The Oxford Idealists and the Education of Working-Class Adults

1999 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 10610259
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Educaion
• Research Institution: Hiroshima University
• Principal Investigator: YASUHARA Yoshihito Hiroshima University, Faculty of Education, Professor, 教育学部, 教授 (00093823)
• Project Period (FY): 1998 – 1999
• Keywords: Oxford Idealists / B.Jowett / T.H.Green / Adult Education Movement / University Extension / Tutorial Class / University Reform / A.D.Lindsay

Research Abstract

The University and social reform movements in late nineteenth and early twentieth century England Such as the university extension, the university settlement and the tutorial class originated in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Some of the dons there advocated the ideas, and the movements developed with the support of the wider circles. In the case of Oxford, many of those dons who were most actively committed to the movements were Balliol men who were under the great influence of the Idealist Philosophy of T.H.Green.
Balliol College, which was transformed into a nursery of national elites under its Master Benjamin Jowett in the mid nineteenth century also produced a host of dons and students who not only showed keen interest in social problems but also cared for the underpriviledged, and devoted themselves to the social causes in various ways. It must be, as Dr.Lawrence Goldman put it, "the paradox of Oxford" that this elitists of people and institutions stood for the underpri viledged and pioneered the way towards social reform.
Those dons who were in one way or another connected with and formed a lineage of the Idealist tradition, also deeply involved in the reform of English universities. Not confined to the internal reform of Oxford, their activities spread outside Oxford and bore fruit in various places and forms.
The thought and practice of Idealists in educational reform in general have been well documentated, for example by P.Gordon and J.White, Philosophers as Educational Reformers, London, 1979. Dr.Lawrence Goldman's more recent work Dons and Workers : Oxford and Adult Education since 1860, Oxford ; 1995 revealed in great detail the fascinating relationship between Oxford and adult and working-class education over the last century.
Baaed on and learning from the above mentioned works, what I have tried to reveal was to trace the thought and practice of the Oxford idealists and their followers in the reform of English universities in A more concrete and detailed way from T.H.Green to A.D.Lindsay.