An Education for the Whole People

Abstract

This chapter emphasizes Henry Cole and Prince Albert's intention to create a top-down system of industrial education, as seen in countries like France. It discusses how Cole sought to align the Great Exhibition with the movement for working-class self-sufficiency. It also talks about how Cole tried to use the Royal Society of Arts to set up new drawing schools for artisans in towns where there was not already a government school of design. The chapter draws attention to a civil servant named Harry Chester who wrote to the Society with a suggestion, imploring it to aid the mechanics' institutions in late 1851. It describes Chester's obsession to improve education, even inventing a slow-burning stove to make sure classrooms would be warm on cold mornings.