On my days off I keep on keeping on with my PhD research, I stumbled across a gentleman called R. H. Tawney and I must say I have quite the education man-crush on the chap, have a read of this and if it doesn’t get you all tingly, I don’t know what will:
“Thanks to the fact that they (Tutorial Classes) are small, tutor and students can meet as friends, discover each other’s idiosyncracies, and break down that unintentional system of mutual deception which seems inseparable from any education which relies principally on the formal lecture. It is often before the classes begin and after they end, in discussions round a student’s fire, or in a walk to and from his home, that the root of the matter is reached both by student and tutor.”
R. H. TAWNEY, ‘AN EXPERIMENT IN DEMOCRAT EDUCATION’, THE POLITICAL QUARTERLY, MAY 1914.
Okay, maybe it doesn’t touch you as deeply as it touched me. You probably just need some background about the man, what he did, who he taught, that kind of stuff. Let’s see if I can do a very quick summary of my research…
I’m looking at the pedagogy used in adult education during the late 19th/early 20th century, with a focus on the education of the workers. And the cry rings out, “Why?”. Well, maybe this next quote might shine some light on that:
“Imagine reader, if you are one who has never had to face these difficulties, a young man who having finished his ten hours of hard physical labour, rushes home from the mill gates at 6’o’clock to get his tea and change his dress in time for the lecture or class at the evening school. He is tired when he leaves the mill, and has a mile to walk home, and another or more to walk to the school. Add to this the difficulties of study at home, and perhaps the cost of a transit fare from some outside village; see him baffled in obtaining the textbook from the library; and can you wonder that the working classes do not take sufficient interest in Extension work?
‘A MEMBER OF THE INDEPENDEENT LABOUR PARTY’, ‘WHAT THE WORKMAN NEEDS IN EDUCATION’, OXFORD UNIVERSITY EXTENSION GAZETTE, 5/51 (DEC. 1894), 26.
Think about that for a second. We aren’t talking about the much-needed education for the kids scraping around in the slums. Nope. We are looking at educating adults. And not just any old adults. These workhorses have just spent 10 – 12 hours working their backsides off in terrible conditions if lucky they got one day off, hardly any free time during the week, and what do they do with it? Well, of course, they voluntarily go to a freezing cold, wooden village hall, sit on cold, wooden seats and listen to a lecture on economics*. I really can’t hammer home how amazing that is to me. The work these men and women did is something we can’t imagine, yet when they get home, they head out to study. I don’t know about you but when I finish my 6 or 7-hour shift in a warm classroom, talking to a bunch of people about stuff I love, the last thing I want to do is to head out and listen to a lecture. But they didn’t just listen to the lecture, remember the last bit of the Tawney quote:
“It is often before the classes begin and after they end, in discussions round a student’s fire, or in a walk to and from his home, that the root of the matter is reached both by student and tutor.”
Tawney
These working-class students didn’t just go home after the class, they would continue the discussion with the tutor out in the street, swapping ideas, arguing their point, grabbing as much knowledge as they can. This pursuit of knowledge would last all the way to the train station, some reports have the tutor leaning out of the carriage window continuing the discussion as the train pulled out of the station. Brilliant! Just pure brilliance!
Please tell me that you have given a class where the students have hounded you afterwards. Well, of course, we have all had that … what I mean is that they hound us because they are interested in learning. Beautiful!
So, back to my PhD … this brings up two questions, which I think might help me in my teaching journey (and hopefully help other teachers):
- What motivated the students to embrace education and how did they manage to produce pieces of academic work which were equivilant to the work produced at Oxford and Cambridge?
- Who the heck were their teachers? These titans of education that could engage people fresh from the pit or factory for several hours a night. Can you even imagine the teaching techniques they used? Well, that’s what I am hoping to find out.
The second question brings us back to Mr Tawney. Get your eyes around these testimonials, you might think we have a difficult crowd to please with our students who so many distractions … well, try teaching adults who have spent the last bit of money to attend your lecture, they are tired, hungry, cold … oh, and they know the world. That is a tough crowd to please.
“Tawney captured them (the students) right away, it is a case of love at first sight on both sides. His lectures are brilliant, illuminating, simple, lucid, eloquent.”
L. V. Gill to A. Mansbridge, 26 Jan. 1908, 2 Feb. 1908, ‘Early Tutorial Classes II’, ‘Rochdale Class’.
and this:
“I went home as if I were walking upon air & was so exuberant that my wife wanted to know what was the matter with me.”
T. W. Price to A. Mansbridge, 2 Feb 1908, ‘Early Tutorial Classes II’, ‘Rochdale Class’.
a couple more:
“My first impressions was of surprise, first at his youth, and secondly at the sweet affable charm of his presence. There was none of the academic manner about him.”
J. W. Henighan to A. Mansbridge, 2 Feb. 1908, ‘Early Tutorial Classes II’, ‘Rochdale Class’.
“Tawney is not a teacher: he is a man with a soul.”
J. W. Henighan to A. Mansbridge, 2 Feb. 1908, ‘Early Tutorial Classes II’, ‘Rochdale Class’.
Did I tell you that Mr Tawney was based in Glasgow and would travel to Rochdale on a Friday night to deliver his classes? Yep, that’s right. He’d stay at a boarding house or kipped in the front room at the home of one of his students, well, actually not much sleep happened, as he would stay up all night, asking and answering questions, taking part in discussions and generally helping his students. What. A. Legend.
That is my PhD … fingers crossed. There does seem to be a lot of research about adult education, specifically the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA). I hope to shine a light on this fascinating period in education, where democracy existed in the classroom, tutors and students produced some super-human feats and motivation was high.
Look out for future blogs on the trailblazing work of the WEA and other adult education providers during the first half of the 20th century. Topics will include the rejection of exams, democratisation of the classroom, student autonomy and other pedagogical methods which were well ahead of their time.
*there were other classes on offer (Literature, Politics, History, Classics, Astronomy and famously Art – Pitmen Painters), but the majority and the ones Tawney taught were Economics. We’ll get into the whys of that in a later blog.
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