The Evolution of Adult Education: 20th Century Perspectives on Workers' Education

1. Attingham, Eton, Ruskin: The short-term residential college, workers’ education & the boarding school in the 20th century John Holford Robert Peers Professor of Adult Educationjohn.holford@nottingham.ac.uk@john_holford

2. “Every picture tells a story” [News Chronicle front page, 10 July 1937]

3. Background The working class & adult education

4. Oxford & Working-class education At University/WEA conference 1907: • John Mactavish: ‘I am not here as a suppliant for my class. I decline to sit at the rich man’s table praying for crumbs. I claim it as a right – wrongfully withheld – wrong not only to us but to Oxford. • ‘What is the true function of a University? Is it to obtain the nation’s best men, or to sell its gifts to the rich? Instead of recruiting her students from the widest possible area, she has restricted her area of selection to the fortunate few. ... • ‘We want workpeople to come to Oxford [and] ... to come back as missionaries. ... We want her [Oxford] to inspire them not with the idea of getting on, but with the idea of social service’ (In Mansbridge 1913)

5. The aims of education for adults 1919 • “adult education must not be regarded as a luxury for a few exceptional persons here and there, nor as a thing which concerns only a short span of early manhood, but ... [as] a permanent national necessity, an inseparable aspect of citizenship, and therefore should be both universal and lifelong.” • “Technical education, though it must be an integral part of our educational system, is not an alternative to non-vocational education. The latter is a universal need; but whether the former is necessary depends on the character of the employment.” (Ministry of Reconstruction 1919)

6. The aims of education for adults 1953 • “... no branch of our vast educational system ... should more attract … the aid and encouragement of the State than [liberal] adult education. … • “This ranks ... far above science and technical instruction .... [and] demands the highest measures which our hard-pressed finances can sustain. • “The appetite of adults to be shown the foundations and processes of thought will never be denied by a British Administration ...” (Winston Churchill 1953)

7. “Even more relevant today” (1919/1973) • “We do not wish to underrate the value of increased technical efficiency or the desirability of increasing productivity; but we believe that a short-sighted insistence upon these things will defeat its object. • “We wish to emphasise the necessity for a great development of non-technical studies, partly because we think that it would assist the growth of a truer conception of technical education, but more especially because it seems to us vital to provide the fullest opportunities for personal development and for the realisation of a higher standard of citizenship. • “Too great an emphasis has been laid on material considerations and too little regard paid to other aspects of life.” (Ministry of Reconstruction 1919, p. 153; quoted Dept of Education & Science 1973, p. 4)

8. Long-term residential colleges for adults

9. Labour politics and long-term residential colleges: Ruskin College, the student strike, & the Central Labour College

10. The Plebs – monthly of the (largely Marxist) Labour College movement, July 1914

11. Short-term residential colleges for adults Educational Settlements Association 1943

12. The Times, 29 December 1952 (acknowledgements to John Field)

13. (Acknowledgements to John Field.)

14. What shaped short-term residential colleges? • Richard Livingstone: residential idea’s key exponent: • Boarding schools for the people • Some intellectual strands: • Residence in adult/workers’ education: • “labourist” & “marxist” long-term residential colleges • summer schools, weekend schools • Spiritual and Christian element in adult education • Residence in the Victorian “idea of the university” • Citizenship idea in 19th & 20th century “public” school • 20th century working-class education and “public” schools had surprising commonalities: • Society should be more equal, participative, “community” • Not an accident that both valued residential experience • Settlement movement

15. Richard Livingstone (1880-1960) • Educated Winchester, New Coll., Oxford • Fellow, Corpus Christi Coll., Oxford 1904-24 • One of group of Oxford uni. reformers (with W. Temple, R.H. Tawney, A.E. Zimmern), who aimed to raise standards, improve teaching, broaden access. • Classicist, Hellenist:  The Greek Genius and its Meaning to Us (1912), A Defence of Classical Education (1916), The Legacy of Greece (1921), Pageant of Greece (1923), Mission of Greece (1928), Portrait of Socrates (1938)  • Assistant master, Eton 1917-18 • Vice Chancellor, Queen’s Uni, Belfast 1924-33 • Knighted 1931 • President, Corpus Christi Coll., Oxf., 1933-50 • Vice Chancellor, Oxford Uni., 1944-47

