Education as an agent of social evolution: the educational projects of Patrick Geddes in late‐Victorian Scotland
2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 38; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00467600902838120
ISSN1464-5130
Autores Tópico(s)Religious Education and Schools
ResumoAbstract This paper examines the educational projects of Patrick Geddes in late‐Victorian Scotland. Initially a natural scientist, Geddes drew on an eclectic mix of social theory to develop his own ideas on social evolution. For him education was a vital agent of social change which, he believed, had the potential to develop active citizens whose interdisciplinary learning would enable them to identify and promote progressive social trends. Something of an academic outsider, Geddes believed that the higher education system in his native Scotland was moving away from the generalist, holistic approach to education he favoured and became a fervent critic of the university establishment. He also initiated two educational experiments – university extension and the Edinburgh summer schools – which he hoped would validate his educational philosophy. Although the success of these experiments was undoubtedly limited, some of his ideas arguably have currency in contemporary educational thought. Keywords: universitiesScotlandPatrick Geddesuniversity extensionsummer schoolscitizenship Notes 1Philip Abrams, The Origins of British Sociology, 1843–1914: An Essay with Selected Papers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 102–3. 2Christopher Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism: Scottish Society and Politics 1707–1994, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1994), 101. 3Helen Meller, Patrick Geddes: Social Evolutionist and City Planner (London: Routledge, 1990), 1. 4Ibid., 2–3. 5See Lawrence Goldman, ‘Foundations of British Sociology 1880–1930: Contexts and Biographies’, and Maggie Studholme, ‘Patrick Geddes: founder of environmental sociology’, Sociological Review 55, no. 3 (2007): 431–40 and 441–59. 6Meller, Patrick Geddes, 92–7. 7P. Boardman, The Worlds of Patrick Geddes: Biologist; Town Planner, Re‐Educator, Peace‐ Warrior (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), 424. 8Meller, Patrick Geddes, 10–11. 9John C. Stock, ‘Technical Schools and the Teaching of Science in Scotland’, in Institutions of Scotland: Education, ed. Heather Holmes (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2000), 219. 10Philip Boardman, Patrick Geddes: Maker of the Future (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944), 8–10. 11Meller, Patrick Geddes, 20–1. 12Boardman, Worlds of Patrick Geddes, 23–5. 13Meller, Patrick Geddes, 25–7. 14Philip Mairet, Pioneer of Sociology: The Life and Letters of Patrick Geddes (London: Lund Humphries, 1957), 2. 15Meller, Patrick Geddes, 30–1. 16Elizabeth Cumming, ‘Patrick Geddes: Cultivating the Garden of Life’, in Patrick Geddes: The French Connection, ed. Frances Fowle and Belinda Thomson (Oxford: White Cockade, 2004), 15. 19Patrick Geddes and Victor Branford, Our Social Inheritance (London: Williams & Norgate, 1919), 344–5, quoted in Meller, Patrick Geddes, 34. 17Cumming, Cultivating the Garden of Life, 15–16. 18Ibid. 20Meller, Patrick Geddes, 32–3. 21Siân Reynolds, Paris–Edinburgh: Cultural Connections in the Belle Epoque (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 82–3. 22Boardman, Worlds of Patrick Geddes, 51. 23Meller, Patrick Geddes, 56–63. 24Meller, Patrick Geddes, 77–8. 25Mairet, Pioneer of Sociology, 40–1; Boardman, Worlds of Patrick Geddes, 52–3. 26Mairet, Pioneer of Sociology, 41. 27Meller, Patrick Geddes, 6. 28Patrick Geddes, Education for Economics and Citizenship, and the Place of History and Geography in This (Manchester: Co‐operative Printing Society, 1895), 47. 29Jose Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit: Britain 1870–1914 (London: Penguin, 1993), 180. 30Tawney spoke of how much he had gained from his experience of working‐class humanity and solidarity in the East End: Anthony Wright, R.H. Tawney (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), 3–4. 31Meller, Patrick Geddes, 92; Roger Fieldhouse and associates, A History of Modern British Adult Education (Leicester: NIACE, 1996), 42. 32Patrick Geddes, ‘On the Conditions of Progress of the Capitalist and Labourer’, in The Claims of Labour (Edinburgh: Co‐operative Printing Co., 1886), 34. 33Meller, Patrick Geddes, 67. 34The fee for one course of lectures at Geddes’s 1890 Summer School ranged from £1 11s 6d to £2 2s, and even though the price of the courses decreased significantly in subsequent years they remained beyond the reach of the vast majority of potential working‐class students: ‘Vacation Science Courses, Edinburgh, Fourth Session, 1890’, Strathclyde University Archives (SUA) T‐GED 12/2/26. 35Meller, Patrick Geddes, 92. 39Patrick Geddes, Paper on university reform (1903), 5: SUA T‐GED 12/1/03. 