepted the
middle-class interpretation and managed to prosper socially and economically.
Well-publicized role models indeed abounded from the late 18th century, and in
the 19th century "some entrepreneurially-minded mechanics began emerging
from the cocoon of artisan culture and entering the web of capitalist
relations" (Leary, 1986, p. 39). However, success tended to render such
self-made people intolerant of workers' critical interpretations of society.
Thus, in 1836 the successful York (Toronto) printer, William Lyon Mackenzie,
could reconcile his own radicalism and support of workers' education with
condemnation of journeymen whom he charged, "foment divisions and
animosities in society" (Forsey, 1960, p. 20). Journeymen,
however, saw the "divisions and animosities" as already present in
society, and if the education provided did not address such issues, then
alternative means had to be sought.
Those
means were to be sought in an increasing variety of formal and informal
learning situations, as the workers sought to formulate alternatives to the
dominant social values of the early 19th century. To independent study for the
dedicated individual student was added group interaction in places of work, domicile,
worship, fellowship, and recreation (Laurie, 1979). Insofar as their prized
skills remained marketable, the skilled workers remained in the forefront of
this enterprise, and their rich associational life was long to mediate the full
impact of prescriptive middle-class interpretations of education. Just as
traditional apprenticeship was being replaced by a more impersonal
market-oriented training, so were mechanics' institutes being jostled by trade
unions, political reform associations, and an array of cults and utopias.
Workers sought to protest emerging industrialism and its underlying
interpretation of workers' education by sampling the 19th century's increasing
diversity of causes and campaigns, of fads and fancies. Their search for a
viable alternative was not to be realized in this period--one may question if
it has been realized today.
REFERENCES
Arnold, T. (1845). The miscellaneous works of Thomas Arnold. London: Fellowes.
Ballinger, S. E. (1965). The natural man: Rousseau.
In P. Nash, A. M. Kazamias, & H. J. Perkinson (Eds.), The
educated man: Studies in the history of educational thought (pp. 224-246).
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