Freedom, Democracy and Self-Government: The Progressive Case of J.H. Simpson

ABSTRACT

This paper has as its focus the life and thinking of the educational theorist and schoolmaster J. H. Simpson (1883–1959), who was not only a reforming teacher at Rugby School but was also the first headmaster of the progressive Rendcomb College. His ideas around education were outlined in a number of books. At the heart of his thinking lay concerns around democracy and self-government and the article explores how these were enacted at various points of Simpson’s life with a particular focus upon his work until 1932. Attention will be paid to how his thinking evolved, moving from simple democracy in the classroom to wider decision-making within an entire school. Linked to these concerns were a number of curricular initiatives that sought to offer a point of contrast to more traditional public schools. The article will conclude by attempting to offer consideration of the legacy of Simpson’s ideas.

KEYWORDS:

• Progressivism
• freedom
• democracy
• self-government
• experimental schooling

Introduction

This article takes as its subject the life and work of the progressive schoolmaster and author James Herbert (“J. H.”) Simpson (1883–1959) who, despite having a long, varied and highly regarded educational career in a range of different capacities, has yet to be the subject of any focused piece of scholarly endeavour. Although bracketed by an older generation of historians alongside those such as Norman MacMunn (1877–1925) and A. S. Neill (1883–1973) as one of the leading disciples of Homer Lane,¹ the coverage afforded to Simpson has been brief and he has yet to achieve anywhere near the same level of academic recognition as his peers. To that end, he has only very recently merited an entry in the otherwise comprehensive Dictionary of National Biography,² whilst any wider mention of him has tended to be confined to formal institutional histories.³ This neglect is all the more striking as Simpson’s list of achievements and offices was impressive. Not only was he the author of several substantial works in which he elaborated a distinct child-centred educational philosophy centred on notions of “democracy” and “freedom” but he was also variously a schoolmaster in three elite public schools, a Junior Inspector for the Board of Education, the first headmaster of a pioneering progressive school (Rendcomb College from 1920 to 1932), and a member of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education before, finally, becoming the Principal of St Mark’s and St John’s teacher training college in Chelsea between 1932 and 1945. His work here further overlapped with his tenure as Dean of the College of Preceptors from 1942–1957. In these latter roles he contributed to the post-war renaissance in teacher training establishments, whilst throughout his life his thinking was to be continually underscored by his earlier observations of the Little Commonwealth, Lane’s Dorset community and a place he had visited before the First World War.

Although all stages of his life’s work were significant, the focus of this article will, however, be on Simpson’s school-based endeavours, up to the time he left Rendcomb in 1932. The reasons for this decision are twofold. First, Simpson’s work relating to teacher education, particularly his time at the College of Preceptors, has been previously touched upon in the literature and to examine any contribution in such a large field would surely be outside the scope of a single paper such as this.⁴ Second, it was during Simpson’s years as both a schoolmaster and headmaster that most of his key educational texts were published and thus it was the time when his susceptibility to twentieth-century British and international progressive ideas was at its most acute. What makes this small (in numerical terms) body of aforementioned published work so significant was its elaboration of several key principles, which can be knitted together to form a cohesive whole. These principles included the need for self-government and democracy in schools; the breaking down of class divisions and a re-moulding of attitudes to authority, and, finally, the importance of developing each classroom as a learning community and with each one being constructed upon a system of shared and collective responsibility. It was Simpson’s hope that such a system would be a precursor to his pupils leaving school as more global citizens; in that vein, one of his criteria for judging the fitness of purpose behind, in this instance, the study of a modern language was, “Does it [the subject] … give them any real sense of a way of looking at life widely different from their own, and by contrast help them [the pupils] better to understand the world in which they live?”⁵

As we shall see, these ideas represented a unique and particular response to the prevailing question – posed by many of Simpson’s contemporaries – as to how freedom and putting the child at the centre of their own learning could be properly enacted in the classroom and how such activity could preclude future conflict as had recently scarred the globe through the traumatic events of the First World War. For Simpson, finding the answer to that question had an especially poignant dimension as he had lost a brother in the early part of the fighting, just prior to taking his post at Rugby School, and his early zeal in promulgating attempts at democracy were surely in part inspired by his reaction (in this case personal loss) to wider events.⁶ Questions over the sort of men – and it was always boys whom he taught – Simpson wanted to create and their role and place in the world will thus form one of the pervading threads throughout the following discussion.

Having therefore established his general framework of ideas, many of which grew out of his early classroom teaching, the article will then move to consider Simpson’s headship at Rendcomb College, an institution which, as its first headmaster, he was instrumental in moulding according to his beliefs and in his own image. Such an exploration thus allows us a chance to explore how his practices differed not just from other experiments in freedom being undertaken at the same time but also the public-school tradition in which, to that point, most of his life had been spent. This is an especially pertinent examination as Simpson himself was quick later in life to bemoan the “lack of agreed purpose in education”⁷ and, in many ways, his entire pedagogic career was an exploration into what that purpose should be and the ways in which certain progressive ideas could be applied in various contexts, whether those contexts be state schools or private schools, with affluent children or with those from less privileged backgrounds.

When considering this part of Simpson’s biography, it is thus possible to see how it encompassed two distinct yet nonetheless still interrelated aspects: the intellectual development of theory worked out through his trialling of ideas and schemes in the classroom, and the application of that theory in the wider context of an entire school. It was these attempts to wed theory to practice that formed part of what has been referred to in some quarters as the dissemination of the progressive ideal.⁸ As one instance where his life and ideas intersect, we can trace the origins of much of his thinking to the work he undertook at Rugby School during the years of the First World War in which, somewhat boldly for the time, he pioneered new and evolving initiatives in democratic governance with his form group. In being therefore both teacher and theorist, as well as an administrator and school leader, Simpson stands alone among progressive educators of the period.⁹ Indeed, Peter Cunningham, in his absorbing discussion of interpersonal networks in the history of education, and teacher training in particular, points to Simpson as an example of one who “crossed many of the boundaries in this structural framework.”¹⁰ A key feature, then, of his life was the way in which he embedded himself within various professional groups and, in the time period under examination here, this was found most obviously in those networks pertaining to radical education and Simpson not only presented at the New Ideals in Education conferences but was also elected a member of Council for their committee.¹¹

