Beyond the walls: University lifelong learning and

the legacy of James Stuart

Adrian BarlowUALL Conference, Clare College Cambridge

20 March 2012

Mill Lane: The Local Examinations and Lectures Syndicate (left) and Stuart House (right)

Stuart House (1925) and the Mill Lane Lecture Rooms (1926)

James Stuart (1843 – 1911)and the ideal of ‘social good’

• “Among those classes whose circumstances inevitably debar them from residing at an University, there exists a wide-spread desire for higher education education of a systematic kind.

….• When these people cry for bread, a stone should

not be given to them, as is too frequently the case with those popular lectures which are got up by the Mechanics’ Institutes and the like.”

Letter to the University 23 November 1871

“The object of all education is to teach people to think for

themselves, that is the direct or specified object of what is called Higher Education. Reading and

writing are one of the many means of acquiring education … but reading and writing are not

education any more than a fork and knife constitute a good dinner, and

a man who is educated in the truest sense may even be unable to read or write, for an educated man is a man who is capable of thinking

about what he sees.”

1871Lecture to the Leeds Ladies’ Educational Association:

‘University Extension’

Extension Lectures – for whom?

• Derby Public Meeting 2 May 1873:

• Young Men of the Middle and Upper Classes• Ladies: (i) Those who have left school (ii)

Governesses and Schoolmistresses• Working Men

“One of the advantages of the system about to be inaugurated would be that it would offer a more liberal education to those

about to become teachers in elementary schools.”

Liberal education and liberal pursuits

are exercises of the mind, of

reason, of reflection.

John Henry Newman:

The Idea of a University

Servile work:

bodily labour, mechanical employment and the like, in which the mind has little or no part.

Key elements of James Stuart’s ‘peripatetic university’

• Run from an ancient university: lecturers appointed by Cambridge

• Establishment of Local Centres and university colleges in large cities Different levels of commitment: Lecture (with syllabus), Class (with questions), weekly papers, examinations leading to Certificates

• Affiliated colleges (Nottingham, Leeds, Exeter etc.)– able to support students financially; remission of one year of Cambridge tripos.

Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter: home of the Exeter Technical and Extension College

“In grateful recollection of the Right Honourable Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, Bart. and as a memorial of the part he bore in the advancement of education through the methods of local examination and of teaching beyond the limits of the university this tablet is set here by some who knew how wisely and how well he worked.”

“A career of almost unbounded

usefulness seems open to the

Universities if they will respond to the

call of the nation for aid in supplying a

better general education to the

great body of their countrymen.”

Thomas Acland: 1858

James Stuart’s legacy (i)“The degree in which Cambridge has, during the last twenty years, come into useful relations with sections of the community which were previously regarded as beyond the sphere of its influence is, we hold, largely attributable to your inspiring initiative and to the wise principles of administration which, mainly under your guidance, the University laid down.”

James Stuart’s legacy (ii)Report of the Conference on ‘The Universities and Adult

Education’ (6 December 1945)

• ‘The Universities recognise extra-mural teaching as one of their normal functions and regard its maintenance as one of national importance.

• The Universities make a special contribution to adult education in maintaining intellectual freedom and standards, and generally in advancing and enriching the cultural life of the community.’

James Stuart’s legacy (iii)

• Widening participation• Encouraging access to higher education• Asserting the value of adult liberal education• Gaining recognition for lifelong learning within

higher education• Insisting on universities’ social obligation to

engage with the wider community

Social value and social good

• ‘Add in social value to reveal true worth, report advises’

Times Higher Education, 22.December 2012

Through a Glass, Darkly: Measuring the Social Value of Universities McNicholl and Kelly, 2012

Social value vs. social good

“There is still a tendency to confine any possible social good to the usual litany about ‘productivity’. ‘competitiveness’, ‘innovation’ and ‘growth’. This discourse tends to be structured so that the non-economic is equated with the private, the economic with the public.”

Stefan Collini, What are Universities For? (2012)

Past, Present & Future: the Public Value of Humanities & Social Sciences (British Academy 2010)

• “The humanities explore what it means to be human: the words, ideas, narratives and the art and artefacts that help us make sense of our lives and the world we live in; how we have created it and are created by it.”

Sir Adam Roberts

• “English is a discipline which attends to the imaginative exploration of human experience.”

David Holbrook, English in a University Education (1995)

Madingley Hall, University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education

“If we lose the focus on lifelong learning, we lose the whole raison d’être of the university.” Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, UALL Conference 19.3.2012