| Biography | Albert Mansbridge (10 January 1876, Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England 22 August 1952, Torquay, Devon) was a British educator who organized the adult education movement in Britain. He is best known for founding the Workers' Educational Association in England in 1903. Mansbridge served as its first secretary from 1903 to 1915.
Mansbridge was born the son of a carpenter, and due to his family's tight finances had to leave school at 14. As a result he was largely self-educated. However he still managed to attend university extension courses at King's College London. He eventually taught evening classes himself in economics, industrial history, and typing, all while taking up clerical work. He had growing concerns over the fact that the extension courses, started in 1873, were aimed at the upper and middle classes. To help the situation he founded the WEA in 1903, originally called An Association to Promote the Higher Education of Working Men. The foundation was quick to be recognized by universities, and Mansbridge left clerical work in 1905 to become its full-time general secretary. He founded international branches of the WEA in Australia in 1913, and later Canada and New Zealand. Mansbridge suffered from spinal meningitis, but after recovering he would go on to form several other adult-education groups. These included the World Association for Adult Education in 1918, the Seafarers' Educational Service in 1919 (The Marine Society College of the Sea), and the British Institute of Adult Education in 1921. In 1922 he delivered the Lowell Lectures in Boston, and for the Pacific School of Religion with the University of California the Earle Lectures in 1926. He also founded the National Central Library (UK), a tutorial system and a scholarly library for working people who were not connected to an academic institution.
He was a member of numerous government committees of education, including the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education from 1906 to 1912, and from 1924 to 1939. From 1915 to 1918 Mansbridge was on the Prime Minister's Committee on the Teaching of Modern Languages. He was a member of the Royal Commission on the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge from 1919 to 1922. He was also on the Statutory Commission on Oxford in 1923. He was a member of numerous church committees, including the Selborne Committee on Church and State from 1914 to 1916.[2] A blue plaque commemorates Mansbridge at 198 Windsor Road in Ilford. |