The Honourable Pursuit of Knowledge? Mapping Morality in the Education of Working-Class Men and Revisiting <i>The Working Men’s College</i> in the 19 ^th Century

Education - and the promise that it holds - has always been a source of tension for working-class populations, given its acquisition often involves changing the self. In surveying contemporary and historic scholarships, this paper explores the ways in which education has been portrayed as a civilising force for the working-classes - specifically working-class males - where it has strong inflections of being both a moral good and a vehicle for social mobility. First, we provide a brief overview of research on working-class males and their disengagement from education before foregrounding what remains a largely underexplored aspect - those who are compliant, studious and engaged in their education. Second, we focus on The Working Men's College in London, founded by Christian Socialist F. D. Maurice in 1854 to foster responsible citizenship for Victorian working men through a liberal education focused on the development of both honour and Christian morality. For the working-class men who attended, they mainly accessed forms of knowledge associated with the upper classes, which had little bearing on their lived realities. The aim of the article is two-fold: first, to capture key aspects of the field of working-class masculinities and how their identities are produced in relation to formal educational contexts. Second, to bring this knowledge into dialogue with what we know about The Working Men's College as a rich case study. Working across these aims, we highlight how notions of honour and morality, albeit socially constructed, remain central tenets of working-class men's encounters with education both historically and in the contemporary moment.