Faculty of Education - Theses

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Start date: 1958 × Type: Masters Research thesis × Subject: 1866-1946 × Subject: Educational sociology × Subject: Educational%20sociology ×

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    Toward a competent society : a critical analysis of H.G. Well's conceptions of social change and the education programme he designed to effect that change
    Wilson, Barbara Vance ( 1989)
    This thesis developed out of initial research on Raymond Williams's conceptions of culture, society and education. Williams had argued that 'a long revolution' was evident in human affairs, from which a common culture must finally emerge. It was a matter of survival for it to do so. Williams saw culture as 'our common life' and argued that it was the proper field in which criticism and selection of what was of value to the common life should take place. It must eventually be organized on a global basis and deliberately constructed by means of participatory democracy. To achieve these ends, Williams demanded an education that would promote a competent society governed by human needs and not by inherited models. (See particularly, Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (London, 1961; Penguin edition, 1965), esp. p.174, and Raymond Williams, Towards 2000 (Penguin Books, 1986). It seemed that in the social and political writings of H.G.Wells, there were many antecedents to Williams's ideas. Wells was engaged in promoting a deliberate revolution in human affairs akin to Williams's idea of a 'long revolution'. It was meant to effect profound social change, culminating in the formation of a global society and thereby rescuing the human species from impending disaster, even extinction. It seemed worthwhile to explore some of these antecedent ideas in Wells's writings and to examine the claims he made for them. This thesis accordingly examines the ideas of H.G.Wells on social change with particular reference to his models for world order and the means by which this change was to be achieved - revolution and education. It is argued that Wells posited a competent society as the ultimate goal of human endeavour and effective social change, a society distinguished by full control over its destiny and the ability to extend a life of complete satisfaction to all of its members, yet there are a number of contradictions that would operate to frustrate that realisation.