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The Peoples University
A great driving force in popular education in Great Britain
is the Workers Educational Association. Thirty-six years ago the
Co-operative movement, the Trade Unions, and the Universities
formed an alliance to reach the masses of the people and make
available for them the best form of :odern education.
Before that there had been mechanics institutes, miners study
circles, and a host of other small societies all attempting to give
to their members a better movledge and understanding of themselves
and the world in which they lived. These efforts crystallised in
the new movement, and from four branches in 1904 the Workers
Educational association has grown to 620 branches to-day, with
3,117 classes dotted from one end of the country to the other.
The students select their own courses of study, which take
from six weeks to three years. Fifty-seven per cent study the
social sciences; twenty-six per cent take literature and the arts;
eight per cent science or biology; and four per cent philosophy
and ethics. fter literature and drama the est popular single
subject is the study of world affairs. Classified by occupations,
the largest group of students consists of manual workers. There
are 11,725 of them Next come the 10,059 housewives, domestic
workers, and nurses. In some places a considerable percentage of
students are unemployed. ..11 the students are enthusiasts. Many
men tram distance of from five to eight miles so as not to miss
this chance of adult education.
The tutors
There is no desire to turn workers into bookworms.
strive to destroy dogma and automatic acceptance of "what everybody
says"; they teach the workers how to think, not what to think. The
aim of the Peoples University, as the movement has been called, is
to develop a genuine democratic cducational system, with freedom
and oportecity of vental and spiritual development for all.