THE INDEPENDENT EXPERIMENTAL SCHOOL
- its contribution to National Education
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What am I talking about – what sort of school?
1 MY BACKGROUND
Brief description of own school and some others-
Contribution now may not be great, but what might its contribn be?
2 JUSTIFICATION of any school. Must meet
(a) childrens’s needs as progressing revealed. (b) needs created by existing soc and polit condition Demand for boarding Sch.
These in fact are one, sep. only for analysis.
3 CHILDREN’S NEEDS
Considered in most general way:
Man inadequate for task of dealing with world institutions lag behind man, and in man himself direction and control of feeling lag behind intell devel
Feeling or emotion: Basis of all valuations and standards. On negative side: not only the blind impulses to destruct but also the power-seeking impulse that leads to evil.
Schools must provide for education of emotions. True personal and social values, operating unconsciously as well as consciously.
Needs of a child: development as a unified person feeling rational not in sense of being controlled by intellect (illusion), but truly related to objective world. Not merely ministering to inner demons.
[Objective world includes Atomic Bombs etc]
Objective sensitiveness. Awareness
(not merely to a certain category)
Child needs to know world in its reality and to have the love, faith hope and courage to face it
Rejection of Idealism as a philosophy and a method.
Does not mean that we throw overboard ideas
- All that goes to make nobility of personality.
- Or the use of ideas, hypotheses, theories.
We should proceed as does a scientist by an integration of theory and practice. And this can apply to the use of emotional judgments as well as logical ones.
This justifies perhaps the use of the term
EXPERIMENTAL. Not that we push children about like instruments on laboratory bench but we should make it a process of discovery in which feeling and thinking are continually tested in practice.
(? Ref. coulton and public school masters?)
Not possible to start without some ideas (neither does the scientist). But the ideas must be those that have developed through experience of life.
What things are fundamental? Truth, Goodness, Beauty
No - abstract.
(a) Knowledge and enjoyment of other persons Friendships
(b) Knowledge and enjoyment of the World.
(c) Thought, feeling and valuation must be expressed and developed in Action.
Friendship: notice that I have not said the fullest development of the individual.
So much of progressive education has tended towards development of individualism – the crank, the opinionated eccentric. Development of personality not the same thing
Individual! – isolation.
Person – the man in his relationship with others. Development of personality – adjustment to the group.
Possibilities of Friendship in a School
Between child and child. Staff and child.
The impulse is there. The obstacles have to be removed.
Between Children a day to day job ( but affected by general outlook and atmosphere and relation of Staff and Child
Prevented by: - authority refer to Roger
Respect as a boy who has
Discipline left to go to
Pride another school
Discipline of necessity not of domination
The meaning of Equality.
Child’s Relation to World
Prov. By curriculum? Abstract academicism.
neglect of ART wh. arises out of immediate contact with the world. Expression of feeling not necessarily mediated by thought.
Encouraging sensitiveness and awareness. (specificity?)
World includes the Community – persons in a group.
Now I come to something specially bound up with the life of a boarding school. Exp. That is more possible in a school of the exper. pioneer type.
Description of a whole life in a community
Small enough to be comprehended by the child.
Compare with the experience of myself in Day School and refer Rendcoulb’s experience.
No community in modern industrial civilisations
Some degree of Democratic Control.
Towards a new aristocracy? In our sense yes: a leaven, but not withdrawn from their class. In the sense of leaders as a separate class, no!
Must not educate consciously for leadership
Leadership must arise out a conjunction of personality with a real political situation. To give a child the idea that he is to be a leader or a member of an elite before he is actually in the political situation that demands leaders is exceedingly dangerous.
Justification:
- Dealing with social problem? Only touching a minute fraction of a percent.
- Setting an example to other schools? Must beware of pride.
- Training leaders? – see above.
- Getting to grips with the problem of educn as a whole, yes. Perhaps providing evidence of what can be done given control over conditions.
Teachers do get a renewal of faith in these schools.
