Morrisian Spectres of Working and Learning in the Context of "The New Division of Labour"

Abstract

This essay considers conceptions of humanities and arts education as implicitly or explicitly articulated in the creative and expository prose of William Morris, in relation to Victorian conceptions of education, and as a means of gaining critical perspective upon recent instrumentalized and labour-oriented arguments about education in the 21 st century. In particular it examines Morris’s argument about learning and the development of “the field of culture” and his conception of “pleasure in labour” in relation to arguments of education-oriented predictive labour models such as that articulated recently by Frank Levy and Richard Murane in The New Division of Labour.