Liberal Education and the Left in Britain
1 Edinburgh University, School of Social and Political Science, 15a George Square, EH8 9LD;
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 23 Oct 2023 / Revised: 15 Jul 2024 / Accepted: 8 Aug 2024 / Published: 30 Oct 2024
Abstract
Liberal education used to command wide political support in Britain. Social democrats and social liberals disagreed with conservatives on whether the best culture could be appreciated by everyone, and they disagreed, too, on whether the barriers to understanding it were mainly social and economic, but there was no dispute that education ought to aim to hand on the best that has been thought and said. That consensus has vanished since the 1960s. The dominant currents of thought on the left now reject any notion of a universal culture that might form the core of worthwhile learning. This paper considers why the British left supported liberal education, why they have moved away from it, and what the implications are for the future of education policy on the left.
Keywords: liberal education; tradition; canon; Arnold; Tawney; relativism; constructivism
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CITE
Paterson, L. Liberal Education and the Left in Britain. Controversial_Ideas 2024, 4, 10.
Paterson L. Liberal Education and the Left in Britain. Journal of Controversial Ideas. 2024; 4(2):10.
Paterson, Lindsay. 2024. "Liberal Education and the Left in Britain." Controversial_Ideas 4, no. 2: 10.
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