Edmond Holmes and Progressive Education

John Howlett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138777866
• eBook ISBN: 9781317678199
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

Although considered a figure of great importance and influence by his contemporaries, Edmond Holmes has been consigned to relative obscurity in the progressive educational tradition. This book reinstates Holmes as a key figure in the history of progressive education, both as a school inspector and educational thinker, who was instrumental in forming a set of ideas and principles which continue to resonate in education today. Combining biographical detail and key critical analysis, Edmond Holmes and Progressive Education brings together the key ideas and aspects of Holmes' life and establishes his writings as amongst the most insightful ever produced by an educationalist.

Throughout his inspectorial career, Holmes scorned mechanical obedience in the classroom and was appalled by the inability of teachers to allow pupils to express themselves freely and imaginatively. His seminal publications positioned him at the vanguard of educational reforms. His work, however, was not exclusively educational, and throughout his life Holmes published on religion, philosophy, poetry and literature, subsuming his educational viewpoint into a much wider 'philosophy of life'. His spiritual leanings and call for an improved education system, which would draw out the potential for development from within the child, inspired successive generations of progressive educators.

In studying Edmond Holmes in detail, this book makes an important contribution to current debates surrounding creativity and the curriculum, in particular, the need for alternative educational voices within the state system of regulation. This book will be key reading for postgraduate students and researchers who are interested in progressive education, the history of education and educational policy and politics.

Chapter 1
Beginnings and influences

Early life and school

In one of the finest of his late poems Edmond Holmes was to refer lyrically to the 'speck-like seed' of the 'mighty banyan-tree...In which it hides its life's totality' (Holmes, 1918, 'The True Self'). Although he was here speaking metaphorically to describe what he saw as a timelessness to the nature of existence, such a reference seems to carry an additional importance as it indicated a knowing awareness on the part of its author that his own life, work and ideas had to that point been inexorably bound together. Whilst therefore on the surface Holmes' intention within that poem may indeed have been purely philosophical and an attempt to acknowledge his increasing indebtedness to an Eastern way of thinking which saw the inherent Oneness of the individual with the Universe, one cannot help wondering if he had as well somewhere in his mind reflections upon his own infancy and the idea of the child as 'father of the man'. At the age of 68 this would certainly not have been out of keeping with the need to contemplate on a life lived fully and its varied achievements and it certainly reflects the trend for poets and writers as they get older to become more meditative and worldly. More significantly however it betrays Holmes' close attachment to that most Romantic of conceits which placed great importance on the spiritual interconnectivity of both infant and adult. Although such speculation derived mainly, as we shall later see, from an emergent religious viewpoint which sought to develop a theory of spiritual and temporal unity, it also gives an indication of the close attention paid to the notion of the Self and its more global position in relation to both time and place – contained in both present, past and future simultaneously.

Holmes' later philosophy and its emphasis upon inward contemplation and outgrowth of the soul in many ways serves to give added primacy to the earlier years as, under this framework, one was contiguous with the other – the life course was not one that was static to be discretely compartmentalized but part instead of an idealized whole to be conceived of holistically. This represented then the adoption of a comparatively radical stance and, although personally a contemplative, gentle and benign individual, old age for Holmes certainly did not lead to a corresponding softening or mellowing of his views. By contrast, the passing years did nothing to blunt the anger of the earlier young man but were rather a time in which he became ever more set against the mainstream and prone to greater unorthodoxy of thought. With his later beliefs in the rebirth and infinite continuity of the soul and its regeneration his was a very loud raging against the dying of many established lights. The link therefore between the youthful Holmes and his later life and works should not, and indeed cannot, be ignored if only as a means of doing justice to his own intellectual prescription. Although such forms of 'psycho history' are notoriously problematic and speculative and should be treated with caution, given the philosophical importance Holmes himself attached to his early life it certainly befalls the historian to explore in greater depth the events within it and the later influences they were to have on his own writing. Such biographical explorations have equally long been fertile ground for historians of education (particularly given its close association to oral history) and nowhere is this more pertinent than in the case of Holmes, whose many and varied later ideas can be traced to aspects of his own life.