Value of Residential Education
Can I claim that this type of school is better fitted than the so-called public schools to meet the need for widely extended boarding school education. Public Schools: deeply entrenched prejudices and well-rooted traditions. We cannot view with any equanimity the introduction of a propn of school boys from elem schools.
They would have to be assimilated – in the strict sense and that would be a political and social tragedy.
What we need is y.p. who while knowing acknowledging and understanding the past and its valuable traditions, are emotionally free from their inhibitions; oriented towards the present and the future.
Results: Free and friendly relns with adults and the adults like its philosophy to give greater unity and meaning to its educational policy. While this remained a matter of doubt, it is certain that such an organisation as ours will benefit considerably if it is periodically challenged to rethink its principles and if its members however vague and varied their starting points backgrounds, accept the need for discipline in their thought. “Progressive” movements are notoriously undisciplined in their thinking, and often in consequence ludicrously ineffective. It should hardly be necessary to point out in this modern world that there can be a close and creative relationship between theory to practice, between philosophy and action. Samuel Whyte’s presentation to the conference of a new philosophy of science provided us with something about which we must think for some time before we come to any decisions about. But what became quickly evident was that………[at this point the manuscript comes to a sudden end and continues on the next page with a new heading after the word “End”
.
End
Freedom
in all the foregoing I have said little about freedom. This may seem strange: to speak of modern education and of a new and unusual school without me facing writing the word freedom very large across the picture. I was a little surprised myself to find that I when I worked out the content of this lecture to find that I had got nearly to the end without saying much about [word or word missing from end of photocopied line. If necessary compare to original document.] But that is as it should be, for this reason: that the word freedom has been so much used and abused in modern educational discussion that it is misleading to us [to] start from it. It is better to say what you intend to do or are doing and then to ask: is that freedom?
Now I maintain that the method and policies I have advocated do lead progressively to a realisation of personal freedom and to an understanding of what freedom should mean in our sociology and politics. Freedom begins with the recognition of limits, therefore in objective experiences. A child allowed to wander about a room just as he likes is not free unless he is protected from falling into the fire either by knowledge of the nature by a fireguard room that has no fireguard is not free unless he is protected by a knowledge of the nature of fire. You are not free in the world unless you know the world very thoroughly. The world of people is harder to know and understand than is the world of matter. That’s why we must give express attention to social experience in schools – not as a conscious intensive course of instructions – but largely in removing the obstacles to that experience.
It would be possible to give a child apparent freedom – freedom to go where he liked when he liked – without giving him any real freedom at all. The removal of the common requirements of everyday life does not constitute freedom. The obstacles to freedom are not meal-times, classes and manner of speech, but are subtle, immensely strong and deeply embedded in our personal relations and our social life. It is our job to combine that love of young people that is represented by a man like Homer Lane with .........
[The narrative stops suddenly at this point and the next page which is not numbered continues with]
ref T.V.A
The state school cannot have autonomy.
Because (a) Once its teachers have been app (prob by a Committee) they have a right to stay irrespective of whether they support the aims, methods, spirit of the school.
A Head can be indefinitely frustrated by teachers who are not in sympathy with him, or with the maj of the staff, but who are competent in their teaching.
The Head of an indep school can say, without injustice to be a member if his staff. “you know that this school was founded to carry out a certain plan, to follow certain principles. If you cannot fall in with this you ought not to stay.”
Example of Ab Teacher (chip) and Croft master (slug).
I would not have a religious observance dictated. It must be a native growth – springing out of the soil of school life.
What the school does.
Emotional Education.
The whole of a child’s day and night is spent in the school. His education and his life are one. It is possible to provide the condition for a radical change in a child’s outlook, and that radical change often occurs – to our delight. It may be seen sometimes within a few days.
The conditions for this cannot be achieved unless one has the greatest possible control over the conditions of life, the method and principles of the school.
The expl.s. gets this. Because it is experimental it sets the conditions for the experiment.
I doubt whether a state school can ever be in this position. It cannot choose its parents; it exists to serve miscellaneous mass of parents who are by circumstances forced to send their children to the school. It hasn’t any right perhaps to .....
