Mastering our Educators

It is convenient at this juncture to pause in the analysis of processes in Birmingham and Sheffield in order to locate these two particular sequences of social development within the national context. This will be done by focusing upon education. In chapters 5 and 6 formal education in Birmingham and Sheffield was treated as a very convenient index of contrasting patterns of persistence and transformation in the class structures and other aspects of social differentiation in these cities. However, more emphasis will now be placed upon the specific part played by formal education within such configurations at both the national and local levels. ¹ The distinctive contribution of education was the bestowal of legitimacy. In the course of the nineteenth century this institutional sphere gradually superseded organised religion as the major public arena within which the moral grounds of authority and status were instilled in the young. It provided a means by which the leadership of the old agrarian order could recoup some of the losses sustained as industrial development and the growth of the state increased the power of urban businessmen, officials and experts.