With the best of intentions however details of these early years are characteristically vague and not assisted by Holmes' own autobiography which is reticent and has little to say on the matter. Born in 1850 at Moycashel, County Westmeath, Holmes' father Robert (1803—1870) was an Irish landlord whilst his mother Jane, also Irish, originated from Dublin. Her father had been William Henn, a master in chancery, a position responsible for assisting the legal process through the gathering of evidence and which then carried with it the reputation of today's barristers. Holmes himself was the fourth son and, as one of seven, was to have four brothers (including T.R.E Holmes the noted historian and classical scholar¹) and two sisters. His ancestors we are told came over with William of Orange and thus formed part of what today is referred to as the 'Protestant Ascendency'. This movement was characterized, as Claydon and McBride (1999) best tell us, by the establishment of a hegemony and dominance of the Protestant faith over that of the Catholics and other minorities which became enacted via a succession of early punitive measures designed to strip Catholic landowners of their former power and, in some cases, land and territory. Such supremacy was exemplified within Holmes' own family through his maternal grandfather who had inherited his position at the tender age of 24 in the main through his household connections.

At the time however of Holmes' birth (1850) such dominance had ceased to be so obviously political and instead was more focussed around the cultural restoration that was later to be closely associated with those intellectuals grouped around Lady Augusta Gregory² including W.B. Yeats, John Millington Synge and the renewal of the Abbey Theatre. We know that this milieu represented much of the world Holmes inhabited; one of his early family friends (and a cousin through marriage) for example was the composer Charles Villiers Stanford who, according to his official biographer, saw much of Holmes during school vacations and was later to be the subject of his friend's kindness as Holmes acted as a go-between for Stanford during his troubled courtship. Stanford's other early friends included the Graves brothers – Alfred Percival (born 1846) and Charles Larcom (born 1856) – both of whom were also to enjoy literary careers in their own right whilst the former is today equally well known as being the father of the poet Robert and a school inspector of some note.

It was this latter role, as we shall see in the following chapter, which was to bring Graves ior a brief time into a close working relationship with Holmes at the Board of Education. Were they here, nearly forty years later, renewing old acquaintances? It seems unlikely that they did not know each other – Graves himself in his autobiography lists his families' friends, many of whom like Sir Thomas Larcom and Lord Dunraven were at the time key players in the political landscape of Dublin, as well as families such as 'the Joys, Wallaces, Blackburns, Gales, Lloyds and Stanfords' (Graves, 1930, 22). Landowners such as those within the various branches of the Holmes family would therefore, perhaps through politics or business, have intersected with these and formed part of a burgeoning and connected municipal middle class with close personal and professional ties. Regardless, Edmond was clearly raised in the cultured and connected environment characteristic of those within families of the Holmes' standing – upper-middle class almost minor gentry although with none of the lavishness or louche manner of those directly above. As he appositely puts it, 'for many generations my forbears on both sides had enjoyed possessions and privileges which were denied to the bulk of their fellow men. And they and we took all that for granted' (Holmes, 1920a, 8).

There is evidence too that Holmes visited much of the rest of Ireland during both his boyhood and as a returning young man and its landscapes were to imprint themselves clearly and powerfully upon his memory and conscience. This influence is most apparent when reading the poetry within his first two published collections (of 1876 and 1879b) much of which addressed, in very direct terms, real places on the West Coast of Ireland particularly those coastal spots within the Counties of Clare and Mayo. Such indeed was the strength of these associations that the landscapes within the poems (which ultimately were to be numbered amongst his best) became imbued with a genius loci which could not have come one feels from anything other than a close and nuanced attachment that went beyond mere superficial appreciation. Holmes himself spoke fondly of his earliest impressions as being of 'heather and cotton grass and bog ditches and the scent of "turf" smoke' (Ibid., 7–8). Poetic as such language is it is clear that, beyond such memories, the spirit of these rugged exteriors was to act as the basis for his later pantheist associations that equated God with a Nature in which, like Wordsworth whom he long admired, he was to find not merely aesthetic beauty but also a sense of guiding morality. Forged therefore in Ireland, his was to be an active and lived love of the outdoors; in later life, Holmes was to continually be attracted to rural locales and demonstrate prowess as a fisherman, rambler and mountaineer all of which brought him closer to the lands and landscapes he revered. This is an important point to note as this engagement with Nature was to represent the first phase of Holmes' mature philosophy and was ultimately to act as a stepping stone on the way to his more global theory of spiritual unity and love.

Enlightening as this world of literature, discourse and travel surely was, it was nonetheless offset by the increasing impact that more established and orthodox religion was having in the young boy's life. Initially this was to spring from his mother, a strict disciplinarian, who took it upon herself early on to take care of her children's religious upbringing which she seems to have done with quite characteristic verve and vigour: 'I was brought up with extreme and consistent severity...My mother, who was deeply and sincerely religious, had thought it her duty to drill religion into each of her children, and had done so by the forcible methods which were then in vogue' (Ibid., 9–11).