Equally noteworthy is the way in which Simpson’s professional career was poised, at various intervals, between the realms of state and private educational provision. Whilst much of his early life was spent teaching and working at elite public schools – brief stints at Clifton and Charterhouse preceded more sustained periods at Gresham’s and Rugby – the distinction between “state” and “private” was one he was later to see as somewhat artificial, and a key achievement of his work at Rendcomb was in establishing links with state schools in the local area, often taking boys who had been through the elementary system in the surrounding districts.¹² Similarly, although inspired by the radical example of Homer Lane, Simpson’s educational experiments were undertaken not among the juvenile delinquents who formed the bulk of the Little Commonwealth but with boys drawn from a cross-section of society, guided at all times by his precepts around the importance of good character formation and the need to promote the development of “naturalness”. These tensions between the different educational realms were deliberated and came to a head in one of Simpson’s later pamphlets in which he sought to redefine the role of the public schools, arguing passionately that their future survival was dependent on them widening their access and making open their facilities to all children, regardless of background and wealth.¹³ Reflecting perhaps this ambivalence, Simpson was never a radical in politics and, unusually for one considered progressive, he remained attached to certain, long-established school traditions such as examinations, formal modes of behaviour and even corporal punishment, which he refused entirely to condemn.

With such apparent contradictions in mind, the purpose of the article is therefore to explore Simpson’s progressive vision, especially as it pertained to developing a sense of democracy and self-government within his classrooms and the implications this had for learning and the curriculum. By so doing it is the intention to not merely reinstate Simpson as a more significant progressive educational thinker of the early twentieth century than has been previously acknowledged, but also to locate him as a member of that pantheon of great reforming headmasters. Such a list would surely include those considered in Robert Skidelsky’s pioneering study¹⁴ (Reddie, Hahn, Badley and Neill) but must now encompass men like W. H. D. Rouse of the Perse School, Cambridge and Lionel Helbert of West Downs School, Winchester who, whilst less well known, were equally sympathetic to such ideas and active in fostering a spirit of educational experimentation.¹⁵ Although less obviously charismatic, like many of them Simpson had the ability to inspire great loyalty and devotion, a point suggested when examining the published utterances of the school inspector Christian Schiller. Schiller had worked under Simpson at Rendcomb and was moved later in life to extol the virtues of freedom, which he defined as being when, “both [that] opportunity and choice are present, and also that personal capacity or power to choose is present.”¹⁶ Such words clearly carried Simpson’s stamp and suggest that Schiller’s lifelong commitment to progressive forms of learning was directly inspired by his time at Rendcomb and the spirit he absorbed there. However, before attempting any wider reappraisal of Simpson’s influence, and appreciative of the need for context, it is to his early life and influences that the article now turns.

Early Life and Formative Teaching Experiences

The facts of Simpson’s early life are easily dealt with; he was the son of J. H. Simpson, MD of Rugby, and entered Rugby School in 1897 before becoming an Exhibitioner and Scholar at Pembroke College, Cambridge where he took an upper second in Classics in 1905, followed a year later by a first in Part II of the Historical Tripos. After some temporary teaching at Clifton and Charterhouse, Simpson was to have three “thought-provoking experiences”¹⁷ that were to impact greatly his future thinking. These were, in chronological order, two years spent teaching at Gresham’s School in Holt under the dynamic headmaster George Howson, a further two years as a Junior Inspector working for the Board of Education in Bolton, Lancashire from 1911 to 1912 and, lastly, his visits to Homer Lane’s Little Commonwealth, which began in 1913 and continued into the early years of the First World War.¹⁸

We are aided in understanding the trajectory of Simpson’s life, as well as the significance of particular events, by his own autobiography A Schoolmaster’s Harvest (1954), which made a point of emphasising the seminal nature of these experiences. From the ethos of Howson in particular, we can discern a clear thread through to Simpson’s own ideas, a point reflected in the short biography he later published of his mentor. Although a panegyric, and right therefore to be afforded a degree of scepticism, Simpson nonetheless identified two key strands to Howson’s work: first, a commitment to a belief in, “the boy’s capacity to remain true to the best in his nature”¹⁹ and, second, a conviction that the school should serve as a tight-knit community permeated by “a desire for what it conceived to be right conduct.”²⁰ These ideas were to prove important to Simpson, especially his sense that the school and its constituent parts deserved to be regarded as a community and one that was organic in its composition. Other secondary accounts of life at Gresham’s support Simpson’s view of Howson and similarly suggest something of the institution’s character and spirit, which differed markedly from other more punitive public schools.²¹ Nor was Simpson alone in being inspired by the forward-thinking atmosphere; part of Howson’s skill – one that was also a feature of the work of his protégé – lay in appointing teachers who worked well together through their shared commitment to freedom. Thus Simpson, although primus inter pares, was but one key member within a dynamic staff group that also included another future reforming headmaster, J. R. Eccles, as well as the chemistry master D. L. Hammick whose own enthusiasm gave impetus to Howson’s commitment to science.²²

However, for all of Simpson’s understandable admiration for Howson, there was one point upon which he was to differ, which was that, in seeking to enforce a strong sense of morality, Howson had been apt to “mould[ing] character from without, rather than of allowing the opportunity of growth from within.”²³ As we shall see, Simpson’s philosophy was shaped by a more obviously Romantic notion of the child and, although he may have been sceptical over the notion of innate goodness, he was nonetheless moved to emphasise how cooperation and the devolving of authority to students meant that they would be better able to make decisions for themselves and each other. This empowering was especially meaningful for Simpson given what he had observed as a school inspector in the grim surroundings of Lancashire, which he undertook following his tenure at Holt. Although his time as an inspector may have been short it was nonetheless worthy of recollection in his autobiography, and he poignantly remembered how, “one seldom came into contact with spontaneous children.”²⁴ For the vast majority, their school experience consisted of “be[ing] able as soon as possible to earn ‘t’brass’ for their parents.”²⁵ Nor was this description authorial hyperbole; school inspection reports from the time corroborate such levels of deprivation. A case in point was the damning inspectorial review, presumably written by Simpson, of one of the largest schools in the area: “the present accommodation is generally insufficient, and the equipment cannot be regarded as adequate for technical instruction in any of the chief industries of the town … the available space is overcrowded and extension is needed.”²⁶

Intriguingly, Simpson’s obituary in the Rendcomb College Magazine was to state that, “At the same time [as he was inspecting impoverished secondary schools] he discovered in some of the infant schools the beginnings of the better ways proclaimed in a book which he described as ‘a turning point’ in his own education – Edmond Holmes’ ‘What Is And What Might Be’.”²⁷ It is, however, unclear here which schools are being referred to and there is nothing in the relevant inspection reports for the time to suggest that progressive ideas of a more radical kind were taking hold in Simpson’s district.²⁸ That being said, Simpson’s autobiography does hint that the origins of his later belief in the democratic classroom founded on strong inter-personal bonds came from Lancashire. He referred for example to the, “obvious harmony”²⁹ between pupils and teachers as they learned together and he was equally damning of those inspectors whose indelicacy in interrupting lessons served to stunt the forging of “subtle personal relationships”³⁰ between teachers and pupils as well as between the pupils themselves.

