Abstract
This chapter critically reflects on education, work and social change in Doncaster, a deeply unfashionable post-industrial city located in Britain’s former central coalfield where I was born, grew up, and continue to reside. Whilst my journey has not been smooth or straightforward, I recognise that I have, overall, benefitted greatly from education, but it is also important to point out that education has often been the site of ridicule, failure and humiliation for working-class pupils and students. Deindustrialisation has moreover further complicated the relationship between education and employment and has in some ways attenuated many opportunities that previously existed for young people in places such as Doncaster, particularly for young men, especially if they are not able or prepared to leave their immediate surroundings. Whilst such processes are evident in many post-industrial locales they are felt especially keenly in the former coalfields where educational success is increasingly associated with the loss of talent set against a labour market disproportionately characterised by ‘poor work’. The starting point for this chapter is, however, a research paper I came across some time ago titled From Coal to UKIP: The Struggle of Identity in Post-Industrial Doncaster in the journal History and Anthropology, by Cathrine Thorleifsson from the University of Oslo (Thorleifsson, 2016).