This boyhood obeisance was to be further reinforced following the Holmes' family move to London and Edmond's attendance, from 1863, at Merchant Taylors' School then housed in the heart of the City. Much of this stricture was to come via the teaching and sermonizing of the then headmaster James Augustus Hessey whose faith, as we shall see, was notably redoubtable and whose pronouncements accorded with much of the ethos and values of the Victorian public school system. It is indeed indicative in the first instance that Holmes was sent 'across the water' for his education and that the family moved with him; whilst the trappings and benefits of a traditional public school education were then as now self-evident, it still says much for his families' Anglo-Irish descent that he was not home-schooled or sent to a religious institution within the land of his birth. Those from the Holmes' social stratum inevitably looked to England and the Union for guidance and governance, part of which involved deference to the continued authority of the Church of England whose principles underlay the development of the Empire and the wider preservation of social order. Similarly, they themselves tended to follow English modes of thinking, culture and occupations with the law, the armed forces and politics being particularly common career destinations. Holmes' Irishness must therefore be couched in its very specific niche which led inevitably to a particular paternalistic and conservative way of thinking which was also to carry through into the early part of his adult life with, for example, his belief in the congenital superiority of particular groups (typically his own class) over others.

In many ways, this educational trajectory embodied perfectly that of a late Victorian gentleman and nowhere was this more evident in his parents' choice of school. Set up in the City of London in 1561, Merchant Taylors' was conceived originally as a place for scholars from both rich and poor backgrounds and under, initially, the dynamic guidance of Richard Mulcaster – one of the greatest early public school headmasters – it strove to promote a well-rounded curriculum focussing upon the many different branches of learning. This spirit continued into the succeeding centuries particularly through the endeavours of another equally dynamic figure James Townley who sought to bring both mathematics and drama into the curriculum, both of which were subjects that were then deeply unfashionable and perceived as superficial and lightweight. Today Merchant Taylors' no longer carries the reputation and lustre of the other schools who formed part of the 'Clarendon Nine'³ (Eton, Harrow, Westminster, Winchester and so on) yet in its own time it was easily considered their equal and counted Edmund Spenser, John Webster, Lancelot Andrewes and Robert Herrick amongst its alumni. As David Turner has made clear, at this time Merchant Taylors' and its near neighbour St. Paul's 'continued to educate few landowners' sons, filling their rolls instead from the capital's highly varied middle class, including the sons of business men' (Turner, 2015, 114). Although not originally a native of either London or England, this was much more Holmes' demographic; being neither part of the socially well-connected ancient aristocracy or heavily landed new money of Eton nor having descended from the intellectual lineages of the Wykehamists, his parents' choice of school (middle class and haute bourgeois) was still highly indicative both of their background and the later career aspiration of their professional son.

The more ancient literary connections within the school may not though one feels have been lost on the young Holmes who during these years began writing the poetry that would, in the end, form such a major part of his literary output. Although dismissed within his autobiography as the kin d of quickly dispensed with juvenilia rhymed out by many an adolescent public school boy on the cusp of manhood it at least indicates the intellectual world surrounding the young Holmes and the inspiration which the school and its distinguished old pupils seemed to generate. Although pertinent questions were then being asked about the composition of the curriculum within the public schools through the Clarendon Commission (1864) – the lack of and in some cases open hostility toward science and practical instruction was a prevailing concern – their emphasis upon Classics, Literature and more traditional branches of learning were to clearly give Holmes an intellectual grounding that he was to put more fully to good use later on in his own writings which covered such a wide hinterland.

Indeed, when considering the narrowness of what was taught in these schools, one can safely say that Merchant Taylors' was hardly amongst the worst offenders in that regard; under the stewardship of Hessey for example the school had worked hard to improve its staff to student ratio, introduced meals at lunchtime and begun to take more seriously the teaching of both mathematics and science. Whilst in part these moves were instigated by the major criticisms within the aforementioned Clarendon Commission, there was clearly too an internal impetus for change and this trend was allowed to continue as the school expanded via the creation of new premises tor the teaching of modern languages, commerce, games and mathematics. Whilst these changes reached their full fruition mostly in the period just after Holmes left, he was nonetheless within an institution which was more clearly attenuated to the emergent needs of a transforming modern industrial society than some of its bedfellows who remained by comparison stuck within insular and archaic frameworks. Again, whilst impossible to attribute with any degree of accuracy, it is certainly conceivable that Holmes' interest in science and its advances which he was to use later to support his belief in the evolution of the soul found itself stoked by the classes taken whilst at school.