The observance of such poverty served therefore to convince Simpson of the enormous social inequalities and lack of educational opportunities befalling many state-educated children. The solution to these problems was to lie less, however, with the lobbying of policymakers and more with the ideas and personality of Homer Lane, of which he was becoming increasingly aware. Much of course has been written on Lane and his Little Commonwealth and as such it is not necessary to replicate it here.³¹ Suffice to say that his institution was one predicated upon self-governance and collective forms of decision-making, operating as not simply a way of life but also as a “living community, the members of which were changing, growing, developing from day to day.”³² For Simpson, who first met Lane in 1913, which was also the year of his initial visit to the Little Commonwealth, this model proved revelatory particularly for, “a youngish schoolmaster, already rather impatient with public school conventions and restrictions.”³³

In coming under the spell of Lane, Simpson was not, of course, alone and such luminaries as A. S. Neill, Beatrice Ensor and Norman MacMunn were to be similarly beguiled. However, in this regard, two important points need to be made. The first is that Simpson saw the value of Lane’s ideas for English education before those others; the initial meeting of Lane with his most celebrated disciple – Victor Lytton – came for example mid-way through 1914, a year after Simpson had first visited the Little Commonwealth. Not for nothing could Simpson boast that, “I came to know the Commonwealth pretty well, possibly as well as anyone who had no definite connection to it.”³⁴ The second was the way in which Simpson attempted to remedy what he perceived as some of the defects of Lane’s system. notably how, “he [Lane] would never admit that his own personality had anything to do with the success of his work.”³⁵ Simpson was also conscious that the role and place of Lane’s “juvenile delinquents” – who constituted the bulk of the residents of the Little Commonwealth – in any future society would be very different from that of his own students, many of whom aspired to professional careers. By choosing to emphasise these differences it becomes clear that, unlike Lane’s other followers, Simpson was less slavishly devoted to his mentor’s devout beliefs around the nature of repression and absolute freedom, and he was to be forever critical of those “‘stunt’ educationalists”³⁶ whose schools were often designed as experiments in provocation, or else relied heavily on the personalities of their founders, rather than being practical, workable schemes of learning that held broader appeal.

Nonetheless, and casting aside any lingering reservations he may have had, it was to be Simpson’s application of these ideas within the context of two private schools (one elite, the other marginally less so) that was to mark out an important facet of his progressive contribution and provide a model that had the potential to be applied more widely. After all, this was a time when many of those interested in education were “groping their way towards a satisfying conception of Freedom”³⁷ and, in light of that key sentiment, Simpson held true to a conviction that his ideas had value far beyond his own limited environment. It is therefore to that initial experiment – a combination of Lane and Howson – that the article now turns.

Building a Democratic School: The Rugby Experiment

Simpson’s attempts at trialling democratic self-government began with his form group during his first term at Rugby School in 1915 and carried on thereafter until his eventual departure in 1920. The results of the experiment were to be described in two separate works: the short An Experiment in Educational Self Government (1916), which described his observations of the summer term of 1915, and a more substantial book entitled An Adventure in Education (1917). This latter work not only reproduced verbatim, as its first chapter, that earlier pamphlet but also carried on the story of the form through the rest of the next two school years. At the time of his arrival, Rugby was undergoing a period of change, driven by the new headmaster Albert Augustus David, who, as J. B. Hope Simpson (1967) (no relation) makes clear, was committed to modernising the school after a period of stagnation. In particular, “David’s appointment to the staff seemed to be of a new type, young, go-ahead men who brought a leaven of fresh life to the place.”³⁸ Such wider institutional support was important and provided Simpson – who was already inspired by the emergent progressive current and his links to Lane – with a platform by which he could strike out in his own direction.

This self-government began in a way that appeared correlative to those similar ventures being pioneered by others at the time, such as Norman MacMunn and Caldwell Cook, particularly in the way that they too were to use their own form class as a test bed for trialling experimental ideas. Simpson was in fact keen to make the point that such individual classes could and should serve as “the unit[s] for valuable experiments in emancipative education.”³⁹ In that vein, at the heart of Simpson’s approach lay a devolving back to the class of certain decision-making powers via his specially devised “General Meeting”. This was a legislative body that consisted of all boys in the form, and which acted as a forum to debate and discuss relevant matters. The Meeting was held once a week and was an embodiment of Simpson’s democratic thinking around education in which boys had ownership over their school experience. Part of the remit of the General Meeting was for instance to elect certain (usually older) boys to various administrative positions such as President, Treasurer and Secretary, all of whom had particular responsibilities and were accountable to the wider group. Any decisions that were made by the Meeting followed the democratic process of discussion, motion, debate and, finally and where necessary, a vote.

As Simpson had hoped, the remit of the Meeting was broad; although there already existed school-wide rules for which punishments and sanctions were in place and which could not be changed, he recognised that, “there remained a number of moral offences which are recognized by public opinion as undesirable or even punishable, but which are not always expressly forbidden by written rule.”⁴⁰ An example of this included any use of bad language whilst waiting in corridors, which the students themselves moved to censure and impose appropriate punishment. Furthermore, such group decision-making extended to the habits and procedures of the classroom: “All such matters as the tidiness of the room, the collection of books and papers, the posting of orders on the notice-board, and all minor disciplinary offences, were made the subject of legislative and, when necessary, judicial action.”⁴¹ Within this framework, Simpson was an equal, sitting in on meetings but only having a single vote, equivalent to that of each pupil. Aspects of the school were thus decided through a rudimentary form of collective democracy.