Summary
- From what knowledge, experience am I speaking? Epts. Schools of very great variety.
- What justifies this sort of school?
A school must justify itself.
What I have to satisfy you about is that this school meets a serious need and therefore deserves encouragement and support, extensive fits !
- in meeting needs of children as progressively revealed.
- in meeting needs of the present social and political condition
- immediate demand for more boarding schools
- the social and political needs as we interpret them.
These are bound to be in reality one – only separated for analysis.
- Man generally speaking inadequate for his task of dealing with the world as it is developing, because his institutions lag behind and because direction and control of feeling has lagged behind his intellectual development.
Feelings: basis of all valuation and standards. Not only provides the irrational blind impulse that leads to destruction but also the basis of power impulse that lead indirectly to evil.
Schools must provide – perhaps more important than anything else – the education of the emotions – opp to arrive at true personal and social values, operating unconsciously as well as consciously.
The needs of a child develop as a unified person – whose feeling are rational in the not in the sense of being controlled by his intellect (that is always an illusion anyway) but in that they are truly related to the objective world not merely ministering to inner demands.
The objective world is a world of atomic bombs etc.
Sensitiveness and awareness – not more to a certain category.
Child needs to know the world in its reality and to have the love – implying faith and hope in individual and courage with which to face it.
Relation with the world
As far as school planning concerned in this catered for by class work.
Maths – English – History – Geography – Sciences etc.
But this is not knowledge of the world – merely ideas about the world;
academicism
neglect of ART – which arises out of direct contact – an expression of feeling not necessarily mediated by thought, a valuation. Encouraging a sensitiveness and awareness. (These may remain specific; unless the policy is part of a general policy).
Experience of government, organisations etc.
Democratic control in some degree.
Community Life
Now I come to something that is specially bound up with this life of a boarding school; and experience that is wonderfully im possible in a school of the experimental proven type than in any other, yet that is denied to the vast majority of children – yet is all an a most important experience. Here I speak more specifically of my own school.
This cannot be provided either by other types older types of boarding schools or by the agregations of people that constitute our towns and cities.
To organise games, to debating societies and dramatic clubs is are valuable experience of responsibility but they are not exp of community.
Why should the school provide this exp? Because in modern industrial civilisation there is no community; there is little more than economic aggregation. (Ideally of the Day School).
Involves abandonment of idealism as a philosophy and a method. Does not mean that these are thrown overboard. Ideas, hypotheses, theories, or that we cease to respect nobility and personality. No – we proceed as does a scientist: integr. of theory and practice.
Not really possible to .combat without some ideas. NB neither does the scientist (Scientist – enjoyment of the objective world.)
But the ideas must be ideas that have developed through experience of life.
What fundamental things: truth, goodness,beautiful beauty? No, these may be ideas and they have been very idealised! – abstract
Friendship
Knowledge and enjoyment of the world.
Feeling and valuation must be expressed and developed in action.
Friendship – knowledge and enjoyment of each other.
What stands in the way of this?
Authority
Respect. domination ( prefects and otherwise)
Discipline
Pride. (refer Coulton)
Equality in friendship. nb not leading to individualism
Immense importance
Develop as a person into an individual.
So much of progressive educn has tended toward devel of individualism, the crank, the opinionist, eccentric. Devel of person is not the same thing. Individualism – thought of someone in isolation to group.
Person – thought of a man in society.
Devel. of personality – emphasis on adjustment to the group.
No such thing as one person – there can be two.
Needs of children
Needs of the social and political order.
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The demand for boarding school education. Better met by this type of school than by either the Public School or schools modelled upon them.
Quality it aims at that have special ref. to present day needs;
No respect for authority as such
Discipline of necessity not of subservience.
Concerned with person, - ?? not the individual.
Understanding of democracy – not only in its political aspect – its “mechanism” – but in its personal basis.
At end, notice that I have said little about freedom. Freedom largely counts in an understanding of necessity.
Archive reference PP/KCB 6/6/4 document 17