Despite these more positive moves and a commensurate widening of the intellectual horizons, there remained still however the shackles of a strong religious ethic and one cannot overlook either this aspect of Holmes' schooling particularly as it was to impinge upon much of his later educational thinking in a far more direct way. A cartoon of Hessey by 'Ape' in Vanity Fair in 1874 (by which time he was Archdeacon of Middlesex) portrays a somnambulant, heavily bewhiskered, pince-nez wearing priest dozing in a pulpit. As with so many of Pellegrini's⁴ distinctive caricatures, this perfectly captures the essence of the man who was well known for his strict pronouncements on sin and who was to be both Holmes' Divinity teacher and beacon of sermonizing authority as his headmaster. Public school headmasters then, as to some extent now, had ample opportunity should they so wish to mould schools in their own image (one only has to think of Thomas Arnold's muscular Christianity) and one of Hessey's earlier and more successful publications had been A Scripture Argument against Permitting Marriage with a Wife's Sister (1850) the Very title of which indicates both his general religious orthodoxy, moral rectitude and wide appeals to tradition. This was a point not lost on Holmes whose autobiography spoke – in hindsight perhaps a little harshly – of this influence permeating down to the classroom: 'There [at Merchant Taylors'] I was taught by Classics and mathematics, or rather I had to learn these subjects as best I could from dreary textbooks, with but little help or guidance and with no inspiration from our overburdened masters' (Holmes, 1920a, 10).

As will become evident in later chapters, Holmes' fully developed educational philosophy was one standing in marked contrast to the experiences of his childhood, thereby serving to indicate the importance of these early years, even if they acted only as a sacrificial 'straw man' by which he could outline his more radical vision of freedom. In particular, the ways in which he was variously force-fed religion both at home and at school in the hope of producing a Christian gentleman obeisant to the Scriptures came to indicate the futility of 'teaching' an ideal through simple ritualism and recitation. This was a fault he later observed both within schools in England in which Bible study was a cornerstone of many a curriculum and, from a different context, in Germany where the ideal was more militaristic. In both cases however, Holmes saw only attendant failure with the upshot being the creation of climates of disinterested atheism or else blind unthinking obedience.

Nevertheless, whilst he may have laboured under a self-perceived climate of fear, by Holmes* own admission these were years of academic success, particularly as he rose through the school. Driven by an avowed need to distinguish himself –perhaps through the need to compete with his equally cerebral older siblings – his 'periodic bursts of almost abnormal industry' (Ibid.) were to pay rich dividends and official probation books (lists of all pupils showing their academic performance in school examinations) indicate Holmes performed exceptionally well in his annual class examinations. Merchant Taylors' records further show Holmes to be a frequent prize winner and, in the year of his leaving, he is recorded as winning two prestigious awards including the prize for History. It was these endeavours that were to be a contributory factor in his obtaining a Thomas White Scholarship to study at Oxford.

Oxford and beyond

Holmes matriculated at St John's College Oxford on 28th June 1869. The course for which he was enrolled was Literae Humaniores (today called Classics) which then consisted of two parts and lasted four years. The first part of his degree programme (five terms) was known as Mods and was designed to provide a fluency in both Latin and Ancient Greek. The second part (seven terms) was colloquially called Greats and consisted, crudely, of demonstrating both knowledge of Greek History and Philosophy. In many ways this was an extension of much of the work he would have done in school although it would nonetheless be grossly unfair to dismiss this as an easy option for which he had been suitably prepared. It was after all a longer than average degree for which Holmes was ultimately awarded a First in both halves and whose examinations were fiendishly difficult including complex unseen passages and gobbets demanding elucidation as well as critical analysis. According to one contemporary, who was to later become a friend and educational colleague, Holmes easily wore the donnish costume of his surrounds and was 'even in youth so manifestly of the very choicest "cru" academically speaking' (Macan, 1937, 2). Although therefore still an intellectual high-flyer perhaps the difficulties and punishing reading demands of the course contributed later to Holmes' fran...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Beginnings and influences
• 2 The years of Inspection
• 3 Edmond Holmes as poet and religious writer
• 4 What is and the key educational works
• 5 Holmes, society and the later writings
• 6 Final years and legacy
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index