Throughout the course of its first year, however, Simpson’s attempt at self-government gradually became modified, migrating away from decisions around those straightforward areas of classroom administration and conduct, and expanding to encompass the ways and means by which different subjects could be taught. Whilst students had previously felt, understandably, that pedagogy was Simpson’s domain and should not concern them, he remained insistent that, “the idea of form self-government, if carried to its completion, involves the assumption by the boys of full responsibility for the performance of [this] ‘work’.”⁴² Although still operating within the constraints of a traditional school in which, despite the previously mentioned changes, there remained many elements of compulsory study and rigidly demarcated subject boundaries, Simpson believed that facilitating student engagement stemmed from two factors: “Either the interest in the work itself, or the desire for some result arising from successful accomplishment, must be sufficient to convince a boy that it was worth the labour involved.”⁴³ One such justification for Simpson’s approach was therefore his recognition, surely drawn from his own experience, that “the ordinary Public School boy is not generally interested in his work as a whole.”⁴⁴ In this he was drawing unashamedly on Edmond Holmes’s What Is and What Might Be (1910) – a work that, as we have seen, he knew well and which he was additionally to refer to as “fascinating and challenging”⁴⁵ – in which it was similarly claimed that, under the current educational system the schoolboy “becomes more and more helpless and resourceless, and gradually ceases to take any interest in the work that he is doing.”⁴⁶

Whilst the arousal of boyish interest was thus clearly important to Simpson, he did not envisage it as a means of giving licence to each child to do whatever they wished whenever they wanted, nor was he advocating for a more explicitly child-centred or play-based approach deriving from those such as Froebel. Instead, as he put it, “the achievement must be co-operative”⁴⁷ and such a statement struck hard to the root of his thinking, which can be understood as a continuing interrogation of the ways in which collective responsibility could be properly exercised. This meant, in practice, boys’ activity being seen more in terms of its relation to the group than the individual: “Behind every kind of self-government there must be this idea of a common good.”⁴⁸ Interest, then, was designed to spring less from the abandonment of any formal adult authority and more as a function of the devolution of power to the class itself. With that spirit in mind, much of the boys’ endeavour originated in committees set up to decide on what should be studied and how. One example – mentioned by Simpson – was in the arrangement of English lessons, which begun to incorporate plays and stories, devised and performed by the pupils, and that were introduced as a reaction to more traditional forms of textual study and reading aloud.

By introducing creative elements in this way, there were obvious comparisons to be drawn with the previously mentioned Caldwell Cook and Norman MacMunn, both of whose work Simpson knew and admired. Indeed, such associations have been invoked recently by the present author,⁴⁹ who has drawn particular attention to Cook’s approach to democratic schooling and his view of the ideal classroom as a “body of workers collaborating.”⁵⁰ Yet, for all his good intentions, Cook’s collaborative experiments were limited in that they were undertaken only within the drama and English classes that he taught, a point that also applied (at least early on) to MacMunn whose “partnership method”⁵¹ was confined to his French classes as a way of developing speaking skills. In both instances, collective activity was being harnessed in very particular ways, either as a means to increase substantive knowledge such as foreign-language vocabulary or else for enhancing individual creative expression in the arts – acting parts in plays for example. In a similar manner, it is also possible to draw comparisons with John Dewey, whose own experiments in democratic schooling were happening around the same time.⁵² Again, however, important differences remain: Dewey was operating in a particular North American context and sought the promotion of frontiersman values, in part as a response to concerns over rapid industrialisation and the fracturing of rural communities. Dewey was also far more interested in the psychological conditions by which knowledge was created – what he called “intellectual constructiveness”⁵³ – than was Simpson and he lacked something of his English counterpart’s adherence to particular forms of national tradition. It is telling that, unlike his other contemporaries, there was no mention of Dewey in Simpson’s writing.

What made Simpson’s early work original, then, was the way in which collaboration and democracy were seen under a more obviously political and societal aspect; he spoke often of the need to prepare schoolchildren for a “life of active citizenship”⁵⁴ as befitting their role as future public (in the widest sense of that term) servants. The various elements of his classrooms clearly reflected this political dimension with, as we have mentioned, students having voting rights, the ability to elect one another to offices, as well as rules governing parliamentary procedure that provided a level of structure which served to determine much of the boys’ expected conduct. Law thereby became an expression of popular will with boys having, within the overarching constraints permitted by the school, full ownership over the conditions in which they worked. This more political aspect was further enhanced when one comes to explore the ways in which Simpson’s attempts at democratic classrooms evolved over time. These developments were born of a need to show that “democratic schooling” was not merely about decision-making processes, obeyance of rules and imposing sanction, but also a way to instil in the young the principle that the needs of all members of a particular community were inter-dependent. As Simpson put it:

if people are to submit to a form of government … they must do so either from habit or because they have a reasonable belief in its virtues, or because they fear a worse alternative; neither the belief nor the fear is likely to count for much, unless the sphere of government touches pretty closely their everyday lives.⁵⁵

This was an important utterance, as it clearly derived from Simpson’s understanding of Homer Lane’s work at the Little Commonwealth, which utilised an “economic scheme” in which each citizen was self-supporting, a precondition he believed of self-respect and self-government. Although within a large school such as Rugby an economic model was hardly practical, Simpson’s ingenuity stemmed in adapting the principle for his own purposes via a system of “collective marking” whereby marks awarded by the teacher for a piece of work did not contribute to an individual student’s grade but, rather, to an overall grade for the class. The marks awarded under this new scheme – which was initially piloted in form groups – were composite and arrived at via a particular algorithm that considered each pupil’s week-on-week improvement as much as their final score. The overall aggregate class mark was then used to determine the rewards given.

