In this article, the author explores some particularly "luminous" paradoxes that have emerged from qualitative material gathered as part of an ethnographic study carried out over the last five years. The research, now a doctoral study, grew initially out of the author's own contradictory experiences of running learning provision in the English Further Education (FE) sector between 1988 and 2002. As a teacher and programme leader in a general FE college in the Derbyshire coalfield, the Nineties had been a decade of involvement in developing adult "access" provision. This provision successfully provided a route for a cohort of learners who had a background in, or related to, the coal industry--often as trade union lay officials or as women's support group members--to progress on to higher education. Whilst often formally educated to only a basic level, and in many cases with a background of disengagement at school, many were nevertheless able to draw on a rich background of critical social engagement gained as activists and made rapid and relatively smooth transitions. In conclusion, the author asserts that young people trying to forge meaningful identities in contemporary Coalbrook, Beldover, Longthorne and Cragwell currently remain imprisoned by the theft of their history, unable either to find solace in the past or excitement in outstripping it. The author argues that therein lays a significant and distinct aspect of their disaffection. (Contains 14 notes.)