Discipline and power: the university, history, and the making of an English elite, 1870-1930

Discipline and Power is an intellectual, cultural, and social analysis of the ways in which universities successfully transformed a set of values, encoded in the concept of "liberal education," into a licensing system for a national elite. From the mid-1870's until the rise of totalit...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Soffer, Reba N. 1934- (Author)
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: Stanford, Calif. Stanford Univ. Press 1994
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Online Access:Publisher description
Table of contents
Summary:Discipline and Power is an intellectual, cultural, and social analysis of the ways in which universities successfully transformed a set of values, encoded in the concept of "liberal education," into a licensing system for a national elite. From the mid-1870's until the rise of totalitarianism and the Great Depression challenged prevailing habits of mind and conduct, the universities, especially Oxford and Cambridge, achieved unrivaled influence upon thought and conduct in every sphere. In their independence from external interference, the universities and colleges evolved by regulating the contents and purposes of new subjects
History, more than any other discipline, reflected and reinforced a broad Victorian consensus about God, country, and the good. Among the contending fields of study, history provided the most consistent moral panorama able to satisfy a variety of intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic needs. History was taught, studied, and tested by a set of assumptions deduced far more from a patriotic agreement about duty than from critical methods or from the weight of evidence
A wide reading of materials not previously consulted allows the author to demonstrate how the writing and teaching of history shaped the ethos of graduates who guided domestic and imperial government, secondary and higher education, the professions, religion, letters, and - contrary to conventional interpretations - even business and industry. These materials include administrative, faculty, and student notes; examination papers; examiners' reports; and correspondence about standards, grading, curriculum, and teaching methods
Physical Description:VIII, 308 S. graph. Darst.
ISBN:0804723834

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