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<p>The nature, type and purpose of workers’ education has been a significant point of debate in the <i>International Review of Education</i> (<i>IRE</i>) over the last seventy years, generating philosophical, psychological and sociological examinations from a series of influential European thinkers from the 1950s onwards. This article draws on key writings from the <i>IRE</i>’s rich back catalogue by Martinus Jan Langeveld, Joffre Dumazedier and Ettore Gelpi, alongside an analysis of the British context, and responses to this issue, by Raymond Williams, R. H. Tawney, E. P. Thompson and Jonathan Rose. Dumazedier, Gelpi and Langeveld all wrestle with concepts of class, culture and social status in their own contexts, seeking to define “workers” and the critical problem of their “rank” in society, as well as the central importance of an education which moves beyond paternalism towards respecting and understanding the working-class experience and recognising the importance of self-determination. This article examines how far workers’ education has been situated within broad-based popular education that stimulates, in Gelpi’s words, “curiosity, creativity, competence and compassion”; how far it has been genuinely agentic, emanating from the workers themselves; and if, and at what points, it has been subject to state suppression. As education, and the centrality of work, have been comprehensively reframed through the neoliberal lens, this article concludes by arguing for academics to take up the baton of historical reflection by returning to the lessons of labour history, challenging the contemporary paucity of imagination at the policy and practice levels.</p>

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Workers’ education and the transmission of culture: The state, civil society and self-determination

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  • 发表日期：

    2025年7月15日

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  • Sharon Clancy

摘要

The nature, type and purpose of workers’ education has been a significant point of debate in the International Review of Education (IRE) over the last seventy years, generating philosophical, psychological and sociological examinations from a series of influential European thinkers from the 1950s onwards. This article draws on key writings from the IRE’s rich back catalogue by Martinus Jan Langeveld, Joffre Dumazedier and Ettore Gelpi, alongside an analysis of the British context, and responses to this issue, by Raymond Williams, R. H. Tawney, E. P. Thompson and Jonathan Rose. Dumazedier, Gelpi and Langeveld all wrestle with concepts of class, culture and social status in their own contexts, seeking to define “workers” and the critical problem of their “rank” in society, as well as the central importance of an education which moves beyond paternalism towards respecting and understanding the working-class experience and recognising the importance of self-determination. This article examines how far workers’ education has been situated within broad-based popular education that stimulates, in Gelpi’s words, “curiosity, creativity, competence and compassion”; how far it has been genuinely agentic, emanating from the workers themselves; and if, and at what points, it has been subject to state suppression. As education, and the centrality of work, have been comprehensively reframed through the neoliberal lens, this article concludes by arguing for academics to take up the baton of historical reflection by returning to the lessons of labour history, challenging the contemporary paucity of imagination at the policy and practice levels.