ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Lawrence’s Education of the People alongside Fantasia of the Unconscious to elicit his articulations of the complexities and dichotomies implicit in the education of what he called the “proletariat” and reconcile them with his demand for a “radical unlearnedness” (595). It will ask such questions as: is Lawrence elitist in the educational policies he advocates? Are his theories of education and culture practical? In seeking to define his ideal teacher, does Lawrence fall prey to his own bête noir of preconception and idealisation? Educators, he says, must be “the priests of life, deep in the wisdom of life” (606). It is Birkin/Lawrence and “life-priests” like him who can guide students to appreciate “the shimmer, not the shape of things” which leads to “radical unlearnedness”.
