At the start of 2014, I began my research on the ShropshireAdult Education College (SAEC) after months waiting to start, combining my time
between finishing off in my job of 6 years and contemplating, with a mix of
excitement and trepidation, a brand new life as a researcher. In preparation, I
had been reading about the College, a short-term residential establishment with
an abundance of diverse and ground-breaking courses, and its charismatic Warden
for 23 years, Sir George Trevelyan, who was a founding father of the New Age
movement, winning the Right Livelihood Award in 1982. He
remains important today for his work on ‘education for the spirit’ and his
espousal of ‘a non-sectarian,
holistic outlook, scientific as well as mystical, and a compassionate, global
humanitarianism’ (Dawkins).
My initial research rapidly showed up the social and
cultural complexities and the genuine educational challenge and innovation
embodied in short-term residential adult education in the post-war period. The SAEC
(1948 – 76) was one of some thirty such colleges in stately homes created
between 1944 and 1950. It sat within the splendour of Attingham Hall and its surrounding parkland, built
for the first Lord Berwick in 1785 and now in National Trust ownership.
Most of the colleges have since been closed, many in the
1970s, like the SAEC, and others followed in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Some remain,
though the emphasis, for most, appears now to be on leisure courses, rather
than the rich debate, the post-war moral and
philosophical urgency typified by the courses in their earlier years. The SAEC,
for instance, offered subjects such as the Human Situation and Problems of the
Adolescent in Modern Society—as well as courses in Music, the creative Arts and
Drama. Other courses
encompassed organic farming and environmental issues, emerging issues in
Sociology and Psychology, such as child development and, atypically, a
burgeoning New Age/spiritual education curriculum.
Such colleges developed at a time when Local Education
Authorities, in partnership with voluntary organizations such as the Workers
Education Association and the Women’s Institute, Trusts and universities, were
given particular powers, and the financial means, to establish imaginative
responses to education for adults in every authority area, following on from
the 1944 Education Act and the 1919 Report on Adult Education by the Ministry
of Reconstruction.
Students at Attingham in the 1950s
The perceived success of previous efforts at short-term
residential education, through Army education, the Summer Schools which had
become part of the University Extension Movement and the Danish Folk High
School model, indicated ‘the scope for and value in short courses as a
permanent part of adult education if a sufficiently wide range of
subjects—practical as well as theoretical—is made available’ (Ministry of
Education, 1947, p.35), with the recognition that the residential nature helps
‘create an atmosphere and engender and enthusiasm for learning that is possible
in no other way’(Ibid., p.60). The emphasis was on the short-term college
experience as a space for personal and social transformation and enrichment.
Students folk dancing, 1948
Two particular questions have arisen as I have read through
archive materials and press cuttings, sifted photographs and scrapbook
materials and interviewed former staff, students and tutors from the SAEC. The
first is who were the students who benefited from this idiosyncratic and wide
ranging education and the second is was its impact ‘transformational’ or life
changing for them?
It is certainly
clear that the SAEC aspired to make available education to people from all
backgrounds, irrespective of their prior experience of learning. Trevelyan expressed
the purpose thus:
‘Attingham
was a cultural centre for everybody, for all classes’ and that ‘No one need be
deterred by the feeling that he or she is not a scholar. . . why shouldn’t we
use our country houses. . . as cultural centres, not for the upper classes, but
for all classes?’ (Sir George Trevelyan’s Personal Notes, year unknown).
The emphasis is
decidedly on culture.
Trevelyan also outlines the importance of modern
education working in a ‘manner fitting for our
more or less classless society’ (Trevelyan, Adult Education and the
Living Idea, year unknown, p.1), as a means for ‘living
ideas to work down into our society, and adult education has here a special,
and in some sense, a priestly, task’ (Ibid.,
p.3). So the purpose is one of stimulating debate, with distinct spiritual
overtones, and of a small group cascading their learning out into wider
society.
There is no doubt that Trevelyan believed passionately in
education for ‘all comers’ (Trevelyan, ibid, p.1) and over the span of the
College’s life, it is estimated that some 40,000 students crossed its threshold.
However, examination of the Visitor’s books and the course attendees, where
records exist, shows that demographically the students did not represent the
spread of British society at the time but were broadly what is defined as
‘middle class’, with an emphasis on professionals such as teachers. Initially,
many came from Shropshire or the West Midlands – true to the LEA’s aim of
attracting local people – but the New Age-orientated courses, which grew in
number from the mid ‘60s, drew people from all over the UK and even overseas.
Sir George (centre) with members of a young people’s course – 1960s
None of this, however, invalidates the transformational
experience for those who attended – and not primarily on the spiritual courses.
One former student - who attended poetry and literature courses - said to me
that it was an important break from ‘the ordinary workaday world’.... ‘the
attraction was simply the refreshment of a complete change, of a complete break
in a different environment, in a different kind of house and even a bygone age,
and that was the great advantage’. (John Hassall, former student). John went on
to comment on the importance, as a sixth former, of the social, relational, residential
aspect of the courses – ‘you were rubbing up against people from all sorts of
backgrounds and all parts of the country’. This helped him in his decision to apply to
university.
Jill Thomas, another former student, attended painting,
Astronomy and public speaking courses, amongst others, and writes - ‘it was a wonderful time, when I escaped for
a brief while from looking after two children to leave my husband in charge and
to be in the enthusiastic company of like minded people, returning home
refreshed in spirit’. Others attributed their future choice of subject at university
to the stimulus of a course at the SAEC; and some their career pathways. ‘It’s
because of coming here [Attingham] so regularly that I worked in the Arts – no
doubt about it’ (Sally Stote, former student).
Arguably,
Attingham catered for the enquiring mind of all types. The optimism of
the times, encapsulated in the 1944 Education Act, is reflected in the range
and diversity of courses and the limited levels of bureaucracy and scrutiny,
which created a genuine freedom to
innovate, even to challenge, as Trevelyan did. This, in turn, appears to have resulted
in deep, immersive and life-changing experiences for many of the students who
attended, as the oral history material I have collected testifies. The space,
and the residential element of the learning, were vital to the transformational
nature of the experience. This was a brief time in history when education
genuinely escaped.
Bibliography
DAWKINS, P. Obituary
- http://www.sirgeorgetrevelyan.org.uk/home.html,
accessed 22/6/15
GREAT BRITAIN, MINISTRY OF RECONSTRUCTION, ADULT EDUCATION
COMMITTEE, (1980) The
1919 Report: The Final and Interim Reports of the Adult Education Committee of
the Ministry of Reconstruction, 1918-1919, Reprinted with Introductory Essays
by Harold Wiltshire, John Taylor, Bernard Jennings. Nottingham
: Department of Adult Education, University of Nottingham
MINISTRY OF EDUCATION. (1947) Further Education: The Scope and Opportunities under the Education Act, Pamphlet number 8, H.M.S.O.
TREVELYAN, G. Adult
Education and the Living Idea, year unknown