EAPEducation

 The summer holiday means I am absolutely immersed in my PhD . I mean from 7am to 7pm, reading, writing, reading, writing, coffee and regular two-and-a-half hour trips to London to visit the fantastic Educational Settlements Association archives (quite close to Kings Cross = only one bacon sandwich, hot drink combo from Greggs) and the Workers' Educational Association archives (quite far from Kings Cross = two bacon/hot drink combo from Greggs). At the latter, I discovered this fantastic piece of writing from my favourite education man crush, R. H. Tawney . I think I am going to have to crowbar a chapter about him into the PhD, which means more trips to London and the archives, ah all day in a library during a nice summer day. What can be better? Anyway, enough of my ramblings. Get your pedagogical brains around these beauties, taken from a speech given by Tawney to the Co-operative Movement ... Education has always meant not simply the accumulation of knowledge, or the perfecting ...

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. ...