ISAAC IRONSIDE 1808-1870: THE MOTIVATION OF A RADICAL EDUCATIONIST.

The article focuses on the educational work of educator Isaac Ironside in England. Although Isaac Ironside's public career began in the early 1830s, his early experience is of significance as illustrating an essential continuity in both Radical and popular educational traditions dating from the eighteenth century. In the educational history of England the first half of the nineteenth century is of peculiar significance as a period when the problems of a rapidly-developing industrial society produced a broad movement for national regeneration in which lay so many of the roots of the modern educational system. Whatever might have been the intrinsic limitations of the Sheffield Lancasterian School, however, it undoubtedly had a profound influence on Isaac Ironside's character and outlook. It fostered a love of learning and a lifelong respect for education. The Lancasterian School also developed in Ironside that strong moral sense that pervaded his social crusading. In summation it might again be said that the career of Isaac Ironside affords some peculiar insight into the complex pattern of motivation that underlay educational effort in the nineteenth century.