Two Nations and the Educational Structure, 1780-1870

The first of three studies in the "History of Education in England", this volume traces the emergence of modern education from the efforts of the scientific societies in the 1780s up to the securing of universal education with the Act of 1870. The ideas for model schools by such reformers as James Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham are expounded in detail, together with the early attempts at working people's self-education, the struggle for leadership of the Mechanic's Institutes and Robert Owen's movement for communal education. Reform of the universities and grammar schools is shown as part of the changeover of political power from the landed aristocracy to the industrial middle class. The Chartists are seen striving for working-class education, and the power of the trade unions finally enters to carry through the 1870 Act. This was a century during which the division of England into "two nations" became most clearly marked, and the structure of education for the different classes was determined.