Such a system had two obvious benefits. First, it countered the inhering individualism present within most schoolwork in which students were inevitably in competition with, and evaluated against, one another. The effect of this was inevitably to discourage those who fared less well and reduce their interest in the work being set. Once more, this echoed the sentiments of Edmond Holmes, whose writing sought to re-characterise the current educational system as one in which children’s rounded and spiritual growth was stunted. Second, Simpson’s approach to collective marking provided a clear incentive for all boys to aid and support each other, with the more able assisting the less able: “It was no longer possible … for anybody to feel that he was not affected by the success or failure of the rest.”⁵⁶

In further making the point that such a principle “would apply to the whole range of our school work and not, as in the case of the play-work, to one isolated subject,”⁵⁷ Simpson was here perhaps seeking to reveal what he perceived as the limitations of many of the contemporary experiments in schooling being undertaken at the time, which included not just those examples already mentioned but others such as Harriet Finlay-Johnson at Sompting, John Arrowsmith at Mixenden, and E. F. O’Neill at Prestolee. Simpson would have known of these establishments and their headteachers through his attendance at the New Ideals conferences and, although supportive of both their spirit and intent, was convinced that few, if any, were basing their foundations upon democracy and truly democratic approaches to learning. Finlay-Johnson’s school, as a case in point, was undoubtedly unique in that pupils used drama as a means of learning in subjects like history and geography, yet such activity was often teacher-led and elements of adult guidance prevailed.⁵⁸

Simpson’s knowledge of this progressive context – in particular how whole schools could be modelled and run along experimental lines – undoubtedly gave him the necessary impetus to begin to look beyond the confines of Rugby and this, after a brief hiatus, was to lead into the next and most important phase of his career. It was only by expanding his vision that he could rectify, as he saw it, some of the mistaken directions of his contemporaries but also the wider public-school tradition in which he had since boyhood been a part.

Expanding the Vision: Simpson at Rendcomb

Following a short stint in the Army, Simpson left Rugby in 1920. One of the reasons cited was the increasing suspicion of his previously supportive fellow teachers, especially as his classroom experiment had, in small degrees, become more elaborate. He was to later refer cryptically to the “obstacles to be overcome by anyone trying to introduce ‘self-government’ inside the public school world,” and this utterance is suggestive of some of the frustrations he had come to feel at the more archaic attitudes and aspects found within traditional public schools.⁵⁹ An opportunity to remedy this came, however, a short time later when he accepted an invitation to become the first headmaster of the newly founded Rendcomb College near Cirencester in Gloucestershire. As with other aspects of Simpson’s life, the founding and day-to-day life of the school has been previously explored, with particular emphasis placed on how it started as the brainchild of the idealistic Noel Wills, the school’s principal benefactor. Wills had read and been impressed by Simpson’s published descriptions of his earlier work and, after an initial correspondence to sound him out, quickly offered him the inaugural headship. The offer was certainly attractive: Wills had a ready supply of capital (he was the son of a baronet) and was keen to found an institution in which, “the power of opportunity and environment [was] brought to the test.”⁶⁰

The school opened on 2 June 1920, with 12 boys and three assistant teaching staff including Raymond Lane, the son of Homer Lane. From the outset there were clear attempts to ensure that the school was democratic in its composition with the Nominated Foundation Scholars (many of whom would have gone to or already been at preparatory schools) rubbing shoulders with the Gloucestershire Foundation Scholars, who were required to have been for not less than two years in one of the local elementary schools.⁶¹ Their education was free. Three years later, fee-payers were admitted. As the school’s historian details for us,

The first twenty-four boys included three Nominated Foundationers and one boy who came directly from an elementary school … Simpson also wanted some of the first boys to be between twelve and thirteen years of age. So the other twenty entrants from June 1920 to January 1921 were selected from ex-elementary boys who had been for up to a year in one of the Gloucestershire grammar schools.⁶²

All boys boarded on the school’s premises.

Although initially working closely with Wills, Rendcomb soon became an extension of the personality of Simpson who at this stage in his career had come, as we have made clear, to the realisation that a single, isolated classroom was insufficient in allowing him to elaborate a fuller vision of democratic schooling. As he put it, “the real thrill lay in the possibility of a school society who would … embody certain [other] ideas then prominent in my mind.”⁶³ Such ideas were, of course, centred on pupil democracy, although increasingly these were becoming more nuanced in nature and indicative of further developments in Simpson’s thinking and critical understanding. For example, he was increasingly drawing links between his precepts and up-to-the-minute scientific understanding of adolescence, which recognised the importance of the peer group and the need for self-assertion.⁶⁴ As adolescents naturally sought relations with their peers, so could these be both harnessed and facilitated by developing the strong bonds of democratic communities within the school – “freedom at this stage must mean freedom of the group, and within the group.”⁶⁵ Group membership was thus acquired but not ever at the expense of individuality, with pupils encouraged to put forth their views in an environment free from censure.

Another widening of his view of “democratic schooling” came through Rendcomb’s distinctive social mixture, perhaps the most obviously radical aspect of Simpson’s thinking and which connected to his opposition towards the class divide and its perpetuation by the more elite public schools. Beyond simply referring to the school’s (initially) high intake of boys on scholarships, the mixture was a means by which boys from poorer backgrounds could learn to dispense with their feelings of social inferiority. This inferiority was seen to stem from two sources; first, more generally, was the way in which authority as a concept was regarded as instinctively alien, especially as teachers utilised top-down approaches to learning, which often involved punishment. Second, at a more individual level, was the idea that boys from working-class communities were overtly deferential and lacking in self-confidence. The success of this initiative can be measured by a later, and very revealing, student memoir in which the author, himself from a humble background, not only made a point of describing the mixture of students – “all sons of Gloucestershire; some rich, some barely well-to-do; most of us like me, from a deeper past than they supposed”⁶⁶ – but also the way in which he felt the school to be a living embodiment of the established ideas of Simpson: “for the first time in my life … I was an active and participating member of a group … and recognized as such by the others.”⁶⁷

Although Simpson did not wish for the re-configuring of social relations to lead to assertive self-satisfaction, we can nevertheless see his socially democratic instincts at work in hoping that “a boy of the humblest origin [can be] capable … of developing just those social qualities which are often claimed to be distinctive of the public school.”⁶⁸ Many of these qualities were developed through the General Meeting, which now took on a more expanded school-wide role than had ever been possible at Rugby. Although self-government remained “limited in scope, not extending to curriculum and classroom,”⁶⁹ it was nevertheless possible, in this wider setting, for the economic system to flourish more fully and the boys were also now responsible for collective spending and apportionment of finances, which was seen as one of the bases of true democratic schooling. Within such a system, decisions were made that, in retrospect, could be looked upon as mistakes, but Simpson was nonetheless keen to stress that the boys learned from these and he resisted any attempts at correction. Compulsion imposed from above was also kept to a minimum. One of the attendant “evils” of the public schools he so distrusted was the prefect system, however, Simpson was able to turn even this to his way of thinking: when prefects were finally introduced in the school their responsibilities were limited to pastoral care, a fitting testament not simply to the humane side of Simpson’s character but also to his view that senior boys “were also essentially partners with the rest in a common effort.”⁷⁰

