"The Children and the Instruments of a Militant Labor Progressivism:" Brookwood Labor College and the American Labor College Movement of the 1920s and 1930s

Abstract

When labor strikes, it says to its master: I shall no longer work at your command. When it votes for a party of its own, it says: I shall no longer vote at your command. When it creates its own classes and colleges, it says: I shall no longer think at your command. Labor's challenge to education is the most fundamental of the three. Henry de Man (1921) A growing body of literature is calling for the historical study of educational experiences outside of the realm of the established school system. Lawrence Cremin has recommended that educational historians move beyond the traditional analysis of schools and colleges. In Traditions of American Education, he broadly defines education “as the deliberate, systematic, and sustained effort to transmit, evoke, or acquire knowledge, values, skills, or sensibilities, as well as any outcomes of that effort.“ Herbert Gutman similarly urges that educational historians transcend the exclusive study of institutional history by exploring such untouched areas as the “selfactivity” of workers and its relationship to class development and class formation. Rolland Paulston delineates a theoretical framework to ascertain the social and economic conditions, ideological bases, programmatic characteristics, and contributions of “nonformal education” in social movements. He posits that nonformal education functions as structured, systematic, nonschool education that relies upon training activities of relatively short duration and involves a fairly distinct target population. “It is, in sum, education that does not advance to a higher level of the hierarchical formal school system.”