36Robert Bell and Malcolm Tight, Open Universities: A British Tradition? (Buckingham: Open University, 1993), 24–5. 37George Davie, The Democratic Intellect: Scotland and Her Universities in the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1961). 38Robert Anderson, Education and Opportunity in Victorian Scotland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 358–61. 41Patrick Geddes, Scottish University Needs and Aims: Closing Address at University College, Dundee (Perth: Cowan & Co., 1890), 8. 40Anderson, Education and Opportunity, 60–1. 44Geddes, ‘Scottish University Reform’, 176. 42Patrick Geddes, ‘Scottish University Reform, No. V’, Scottish Review 11, no. 21 (1888): 171–2. 43Ibid., 173. 46Perth University Education Society, inaugural meeting, October 4, 1887: St Andrews University Archives (SAUA) UY 470/2, 2. 45Robert M. Wenley, The University Extension Movement in Scotland (Glasgow: Maclehose, 1895), 19–20. 47Minute Book of the General Committee for the Extension of University Teaching in Scotland, March 27, 1887: SUA T‐GED 12/1/22. 48Ibid., February 4, 1888. 49Ibid., Douglas Sutherland, ‘University Extension in Scotland c.1886–1896’ (MPhil thesis, University of Glasgow, 2007), 45–7. 50Edinburgh University Lecture‐Extension Association, First Annual Report, April 1889, 3–4: SUA T‐GED 12/2/18; William Knight, University of St Andrews Scheme for the Extension of University Teaching by means of Local Lectures and Classes in the Counties of Fife, Forfar, Perth, Kinross, and Clackmannan (Dundee: John Leng & Co., 1888), 4. 51Perth University Education Society, inaugural meeting, 2. 52Ibid., 2–3. 53Newspaper cutting: letter to the editor of a Borders newspaper from J.W. Munro, December 16, 1887: SUA T‐GED 12/2/13. 54 Dundee Advertiser, March 19, 1888. 55Dr H.R. Mill to Patrick Geddes, December 26, 1887: SUA T–GED 12/3/1. 56 Perthshire Advertiser, April 11, 1888. 57 Dunfermline Journal, February 19, 1887. 60Perth University Education Society, inaugural meeting, 7. 58Fieldhouse and associates, Modern British Adult Education, 40. 59‘Perth as Metropolitan University’, sketched on a letter from Professor William Knight, March 7, 1887: SUA T‐GED 12/3/1. 61Perth University Education Society, report for the year ending March 31, 1889, 4. 62Ibid. 63Sutherland, ‘University Extension’, 55–6. 64Glasgow University Extension Board Report (1889), 1–2: SAUA, UY 470/2. 65Wenley, University Extension, 34–5; Minutes of the Glasgow University Extension Board, July 20, 1896. 66Lectures delivered in connection with St Andrews Lecture‐Extension, handwritten record, n.d.: SAUA UY470/2. 67Anthony Cooke, From Popular Enlightenment to Lifelong Learning: A History of Adult Education in Scotland 1707–2005 (Leicester: NIACE, 2006), 119. 68Sutherland, ‘University Extension’, 74–89. 69Perth University Education Society, inaugural meeting, 6–7. 70A.J. Belford, Centenary Handbook of the Educational Institute of Scotland (Edinburgh: Educational Institute of Scotland, 1946), 193–4; Anderson, Education and Opportunity, 265. 71Bell and Tight, Open Universities, 75–85. 72Fieldhouse, Modern British Adult Education, 41. 73Sheila Rowbotham, ‘Travellers in a Strange Country: Responses of Working‐Class Students to the University Extension Movement 1873–1910’, History Workshop Journal 12 (1981): 71. 74Sutherland, ‘University Extension’, 74–89. 75Ibid., 87–8. 76J.W. Munro to William Knight, August 2, 1888, August 17, 1888: SAUA UY 470/2. 77J.W. Munro to Professor Andrew Seth, September 5, 1889: SAUA UY 470/2. 78University of St Andrews University Lecture‐Extension Association, Second Annual Report, 1890, 6: SUA T‐GED 12/2/23. 79Sutherland, ‘University Extension’, 69–70, 72, 83, 86–7. 81‘Summer Meeting, Edinburgh (Vacation Studies) Sixth Session, 1892’, 12–13: SUA T‐GED 7/8/19. 80Boardman, Worlds of Patrick Geddes, 129. 83Ibid. 82‘Edinburgh Summer Meeting, University Hall, Eighth Session, 1894’, 1: SUA T‐GED 7/8/21. 84Elizabeth Baigent, ‘Herbertson, Andrew John (1865–1915)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/40187 (accessed December 15, 2008). 85Boardman, Worlds of Patrick Geddes, 128–33. 86Meller, Patrick Geddes, 63. 87 The Interpreter 10 (August 13, 1896): SUA T‐GED 12/2/76. 88Charles Zueblin, ‘The World’s First Sociological Laboratory’, American Journal of Sociology 4, no. 5 (1899): 577–92. 89Meller, Patrick Geddes, 111. 92Fanny Franks of Camden House, London, to Patrick Geddes, September 3, 1903: SUA T‐GED 9/503. 90Ibid., 67. 91Baigent, ‘Herbertson’; Dorothy Herbertson, The Life of Frédéric Le Play (Ledbury: Le Play House, 1950). 93Boardman, Worlds of Patrick Geddes, 129–30. 94Mairet, Pioneer of Sociology, 64. 95Boardman, Worlds of Patrick Geddes, 211–13, 235. 96Peter Searby, ‘Reddie, Cecil (1858–1932)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/46697 (accessed December 11, 2008).
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