1959c: William Boyd - Contributing to Kilquhanity Building Fund
Glasgow University
John Aitkenhead was in the first cohort of students who studied for the newly presented degree in Education at University of Glasgow.
University of Glasgow (1950)
c1959
My dear John,
I have pleasure in sending a contribution to your building fund. If there is still need I will be happy to repeat later on.
I have been thinking over your very interesting undertaking and am wondering if you are getting all the value out of the experiment that you might. It is good to have a school like yours where some children get a real chance to grow into a good personality and way of life. But I would like to have a distillation of the experience for everybody wanting a better kind of education. In a word I want to have the ideas that have come to you and that are still coming presented in a form that will set more folk thinking.
Have you done any writing about Kilquhanity? If you have it has not got to me. I know that you have been very fully occupied with the school and may possibly not have found time to do much writing. But without some exposition of your principles you have only done half of your job.
15th July: I got stuck at this point yesterday because I was not quite sure about how best to put a suggestion I wanted to make to you. The simplest course, I think, will be to make it. If there is no need for it or if you don’t think there is anything in it no harm will be done.
Here you are conducting a most interesting practical experiment. I want to know what is coming out of it in the way of new ideas and methods. I have made myself acquainted with new schools both in this country and America in an attempt to write the history of the New Education Fellowship, and I am worried by the absence of clear thinking on the part of those responsible for them. I have asked various people: what does this ‘new’ education mean for you and nobody is prepared to give me an answer. The last time I put this to Jim Annand all he could say was that it had proved impossible to get any agreement about this and that all attempts at formulating general principles had failed.
All this by way of a preamble. What I would like you to do is to get your own ideas and practices down in black and white. I know the difficulty you cannot but have to find time for this when the job is making heavy demands on you. Even so I think that it might be possible to get something done and is where my suggestion comes in.
Could you manage to get down to a monthly recording over a year (to begin with). Two lines you could follow. The first is just to jot down as briefly as possible any special happenings in the course of the month: anything tried, any problem that had to be met (I used to keep a diary of my children in their early years and I kept track on their development by such periodical jottings).
The notes would not need to be lengthy so much as memoranda. The second is to take some one aspect of your work and write a screed about it just as it comes to you at the time. For example: how you go about teaching reading, spelling, counting etc.’ what things you decide must or must not be done; the kind of sanctions to be employed in a free way of life where there are no compulsions; difficulties caused by parents; children stealing things; nude bathing; etc. There are some things too intimate to be put down for other folk to learn and consider, but if you could find a few sympathetic critics with whom you could discuss these recordings there might come a greater clarity of idea and ideal.
You might even bring in some the members of the Educational Colloquium to help. There are funds at its disposal for educational investigation which might be got to meet the costs of reproduction, postage etc.
Is there anything in the scheme, do you think? Or can you think of a better one?
Anyway John, you have my best wishes for the success of your efforts to meet the demands of the Department. While I see the need for some kind of national control on educational institutions I greatly fear that it is going to make the experimentation that is needed to ensure growth and real progress very difficult.
In later years Boyd wrote a short autobiography (sadly unpublished) which gives insights into the man that John so rightly admired and held in high esteem.
