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English Education for Technology and Science: The Formative Years, 1880–1902

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Michael Argles
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Extract

The England of 1880–1902 saw the final flowering of Imperialism and the beginnings of its collapse in the South African War of 1899. It was a period of tremendous optimism, when society as a whole appeared prosperous and ebullient, but in which social injustice and rank poverty were widespread. The Education Act of 1870, the democratization of government made possible by the enlargement of the franchise, the coming of the popular press, and the reorganization of local government were the pointers to a new conception of the Great Society (as one of Graham Wallas's books was entitled). The searching analysis of social organization made in the 1840's by Marx and Engels, combined with the liberal ideals inherited from the French Revolution and the American War of Independence, took a more kindly and acceptable form in the intense yet essentially gentle collectivist doctrines of post-Utilitarianism, Fabian Socialism, and organized Labor—movements in which John Stuart Mill, Sidney Webb, H. G. Wells, Graham Wallas, and Keir Hardie were prominent. A. V. Dicey, in his great book on the origins of the British welfare state, underlines the fact that essential reforms were made possible by the climate of opinion, especially after 1870: education was able to ride high on the tide of these reforms.

Type
Research Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , September 1962 , pp. 182 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © 1962, University of Pittsburgh Press 

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References

Notes

1. Dicey, A. V., Lectures on the Relation Between Law and Public Opinion in England During the Nineteenth Century (London, 1905). These were originally delivered at Harvard Law School.Google Scholar

2. Ashworth, William, An Economic History of England, 1870–1939 (London, 1960), 80.Google Scholar

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6. Millis, C. T., Technical Education (London, 1925), 61.Google Scholar

7. For the early days of the City and Guilds see Sir Philip Magnus, Educational Aims and Efforts, 1880–1910 (London, 1910).Google Scholar

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9. For instance it produced a detailed survey, Technical Education in England and Wales (London, 1889).Google Scholar

10. The Cockerton judgment of 1901, which dealt with this anomaly, is treated at length in Eric Eaglesham, From School Board to Local Authority (London, 1956).Google Scholar

11. The London Polytechnics are not to be confused with their German namesakes, which were institutions of university status. The London colleges were adult education centers, with a hard core of technical classes, which had been started by the philanthropic impulse of Quintin Hogg, grandfather of the present British Minister for Science. However, their influence is not to be underrated: in 1904, 500 Polytechnic students were working for external degrees of London University.Google Scholar

12. The work of the London T.E.B. is particularly well described by Sidney Webb in London Education (London, 1904). By 1902 Webb had bullied and intrigued the London County Council into spending £180,000 a year of Whisky Money on education, instead of ploughing it back to reduce the rates. He was indefatigable in pursuit of his collectivist ideals.Google Scholar

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