Workers' Education: A Confrontation at Ruskin College

Abstract

In 1908, the content and values of higher education and their bearing on the needs of working-class students were debated at Ruskin College, Oxford University. In this debate, working-class students had a chance to express their ideas. Lord Curzon, representing the Oxford faculty, argued that higher education embodied a great national heritage and enabled students to acquire upper-class manners and values. Albert Mansbridge, supported by liberal dons in the Workers' Educational Association, argued for a university education aimed primarily at the development of intellectual capacity. He repudiated the idea that higher education should be suited to the interests of working-class students or that traditional Oxford education would estrange the working-class student from his class. Radical working-class students charged the Workers' Educational Association with failure to recognize the relationship between education and social class. They asserted that traditional Oxford education reflected only the experience of the higher social classes, that the values of the upper classes were portrayed as correct, and that working-class values were ignored. Such an education would indeed estrange the working-class student from his class.