Beyond the Lecture Hall

Beyond the Lecture Hall Universities and community engagement from the middle ages to the present day Edited by Peter Cunningham with Susan Oosthuizen and Richard Taylor Faculty of Education and Institute of Continuing Education Beyond the Lecture Hall Conference, Cambridge, 5-7 September 2008 in collaboration with History of Education Society UK www.historyofeducation.org.uk First published 2009 by University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education, Cambridge CB2 8PQ and University of Cambridge, Institute of Continuing Education © 2009 University of Cambridge for selection and editorial matter; the contributors for individual chapters. The contributors as identified in this publication have asserted their moral right under the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as authors of their respective works. Except as otherwise permitted under the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 this publication in whole or in part may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means with the prior permission of the University of Cambridge or individual contributors as identified. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent in the first instance to: The PLACE Administrator, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Cover design: Clare Yerbury Printed and bound by Victoire Press, Bar Hill, Cambridge ISBN 978-0-9560861-2-9 Contents Introduction: universities and community engagement in historical perspective 1 Peter Cunningham and Richard Taylor Foundations, funding and forgetfulness: reflections on the pattern of university histories 9 David Watson The university and rural community outreach: from Cambridge beginnings to a national system 19 Bill Jones Civic universities and community engagement in inter-war England 31 Keith Vernon The reach of print 49 David McKitterick Educational radio in Quebec: a complement to university 61 Paul Aubin Universities and professions in the early modern period 79 Rosemary O’Day The university, professionalization, and race in the United States 103 Philo Hutcheson The origins and consequences of university involvement in English school examinations 117 Sandra Raban Modes of engagement: universities and schools in Australia 1850-1914 133 Geoffrey Sherington and Julia Horne The University of Melbourne and the retreat from university extension 1922-1946 151 Gordon Dadswell Trapped in a local history: why did extramural fail to engage in the era of engagement? 169 Chris Duke Notes on contributors 189 Introduction: universities and community engagement in historical perspective Peter Cunningham and Richard Taylor The nature and extent of higher education’s contribution to economic prosperity and to the development of a vibrant civil society, and thus to national well-being is a key policy debate. This book contributes to that debate, exploring the neglected but important role of universities’ engagement with their communities. Faced with apparently relentless policy changes by successive governments aimed at reforming higher education for the national good, universities need to avoid the defensive stance that can emanate from an inward-looking and self-referential academic culture. We need instead to recognise and properly understand initiatives and achievements of the past in relating and responding to the needs of the world beyond the lecture hall. Complex and contested definitions of ‘community’ in relation to the university can only be fully understood by examining the variety of ways in which universities have reached out, and society has reached in, in a relation of mutual dependence and enrichment over centuries. Here we foreground historical analysis, underlining the longevity and complexity of universities’ interaction with their multiple communities. Historians around the world have been active in researching these aspects of higher education, where attention has shifted from purely internal configuration of institutions, curricula and teaching careers, to a concern for the influences of, and effects on the societies in which universities work. That extensive international research underlies the content of this book. Researchers from Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan, Iraq and Israel, Finland, France, Italy and Serbia, as well as a good number from Australia, the USA and the United Kingdom gathered at the Faculty of Education in Cambridge at a conference convened in September 2008 to acknowledge the university's 800th anniversary. The chapters in this book represent a small selection of these peer-reviewed conference papers, in which a frequent reference point is Cambridge as one of the oldest universities in the UK. But this selection includes some key comparative studies from other parts of the world. Case studies include colonial Australia, black America and bi-lingual Canada. Recurrent cross-references indicate how reaching ‘beyond the lecture hall’, and its reciprocal consequences for Cambridge, are reflected and contrasted in other geographical and historical settings. Each of the four strands that structure this collection of papers highlights a two-way relationship between university and society. Book publishing, professional formation, adult education, and interaction with schools, are not simply a benign extension of traditional intellectual leadership, but constitute formative agents of change within the university itself: • Through promoting print and publication of the written word, universities disseminated their knowledge to a readership well beyond the confines of the academic community. This activity became increasingly responsive to the needs of the reading public, and the market for books, and was enhanced by the adoption of broadcasting media, and most recently the internet, for distance learning. 1 Peter Cunningham and Richard Taylor • From early engagement with the church, and eventually with the vocational preparation of an increasing range of professional groups over time, universities have contributed significantly to the conceptualization and articulation of professional education and training. At the same time, they have had to respond over the course of time to changing conditions of professional organisation and practice. • Relationships between universities and the provision of schooling emerged in England with Oxford and Cambridge foundations and their associated colleges at Winchester and Eton, but an increasingly close connection with a national school system developed through the establishment of examination boards, and the associated publication of textbooks, and through the training of teachers. The establishment of state systems of education, however, and their exponential growth in the twentieth century, required university examining boards to attend to the varied demands made by governments and school systems nationally and worldwide. • Adult and continuing education has been an important extension of the universities' activity, has also provided a vehicle for new disciplines to be brought in from the margins to the mainstream of university teaching and research, and thus the university's academic knowledge has interacted with individual adult learners and broader social movements. Adult and continuing education has also had a longstanding concern with enabling educationally disadvantaged communities to have the opportunity to engage with university level study. Communities In his opening chapter David Watson alerts us to the long history of ‘the university’ and the way the concept has evolved over centuries. Despite the enduring image of ‘ivory tower’ he argues that universities have been more closely associated with their communties than is sometimes understood. But ‘community’, like ‘university’, is a slippery concept and identifying the university’s community is akin to peeling the onion. Watson reveals also the multi-faceted nature of community engagement, and poses some hard questions for the higher education sector, such as ‘How do we use our autonomy?’ and ‘How do we balance our obligations to civil society and the state?’. One prominent manifestation of ‘engagement’ has been so-called extramural education, early examples of which appeared in the work of James Stuart at Cambridge. Chris Duke, in his closing chapter, draws attention to language and narrative, highlighting the play there has been with ‘walls’ – trans-mural and intra- mural – as well dismantling them altogether. Extension shared this connotation of taking university education out from its on-campus heartland, outreach likewise. Each of these terms, he points out, suggests that the university is taking something of its riches out from a closed scholarly community, on its own terms, to a wider audience or, as we would now say, clientele. The notion of (learning) partner(ship) was uncommon. More contentiously, he argues too that the very separateness of extramural activity in the academy condemned it, from the outset, to a marginality from mainstream university life. The immediate community for most universities has been the town or the city, as over time they generated settlements around them, or more usually were founded to 2 Introduction serve existing centres of population. An evident factor as universities embarked on extension activities in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was industrialisation and its urban impact, and Stuart’s early ambitions for his extension classes were on a national

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