Rendcomb was therefore unique in its use of self-government as a tool for emancipation from authority and the way in which this was embedded into the fabric of the school with each boy expected to take on a high level of responsibility in decision-making. In other aspects, however, it shared similarities with those schools affiliated with both the New Education Fellowship and, in a more domestic context, the New Ideals in Education movement.⁷¹ There were, for example, few classes at Rendcomb which were compulsory and Simpson was keen that “boys need to be presented with new ideas which they could not develop from their own consciousness.”⁷² In other words, whilst the teacher existed to prompt students’ thinking, the direction of that thinking and what the children chose to do with the new ideas was up to them. Likewise, in a clear attack on the socially divisive public schools of his youth, manual work was seen to be as important as study in the classroom and much of Simpson’s thinking around the curriculum was seen in terms of its benefits to the boys’ spiritual, physical and emotional lives.

In modelling Rendcomb in this way Simpson was actively seeking to critique and supplant many of the traditions of Rugby and the public schools more generally. Most obviously, Simpson envisaged a future for his boys as professional men and public servants, and it seems that his ideas focused on the construction of a man who would work in – as opposed to automatically leading as would have been the case in more elite schools – bureaucratic organisations within the State. An interesting contrast can be made here with the nearby all-female Badminton School, which, although styling itself in the feminist tradition and with staff holding left-wing views, nonetheless “was also careful to locate itself socially, architecturally, reputably and financially in the privileged elite of public school education.”⁷³ The difference with Rendcomb should be clear and something of this was captured in one of Simpson’s Founder’s Day speeches in which he made a point of emphasising the career destinations of some of the school’s initial cohort:

two have succeeded in winning the Scholarships of the Board of Agriculture…. Another is an apprentice with a leading firm of engineers in the North. Another is an Aircraft Apprentice in the R.A.F. Two are learning their business in the motor industry, one, I believe, in exceptionally favourable circumstances. One is already making his mark in theatrical design. One is in a bank. Two others are using vocationally the skill in manual work that they first showed here, and one of these is learning under the happiest auspices the art of making beautiful furniture…. That seems to me a rather remarkable variety of occupations.⁷⁴

A contributing factor to this variety was the fact that Simpson’s educational philosophy rested on the belief that any programme of study had to be broad and balanced. He was keen to stress for example that health, sex education and civics should hold as much weight as the study of classics and literature, and he attached a high level of importance to the value of outdoor, communal work for boys: “One of my deepest convictions … is that there is a time soon after puberty when nearly every boy would be the better for several months spent mainly out of doors, and almost entirely without books.”⁷⁵ In this he was more clearly than ever evidencing the influence of his progressive contemporaries, an aspect of their thinking having been to emphasise “the rusticity inherent within the Romantic cultural project” to the extent that there was “an anti-industrial feel to the atmospheres of many of the[ir] schools.”⁷⁶ Such work at Rendcomb was undertaken either in the school’s specially designated Manual Workshop or else in the extensive grounds that the school enjoyed.⁷⁷

Another way in which Simpson showed a clear repudiation of public school values was in his attitude to games playing and athletic culture, a point he was to emphasise in his descriptions of the school but more importantly in a short pamphlet on the subject, the first in a series of Educational Times booklets.⁷⁸ In it he was to argue that “the attitude of the public school man to athletics is a neurotic one,”⁷⁹ and he was to offer a powerful critique of the overtly prominent position that athletics occupied within school life. Critically, he saw the supporters of such activities – which within the public schools were usually competitive with success taken as a sign of the school’s standing – as being antithetical to the culture of self-government: “For it will always matter more to him [the school master] that games should be ‘efficient’ and the school teams successful … than that their organisation should be the genuine work of the boys.”⁸⁰ At Rendcomb, as one might expect, such activities were turned over to the General Meeting, which set about removing any elements of competitiveness.

Changing the nature of sports and recreation in this way also showed Simpson in revolt against the traditional forms of masculinity propagated within the public schools. Much has been written on the rise of physicality in these schools in the first half of the nineteenth century and the perceived need to produce athletic, muscular Christians as a way to protect and safeguard an imperial way of life.⁸¹ More recently, however, Gideon Dishon, building upon that earlier work, has argued convincingly that, “while team sports were an effective means of shaping students’ behaviour on the court, they were less successful as means of building character” such that, “by the end of the century … [a]lthough team sports remained an essential part of the public school system … the idea that they would transform the educational system for the elites was all but abandoned.”⁸² Simpson was therefore an important example of someone who not only pursued this idea – for him competitive sports was anathema to building a good character – but, in turning decisions over games playing to the boys, was actively advancing this area of school life.

Indeed, when thinking about the sort of man Simpson was looking to develop, it is worth drawing attention to Simpson’s wife, Evelyn, who was to play an active role in his professional life with one of his obituaries even going as far as to say that, “it is not possible to dissociate James Simpson from Evelyn Simpson.”⁸³ Throughout all of his professional life, Evelyn would also shoulder some of the burden of the pastoral responsibilities. At Rendcomb, for instance, she was known personally to many of the pupils and, later, when Simpson was Principal of St Mark and St John College, a temporary relocation to Cheltenham meant that he and his wife lodged with students, with Evelyn regularly inviting them to tea. Not only was this symptomatic of Simpson’s attempts to build a more equal and inclusive democratic community but it was also an attempt to subvert the environments of the older public schools. Writing about this period, Peter Lewis has made the point that “male institutions like boarding schools … construct[ed] a system in which masculinity [wa]s defined by absence of the feminine”⁸⁴ and thus, in consciously involving his wife in elements of the school, Simpson was surely offering a further challenge to the accepted public school and educational orthodoxy.

