Chapter 1 from Making Youth: A History of Youth in Modern Britain

What is it about?

Young people at work Youth employment from the end of First World War Class and schooling Educating working-class youth Work defined the lives of most adolescents during the nineteenth-century and for much of the twentieth and this chapter examines the significance of the youth labour market, the role that young people played in the working-class family economy and how patterns of child and youth employment changed across the period. Education played a lesser part in their lives, despite state investment in elementary schooling from the end of the Victorian period. Secondary education did not become free and universal until after the Second World War and the chapter explores the persisting significance of class in defining how young people were educated, the type of schools they went to, and the assumptions made about their educational potential.

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