PATTERNS OF WORKERS’ EDUCATION

 

educational programs throughout the country. New labor colleges and schools,
conferences or institutes, and independent classes were started. In 1926, the
Affiliated Schools for Workers* developed from the original Bryn Mawr
experiment as a coordinating agency and aided expansion and consolidation
in the field. One year later, the agency could point to three residential sum-
mer schools as member institutions in addition to the Bryn Mawr Summer
School, namely the Summer School for Workers of the University of Wis-
consin, the Southern Summer School, and the Barnard School. A winter resi-
dential school, the Vineyard Shore School, was started in 1929 as an inde-
pendent venture for the purpose of offering more advanced study to industrial
workers who had attended one of the summer schools.

Cultural opportunities began to be offered to workers through the Art
- Workshop founded in 1929. In the same year, after the American Federation
of Labor labelled Brookwood Labor College as Communistic and the Workers’
Education Bureau had nullified the membership of the institution, education
began to develop under the control of the large A. F. of L. unions.
Highlander Folk School, entering the field in 1932, began to train labor
leaders, union organizers, and teachers, as Commonwealth and Brookwood
Labor Colleges already were doing. Other enterprises instituted classes for
the children of workers and a large number of trade unions, collegiate institu-
tions, and other organizations vitally interested in workers were sponsoring
workers’ education.

As may be seen, in the period 1926-1932 groups other than organized
labor initiated most of the new ventures; partly responsible was the emascula-
tion of the Workers’ Education Bureau after the 1929 controversy. Yet the
many experiments were a sign of growth and development, even if workers’
education had not become part of a unified labor movement‘

 

Gere referred to as the American Labor Education Service, the name

“Both the personnel and the organizations reporting to the Workers’ Education Con-
ference at Brookwood Labor College in 1931 reveal the growth of the movement in ten
years. The personnel of the conference represented the following organizations: Affiliated
Schools for Workers, American Association for Old Age Security, Barnard Summer School
for Workers, Brookwood Labor College, Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Work-
ers in Industry, Commonwealth College, Denver Labor College, Manumit School for
Children, Philadelphia Labor College, Pioneer Youth, Southern Summer School for
Workers, Vineyard Shore School and Young Women’s Christian Association. Repre-
sentatives from these organizations came from different cities and countries. Reports

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