Of perhaps greatest significance, however, in our understanding of the reforming nature of Simpson is the way in which the term “democracy” came to be envisaged as not simply about the functioning of the individual classroom, or even an entire school, but as a way of inculcating a particular view of the world citizen. Underscoring Simpson’s proposals for the curriculum was a strong belief that it should allow the child an opportunity to “understand himself and the age or civilization in which he lives”⁸⁵ and, when coupled with his calls for classes in world history and democratic citizenship alongside decrying of subjects like French, which did not make boys consider lives “widely different from their own,”⁸⁶ it was clear that he was articulating the spirit of the more obviously radical reformers such as those within the New Education Fellowship. As Kevin Brehony has shown, this group had a “strong commitment … to the fostering of international understanding and a world consciousness through education and support for the League of Nations,”⁸⁷ and there was much of that internationalist ethos found within Rendcomb, far more than in any other comparable institution within the United Kingdom.

Simpson’s achievement at Rendcomb, building on his work at Rugby, had been to envisage and enact a system of democratic self-government in which not only were boys prepared for future life but a more responsible attitude towards authority was cultivated. Such an attitude stemmed from a particular habit of mind that did not seek to continually be challenging those in power, but rather to query and question how such power was used and exercised. Allowing students the opportunities to be responsible for aspects of their learning and conduct was part of that process. Tied to that was a view of education which had responsibility at its heart, be that responsibility towards peers or, more broadly, those in wider society. Inevitably this meant re-thinking the purpose of the curriculum, which came to be less about “measurable ‘success’”⁸⁸ than it was about developing self-understanding, in other words each boy knowing “something about his own processes of thought, both as an individual and as a member of a group.”⁸⁹ In this, Rendcomb came therefore to embody the core components of Simpson’s thinking and it is notable that his resignation followed soon after the death of Noel Wills, a man whose idealism had been a constant source of inspiration to him.

Conclusion and Assessment

In attempting any general appraisal of Simpson, it is important initially to reflect not only on the impact he made directly on his contemporaries but also how his ideas around democracy and democratic forms of governance became accepted into more mainstream forms of schooling. The first of these is easier to identify and, whilst the article has previously mentioned the devotion inspired in Christian Schiller, it is likewise significant that none of the institutions with which Simpson was involved had a bad word to say about him. Although it was and remains customary for organisations to speak highly of their retiring members, the words of one alumnus of Rendcomb carry a genuine ring of authenticity:

He brought a constructive intellect to bear on school-mastering such as is very rare. Schools and teaching, moreover, provoked in him a sense of craftsmanship or artistry with all the intuitional flair that is second nature to the man who lives within his art.⁹⁰

Such sentiments were typical, and Simpson’s life clearly embodied the sort of devoted public service that he sought to instil in others.

Tracing the influence of his ideas is, however, more problematic – not least as any impact of, for example, his writing on the practice of individual teachers or schools is difficult to attribute directly. Nonetheless, this is not an impossible task and in certain ways his words can be seen as prophetic and forward-thinking. Citizenship and the development of citizenship education in schools represents a case in point. Simpson’s belief that an important part of a boys’ education was “the rights of active citizenship and of carrying out such duties as are imposed upon them by the community”⁹¹ was to find echo as early as 1936 and the formation of the Association for Education in Citizenship. Although they utilised a broader definition when trying to define what was meant by a “democratic school” they nevertheless followed Simpson in asserting that “The object of self-government is to bring everybody in; it is a way of releasing and unifying the dynamic of the whole community; a means of drawing everyone out of individualist isolation into co-operation for the common good.”⁹² Such comparisons percolate through even into more modern times with the influential Crick Report’s call for citizenship lessons to find and restore a “national identity”⁹³ seemingly chiming with Simpson’s call for, “a special course … designed … to throw light on the meaning of democratic citizenship.”⁹⁴ Student councils, too, often with decision-making powers, are now a common feature of many schools.

Away from the specifics of citizenship, Simpson’s belief that the most important purpose of any curriculum was to inspire in each individual student a desire to “continue his education after he leaves school, not necessarily … by studying the same subjects, but by reading and enquiring on his own account”⁹⁵ seems a precursor of what today is termed life-long learning. Nor was this a type of learning akin to the re-education common to the left and of the sort going back to the Owenites and Chartists. Instead, its liberal spirit seems more closely aligned to the later work of those such as the philosopher R. S. Peters, who was to argue not only that education was a normative process but that it involved developing the “cognitive perspective”, effectively a way of participating fully and productively in public life through an absorbing of the principles of procedure.⁹⁶

Such a point should also serve to remind us that Simpson’s progressivism and wider educational thought was not of the more obviously radical kind. Whilst he desired change and the breaking down of class boundaries – the justification for Rendcomb’s social mixture – he nevertheless sought to do so by changing the system from within – expanding and supplementing rather than destroying and re-building. An obvious example of this was his attitude to the public schools, a subject which came in later life increasingly to occupy his thinking. In his last published work, a small pamphlet addressing their future, Simpson had no inhibitions about outlining the contradiction, as he saw it, within his position: “I do not feel guilty of the least inconsistency in admiring their past achievements and … virtues … and believing at the same time that they are not what this country will require in the coming years.”⁹⁷ In light of future developments, Simpson’s words once more appear prophetic and, in outlining the moral duty that elite education had to expand its intake so as to include boys from poorer backgrounds, he was prefiguring today’s widening participation agendas and continuing calls for reform of the private sector.

There are therefore many avenues in which we can trace the legacy of Simpson’s work and thinking. In marrying up freedom with the attributes of “criticism, self-criticism and tolerance”⁹⁸ and doing so through entrusting children and young men with responsibility, Simpson was not only providing a unique example to his contemporaries but setting one for the future.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. See for example Stewart and McCann, The Educational Innovators, 92–95; and Stewart, Progressives and Radicals in English Education 1750–1970, 227–31.

^2. See Howlett, “James Herbert Simpson (1883–1959).” By contrast, Neill and MacMunn have been the subject of more substantial research – see for instance Bailey, A.S. Neill, and Howlett, “Freedom, Differentialism, and the Partnership Method.”

^3. See Osborne, James and James, A History of Rendcomb College; Benson, I Will Plant Me a Tree; Hope Simpson, Rugby Since Arnold: A History of Rugby School since 1842.

^4. Vincent Chapman, Professional Roots, 119–51.

^5. Simpson, Sane Schooling, 283.

^6. See de Ruvigny, The Roll of Honour, 481. Anthony Henry Simpson is listed as a Lieutenant to the Special Reserve of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, 24 December 1914. He died at the Base Hospital, Boulogne on 1 February 1915 of pneumonia contracted on active service.

