EAPEducation

  The recent report in The Guardian about the BBC dumbing down some of its content got me thinking about my own research. For readers new to the party, my research focuses on adult education in the 1920s and 1930s, primarily working-class adult education. The Guardian report suggests the BBC is set to "redirect its television budget to make “lighter” dramas and comedies in the belief they will appeal to Britons from poorer backgrounds." The report goes on to explain that these Britons are people who fall into the C2 social grade or skilled working class to you and me, the D social grade or working class, and the E grade or non-working. This got me thinking. How did we get from thousands of working-class men and women spending their limited leisure time listening to lectures in cold, draughty halls to the situation we are now in, where the BBC feels the need to dumb down content to appeal to working-class people? I have recently returned from a research trip to Birkenhead, wh...