16. Livingstone & adult education • Strong influence during & after second world war • especially in WEA and university adult education • Future in Education (1941), Education for a World Adrift (1943) • ‘Character’ and its ‘training’ in a ‘world adrift’ • vital role of ‘habitual vision of greatness’ • Community, unity, collective endeavour • Citizens are ‘made, not born’ • learning citizenship is mostly informal: ‘we become good citizens by doing what good citizens do’ • institutions whose ‘members learn the habit of citizenship by being citizens’ are vital, e.g., boy scouts, boarding schools, trade unions • part-time continuing education might be alternative to general raising of school leaving age • residential colleges for adults ...

17. Livingstone on Danish People’s High Schools “In Denmark adult education penetrates the whole nation ... [It] has three secrets of success: it is given to adults; it is residential; it is essentially a spiritual force.” “Let our youth live in a beautiful land, among beautiful sights and sounds, and absorb good from every side; and beauty streaming from the fair works of art ... [will] insensibly draw the soul into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of Reason” (quoting Plato) “The period of boyhood is not the right school-time. Whoever is to profit by learning must first have lived a while and paid heed to life in himself and others ...” (quoting C. Kold) “Grundtvig made the discovery that secondary education for all is an easy method of wasting money and time” “The PHS is attractive because it is residential and because the residences are pleasant places. It is the Oxford and Cambridge of the poor man ... a rare oasis in a life of hard work and comparative isolation.” “Danish adult education is essentially social. ... Living together the pupils learn from each others’ views, from contiguity and personal talk.” “Most human beings have a capacity for education, rather than a desire for it.” (Quotes from Livingstone 1941)

18. Livingstone: the post-war opportunity • Danish People’s High Schools: “the only great successful experiment in educating the masses of a nation” (p. 44) • “... While our future educational development … automatically brings adult education into the foreground, economic conditions give an exceptional chance for its development on residential lines. ... • “Why should not each Local Education Authority start its own House of Education? • “It need not follow the exact lines of the People’s High School .... It might be used for week-ends, or for weeks, of study, for educational or other conferences. Out of small beginnings great developments might grow.” (Livingstone 1941, p. 65)

19. “There will be no need to build colleges. All over the country, great houses will be vacant, calling for occupation, purchasable for a song.” (Livingstone 1941, p. 65)

20. Workers’ Education: the Residential Experience

21. WEA Summer School, Balliol College, Oxford 1909

22. John Percival & Reuben George

23. Residence in Newman’s Idea of a University • “When a multitude of young men, keen, open-hearted, sympathetic, and observant, as young men are, come together and freely mix with each other, they are sure to learn one from another, even if there be no one to teach them; • “the conversation of all is a series of lectures to each, and they gain for themselves new ideas and views, fresh matter of thought, and distinct principles for judging and acting, day by day. ...” (p. 146)

24. University as a learning community • Such a “youthful community will constitute a whole, ... embody a specific idea, ... represent a doctrine, ... administer a code of conduct, ... furnish principles of thought and action ... give birth to a living teaching, which in course of time will take the shape of a self-perpetuating tradition, or a genius loci, ... which imbues and forms, more or less, ... every individual who is ... brought under its shadow.” (Newman, p. 147)

25. “if I had to choose ... • as “more successful in training, moulding, enlarging the mind, which sent out men the more fitted for their secular duties ...” • “between a so-called University, which dispensed with residence and tutorial superintendence, and gave its degrees to any person who passed an examination ..., and a University which had no professors or examinations at all, but merely brought a number of young men together for three or four years, and then sent them away as the University of Oxford is said to have done some sixty years since, ... • “I have no hesitation in giving the preference to that University which did nothing, over that which exacted of its members an acquaintance with every science under the sun” (Newman p. 145)

