The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes

But once I graduated and secured a job, I found myself returning to the interests I had abandoned along the way.

Literature, art, history, philosophy.

I wanted to understand the ideas and events that had shaped the world around me.

And I wanted to, like the thinkers I admired, use historical anecdotes to analyse a contemporary event, or put different novels and artworks in conversation with each other.

What formal education institutions offer is a community where students learn from both professors and their peers.

But universities aren't the only places where these relationships are built.

The historian Jonathan Rose's history of autodidactism from the 18th to 20th centuries, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, 2001, shows how those with little to no formal education can cultivate rich intellectual lives.

Rose draws from memoirs written by miners, weavers, labourers and housemaids, which vividly depict the kind of social structures that can help people learn – I was surprised and gratified to find that self-study didn't require isolation.

By Celine Gwynn.

The history of autodidacticism shows that learning has always been social.

The right relationships open intellectual horizons.

The year after I graduated from university — from a degree that I struggled through dutifully and mostly dispassionately — I began to feel that I had missed out on an actual education.

Like many other students, I’d entered university keenly aware of high tuition fees and the threat of student loans, and as a result, I often chose classes based on the employment opportunities they offered.

But once I graduated and secured a job, I found myself returning to the interests I had abandoned along the way: literature, art, history, philosophy.

I wanted to understand the ideas and events that had shaped the world around me, and I wanted to — like the thinkers I admired — use historical anecdotes to analyze a contemporary event or put different novels and artworks in conversation with each other.

Could I teach myself to do the same? The internet is full of resources for self-directed learning.