^7. Simpson, Schoolmaster’s Harvest, 9.

^8. See Cunningham, Curriculum Change.

^9. As a case in point, even an “establishment” figure with whom Simpson can be compared – Chief Inspector of Elementary Schools, Edmond Holmes – never taught in a school beyond a few months, whilst other progressive headmasters such as Cecil Reddie and J. H. Badley did not sit on any Board of Education committees or contribute to the provision of teacher training.

^10. Cunningham, “Innovators, Networks and Structures,” 444.

^11. Simpson, “Freedom and Adolescence.”

^12. Osborne, James and James, Rendcomb College, 32–5.

^13. Simpson, The Future of the Public Schools.

^14. Skidelsky, Progressive Schools.

^15. Unlike Simpson however, even these men have had their champions; see Smith, Lionel Helbert; Stray, The Living Word; as well as relevant sections in Jones, A Vision Realised.

^16. Griffin-Beale, Christian Schiller, 48.

^17. Anon, “Mr J.H. Simpson.”

^18. In this Simpson is not alone and there are other notable cases of progressive educators being shaped by their early professional experiences. For example, A. S. Neill was affected deeply by the punishments he observed being meted out in Scottish schools through the use of the “tawse” whilst Edmond Holmes, albeit in a far more obvious way than Simpson, was to derive many of his ideas from his observations as a school inspector.

^19. Simpson, Howson of Holt, 78.

^20. Ibid., 30.

^21. See Benson, I Will; also Bushell, School Memories, 87–105.

^22. Bushell, School Memories, 89.

^23. Simpson, Howson, 52.

^24. Simpson, Schoolmaster’s Harvest, 107.

^25. Ibid., 109.

^26. Board of Education, “Report of H.M. Inspectors on Bolton Municipal Technical School.”

^27. Osborne, “Obituary,” 5. The quote in question comes from Simpson, Sane Schooling, 20.

^28. It could also be the case that the author of the obituary was thinking here of Prestolee School, only four miles from Bolton, which achieved fame for the reforming work done there by E. F. O’Neill. O’Neill, however, only took over in 1918 and at the time of Simpson’s inspections was at teacher training college in Crewe. For more information, see Burke, “‘The school without tears’.”

^29. Simpson, Schoolmaster’s Harvest, 110.

^30. Ibid.

^31. See for example Wills, Homer Lane; Bazeley, Homer Lane.

^32. Lytton, “Introduction,” 8.

^33. Simpson, Schoolmaster’s Harvest, 147.

^34. Ibid., 138.

^35. Ibid., 140.

^36. Simpson, Sane Schooling, 105.

^37. Simpson, Schoolmaster’s Harvest. 178.

^38. Hope Simpson, Rugby, 163.

^39. Simpson, An Experiment, 10.

^40. Ibid., 13–14.

^41. Ibid., 14.

^42. Simpson, An Adventure, 72.

^43. Ibid., 73.

^44. Ibid., 72.

^45. Simpson, Schoolmaster’s Harvest, 106.

^46. Holmes, What Is, 67.

^47. Simpson, An Adventure, 74.

^48. Ibid., 176.

^49. Howlett, “Henry Caldwell Cook.”

^50. Cook, The Play Way, 37.

^51. For the best descriptions of MacMunn’s method see MacMunn, A Path to Freedom.

^52. Dewey, Democracy and Education, was also published in the same year as Simpson, An Experiment.

^53. Dewey, Democracy, 166.

^54. Simpson, An Adventure, 183.

^55. Simpson, Schoolmaster’s Harvest, 145.

^56. Simpson, An Adventure, 108–9.

^57. Ibid., 111, italics in the original.

^58. See Bowmaker, A Little School on the Downs.

^59. Simpson, Schoolmaster’s Harvest, 153.

^60. Wills, ed., The Collected Prose, 85.

^61. Preparatory schools were typically those schools for ages 5–11, which acted as “feeder” institutions to the elite public schools. Elementary schools referred to those schools for ages 5–11 which were organised and run by the state. The consequence of such an arrangement was that Rendcomb contained a mixture of students from different social backgrounds.

^62. See Osborne, James and James, Rendcomb College, 23.

^63. Simpson, Sane Schooling, 16.

^64. Much of this thinking derived from Hall, Adolescence.

^65. Simpson, Adolescence, 87.

^66. Field, Champagne Days, 6.

^67. Ibid., 12.

^68. Simpson, Sane Schooling, 78.

^69. Osborne, James and James, Rendcomb College, 34.

^70. Ibid., 177.

^71. See Howlett, Progressive Education, 141–76 for an explanation of the Fellowship schools. In relation to the New Ideals group, published records indicate that Simpson attended all of their meetings from 1915 to 1923 and was, as the paper has earlier mentioned, a member of Council for the Committee from 1919 onwards. This meant that he had a degree of responsibility for organising the conferences and setting their agendas.

^72. Simpson, Sane Schooling, 142–3.

^73. Christopher Watkins, “Inventing International Citizenship,” 336–7.

^74. Simpson, “Speech by the Founder,” 7–8.

^75. Simpson, Sane Schooling, 222–3.

^76. Howlett, Progressive, 157.

^77. See Field, Champagne, 36–42.

^78. The pamphlet in question is Simpson, The Public Schools, 1923.

^79. Ibid., 4.

^80. Ibid., 16.

^81. See for example Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School; Mangan and Walvin, Manliness and Morality; Newsome, Godliness and Good Learning.

^82. Dishon, “Games of Character: Team Sports,” 378.

^83. Osborne, Obituary, 6.

^84. Lewis, “Mummy, Matron and the Maids,” 268.

^85. Simpson, Sane Schooling, 266.

^86. Ibid., 283.

^87. Brehony, “A New Education for a New Era,” 733.

^88. Simpson, Sane Schooling, 267.

^89. Ibid., 288.

^90. Lucas, “Untitled Piece,” 8.

^91. Simpson, An Adventure, 191.

^92. Association for Education in Citizenship, Democracy in School Life, 13–14.

^93. Crick, Education for Citizenship, 17.

^94. Simpson, Sane Schooling, 276.

^95. Ibid., 266.

^96. See in particular Peters, Ethics and Education.

^97. Simpson, The Future, 6.

^98. Simpson, Schoolmaster’s Harvest, 11.