28. Jowett & the idea of service • Benjamin Jowett (1817-93) • Master of Balliol (1870-93), Regius Prof. of Greek, Oxford (1855-70), Vice Chancellor (1882-86) • Committed tutor, moral teacher • small undergraduate study parties in vacations • pupils took leading positions in government, universities, empire; built Balliol’s predominance • Liberal theologian, advocate of liberal university reforms, member of Royal Commission on Indian Civil Service, etc. • Hegelian/Platonic view of the state • “Plato had entrusted his ideal state to a class of guardians specially trained and chosen ... the repositories of the wisdom and courage of the state” cf Philip Woodruff, The Men Who Ruled India: The Guardians (1954)

29. Settlements: Service and citizenship

30. “Public schools” & citizenship “Education in the Platonic State ... “(c) The Schools. Plato has almost anticipated the English public school. “... outside the city ... schools for horse exercise and large grounds arranged with a view to archery ... at which young men may learn and practise. ... let there be quarters for teachers, ... [who will teach] the art of war and the art of music ... and the pupils shall be regarded as belonging to the state rather than to their parents.” (R. Livingstone (ed.) Plato, Selected Passages, 1940, pp. 159-61)

31. “Positive advantages of boarding schools”: • “We place first a training in community which enables the boys and girls to work in and for a society composed of very different types, to sacrifice their personal wishes for the general good, to find their place in the community, and to be ready, if called upon, to take responsibility ...” • Co-operative Union Education Dept evidence said: “our ideal is that all Secondary Schools should be Boarding or Residential schools ... In a democratically conducted Boarding School adolescents begin as citizens in readiness for the larger social field of service where they will have to mix with fellow citizens in field, farm, factory, workshop and office. Boarding School ... can give ... experience in democratic self-government, almost a miniature republic ... [and] will develop self-reliance and ... democratic leadership.” Board of Education, The Public Schools and the General Educational System (Report of Committee on Public Schools), 1944, p. 47; emphasis added.

32. Open University “... courses will involve ... short residential courses ...” A University of the Air, (Cmd 2922, 1966) OU students surveyed in 1972 “ranked residential schools as the most helpful component” Dick Crossman, previously “sceptical about the OU” said after observing summer schools: “I’d never seen people working with such intensity and also enjoying themselves” “Never did so few hours sleep suffice over such intense activity. Never had a profusion of profound thoughts been mulled over and revelled in. Never did I realise what the old brain was capable of.” (1975) “During the week we were kept very busy from 9 am often to 8 or 9 pm ... I couldn’t believe how quickly the week had gone by ... Most satisfying ... I had been able to talk about the course with like-minded people” (2000) “Evidence accumulated that the residential element had little bearing on the measured achievement of students.” (Quotes from Weinbren 2015, pp. 252-262; emphasis added)

33. To conclude: some challenges • Residence valued across 20th century adult ed. • Creating, then drawing on, post-1945 ‘social democracy’ • Livingstone (et al.) saw citizenship as learned through communal experience (fellowship) • Learning involves understanding, and valuing, one’s fellow-men (… women?) • Static view of society (workers work in factories but engage with ‘visions of greatness’)? • (Oxbridge) elite as Platonic “guardians”, committed to “service” • What visions of education (and society) snuffed out residential education for the people? • Finally: The Plebs lost … but … were they right?

34. Raymond Williams on adult education in the welfare state • The WEA “has always stood for the principle that ordinary people should be highly educated, as an end justifying itself and not simply as a means to power.” • Many thought that as the welfare state expanded, the need for adult education would decline: “the exceptional mind in the poor family” would be “spotted young, and ... given a real chance”. This was “never at the heart of the WEA’s purpose.” • “Of course the exceptional minds must get their chance, but what about everyone else? Are they simply to be treated as rejects? The W.E.A. stands for an educated democracy, not for a newly mobile and more varied elite.” (Open Letter to W.E.A. Tutors, c.1961)

35. The Plebs – monthly of the (largely Marxist) Labour College movement, July 1914