6 minute read

Peter Cunningham

Next Article
Roger Green

Roger Green

More Hot News from the Archive

Peter Cunningham

Advertisement

M

odern archives must be multi-media and, after the excitement of finding something that had been lost, … the next hot news is not video but

audio.

Some 30 years ago, our then Librarian/Archivist Liz Edwards together with historian Sallie Purkis, recorded interviews with staff and students. Cassettes are now being digitised with remarkable quality, entertaining and enlightening to hear. Good examples are memories from students of the wartime years, recorded at Homerton Roll Reunions in the early 1990s. Light-hearted and full of interest about social life in College and in Cambridge, the constraints of war, as well as their academic and professional experiences. Two themes resonate with other items in this Newsletter: memories of their colleagues from Sierra Leone featured in the lost film (see production stills previous page); and students’ encounters with Principal Alice Skillicorn, some daunted by her strict demeanour, others warmed by the personal interest and detailed memory she showed on other occasions –more about Miss Skillicorn in the next article.

But for the moment keeping with recorded interviews brings us (apparently seamlessly) to the RSM Heritage Project, now re-emerging from lockdown. Following a suggestion made at the recent AGM, the Principal agreed to be interviewed by Steve Watts and me, recorded on Zoom and uploaded for public access on YouTube. Geoff provides an inspiring account of promoting the arts through his varied career in higher education, from Cambridge to Liverpool, Dundee, Royal Holloway and back to Cambridge. He also reflects on leading the College through its period of post-Charter growth, as Homerton has played a distinctively progressive role in 21st century Cambridge. This interview provides not only a valuable document to archive for posterity, but a welcome contribution by the RSMs to valedictory celebration of Geoff’s Principalship. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoiZ3JL7OuI

Mathematicians, too, have made a start on committing their departmental memories to history, recording a fruitful discussion of how their subject developed in the last three decades of last century. Homerton acquired a high profile in developing teachers for the teaching and learning of maths in primary and secondary schools, over a period of curricular, cultural and technological change. The opportunities and challenges are interestingly revealed, and it’s to be hoped that other groups of RSMs might take the opportunities presented regarding their own subject. The archive has a wealth of documentary material that could provide a backdrop or a focus for this kind of discussion.

Finally, we can observe how far our archive has come in the last 40 years …

… from Homerton Roll News 1979

An item in Homerton Roll News of 1979 reminds us how the archive has grown and Miss Skillicorn’s crucial posthumous role in its development. From library cupboards in the Black and White building, via a basement cellar in Cavendish, to its penthouse suite in Queen’s Wing, with garden views and stunning sunsets. Rich seams of history are preserved, as College continues to benefit from this asset in its new home. The archive made a striking historical and artistic contribution to our 250th celebration in 2018; this was followed by Sue Conrad’s exhibit documenting the Royal Charter on its tenth anniversary, sadly frustrated by the pandemic but we hope this work may be more fully appreciated on a future occasion, with the opening of a new Dining Hall, perhaps?

Even more news from the Archive: teacher education in troubled times

Miss Skillicorn has gained two mentions in ‘More Hot News from the Archives’ but she features again in a significant new book. Life and Death in Higher Education by Clare Debenham is the dramatic and ominous title of a volume published this year by Cambridge-based Lutterworth Press. RSMs might be scared off by her subtitle ‘A political and sociological analysis of British Colleges of Education’, but Debenham researched extensively in the Homerton archive, and her lively text follows our former archivist and librarian Elizabeth Edwards in a thought-provoking but controversial analysis of Alice Skillicorn.

Liz Edwards published her challenging work on Women in teacher training colleges, 1900-1960: a culture of femininity (London: Routledge) in 2001, while books and journals carried chapters and articles on Mary Allan and Skillicorn who between them led Homerton for 57 years. The latter was in many ways an outsider in college, coming from a working-class background, her father a shoemaker; her degree was B.Sc. from London School of Economics rather than Oxbridge, and she attracted unfair criticism on her appearance and dress, as well as sometimes on her relationships with staff. She was accused by some of being autocratic. Yet she made a significant contribution to Homerton by improving its financial position and successfully campaigning for the college to have its own nursery school. As a result of her innovations the college was visited in 1941 by R.A. Butler, President of the Board of Education, who subsequently introduced the 1944 Education Act. Under her leadership the college grew academically. Debenham’s work is ominous but timely as our College and our University, along with Oxford, the Russell Group, and many other universities as well as professional bodies, have responded this summer to an even more controversial ‘market review’ of initial teacher education undertaken by the DfE. Paul Warwick and Stephen Grounds have been leading informative discussion by RSMs on this topic

Debenham’s book traces the fortunes of teacher-training through many of our own careers as colleges expanded rapidly, introduced B.Ed and later BA Education degrees, before many closures and mergers with local polytechnics and universities. She draws on interviews and archive material to record their ‘life’. What she could not have predicted as she researched and wrote, was a new attempt by government to impose central control of the teaching profession, and professional preparation of teachers in universities and schools.

David Bridges recently reviewed Debenham’s book in the Times Higher Education, observing that ‘at their peak in 1968 there were 113 local authority colleges and 53 run by voluntary bodies’, a year when ‘some 40,000 men and women entered these colleges … compared with about 50,000 entering universities’. He recalls how from 1974 onwards, most were closed or merged, while a few diversified and became universities in their own right, and notes her account of the colleges’ ‘death’ as a starting point for ‘provocative analysis and questions about how and where teacher education is best provided inside, or increasingly, outside higher education.’

Competition 2020 – Editor’s Photo Quiz

Photo taken on Jesus Green – Time for the Answers

Level 1 Question: What was the year? 2020 (of course): March 30th, one week into lockdown number 1 to be precise. Level 2 Question: How many people are in the picture? Not quite sure but at least one – man in red jacket carrying a full Sainsbury’s shopping bag, bottom left; definitely more litter bins than people though. Level 3 Question: How many trees are in blossom? I hope that at least some of you think there are three – but no, just one! Never trust a camera some people say.

A more intriguing fact (at least to me) was that during all the time I was out for my daily walk on Jesus Green I only met one person I knew: Anne Thwaites (twice). On one occasion I did hear someone shouting “Libby, Libby” but then realised they were calling their dog.

This article is from: