New Evidence on Life, Learning and Medical Care at Beacon Hill School

Abstract

ocuments NEW EVIDENCE ON LIFE, LEARNING AND MEDICAL CARE AT BEACON HILL SCHOOL W B Educational Studies / U. of British Columbia Vancouver, , Canada   .@.   hree new and evocative sets of documents on Beacon Hill School (“”) Tare here made available. They contain unprecedentedly detailed evidence of the school’s physical layout and day-to-day operations. Apart from matters of daily life, they suggest ’s relations with the state, and raise questions about wider social forces in the Britain of the late s and early s. The documents also invite readers to make an imaginary visit to Telegraph House, Beacon Hill, in the early s. With the help of these documents, as a well-known American radio commentator used to say, “You are there.” Although there is much published work on the educational theories of Bertrand and Dora Russell, especially those they relied on at , we know far less than we would like of daily life in the school. Anyone interested in experimental or “progressive” education knows how hard it is to find and to produce reliable accounts on all sides—pros, cons, and the shades of grey between. With publication of Documents –, we go some distance to remedying that lack for . Document  is a reminiscence of daily life and learning at  by Katharine Tait, Bertie and Dora’s daughter. Tait’s document dates from the end of , and appears just over  years after the events it relates. Katharine Tait lives in the very house where her parents, her brother, John, and she spent happy holidays in the s and early s.  Katharine Tait’s memoir is an extended answer to questions put by William Bruneau to her, in the first instance through an intermediary—Richard A. Rempel. Once contact was established, the Tait–Bruneau correspondence flourished without further help from Dr. Rempel. But that first exchange would not have occurred without his help, and I wish publicly to thank him. russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s.  (winter –): – The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U.  -    Document  consists of medical reports on  prepared between  and  by Dr. Florence Erin Smedley, an officer of the local English authority responsible for children’s welfare in Sussex. Document  contains letters and pupil lists in fulfilment of ’s legal obligation to report under the Children Act . The lists are jointly the work of the Russells and of Dr. Smedley; a first list of boarding pupils would be prepared by the Russells, then checked by Dr. Smedley against her own records. The letters are Dora’s clarifications, additions, and subtractions to the attendance lists. Together, they show how detailed was surveillance of . None of these documents makes claims of totality or pretends to “final truth”. There is no need, as all are original and primary sources offered by participants —one (Katharine Tait) a pupil at the school and the owners’ daughter, another a busy pair of civil servants anxious to preserve children’s health and welfare by standards of the time, and yet another the harried owners of . It is for us researchers and, one supposes, enthusiasts or opponents, to make inferences and assessments. All three documents are consistent on matters of detail, yet provide markedly different perspectives on . Katharine recalls what it was like to be eating, learning, playing in one room or other at , and enjoying the natural world that surrounded the school. She recovers a child’s view of space and place (down to the fascinatingly horrid cesspool to the west of the house). In the end, she detects and describes the inescapable order of things and events in daily life at —times, friendships, study, exploration in grounds and town—and how  children could not imagine the world otherwise. On the other hand, we have Erin Smedley, whose outsider’s view of the school is a verbal picture taken on a single day each year, incomplete even so (as photographs and pictures necessarily are). The Introduction records ideas, policies, and expectations that may have shaped Dr. Smedley’s perspective. But it is for the reader, in the end, to sort these interpretive matters out for himself or herself. In order that readers have background they may need to make...