From Popular Enlightenment to Lifelong Learning

This is the first full-length history of adult education in Scotland, from 1707 to 2005. It explores the distinctively Scottish/Calvinist concepts of popular education, self-help and self-improvement, which have had a prodigious influence worldwide, due in large to the Scottish diaspora.This authoritative book explores the development of the institutions of adult education in Scotland, including Mechanics? Institutes, Mutual Improvement Societies, University Extension, and the Labour College movement. At its core is an analysis of over sixty autobiographies by Scots-born working men and women. They reveal the limitations of schooling for many Scots in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and their reliance on self-education and mutual instruction. They also illustrate many aspects of popular culture, including questions of 'respectability', drink versus temperance and the role of adult education in radical politics.