The Story of a Great SchoolmasterWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
The Story of a Great Schoolmaster
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Sanderson, F. W. (Frederick William), 1857-1922; School principals -- Great Britain -- Biography
It was in the early stage when the Eric Yarrow memorial was to be
nothing more than a museum of industrial history and organisation
that Sanderson set afoot the building at Oundle which is now known
by that name. Apparently he did not get much inspiration over to the
architect, and at any rate the edifice that presently rose was a very
weak and dull-looking one, more suitable for a herbarium or a minor
lecture-hall than for a temple of creative dreams. It was a premature
materialisation, done in the stress and under the cramping limitations
of war time. Long before it was finished Sanderson's imaginations had
outgrown it. I think this unconfessed architectural disappointment
probably played a large part in the subsequent development of the idea
of the school chapel, still to be planned, still capable of being made
a spacious and beautiful building. To the latter dream he transferred
more and more of the ideas that arose properly out of the germ of the
Eric Yarrow memorial.
At first the House of Vision was to have been no more than an
industrial museum. It was not to be used as a class-room or
lecture-room. It was to be empty of chairs, desks, and the like,
and clear for any one to go in to think and dream. About its walls,
diagrams and charts were to display the progress of man from the
sub-human to his present phase of futile power and hope. There were to
be time-charts of the whole process of history, and a few of these have
been made. As his idea ripened it broadened. The memorial ceased to be
a symbol merely of industrial reorganisation and progress, and became a
temple to the whole human adventure. He began to stress first social
and then imaginative growth. The charts were to be full and accurate,
everything shown was to be precisely true, but there was to be no
teaching in the building, no direction beyond the form and spirit of
the place.
And so while the scaffolds of the workmen rose about the commonplace
little erection in the school fields, the schoolmaster in his
day-dreams realised more and more the full measure of the opportunity
he was missing.
The realisation of the past is the realisation of the future, and it
was an easy transition to pass to the idea of this building as an
expression of the creative will in man. In it the individual boy was to
realise the aim of the school and of schooling and living. It was to be
the eye of the school, its soul, its headlight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account