Georges Sorel’s ideas about education are key to making sense of his critique of the Third Republic. Cutting across the heated debates over classical as opposed to modern curricula, Sorel drew on a complex account of the nature of scientific knowledge to offer a sustained defense of education within the factory and on the picket line as a source of individual autonomy. Sorel’s refusal of the practices and modes of institutionalization of liberal education in his own time is a standing challenge for those who would defend liberal education today.