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‘The UNIVERSITY will be for the people’: arts, humanities and the founding of the civic universities
Abstract
The paper addresses the current crisis in the Arts and Humanities by a foray into history, looking at the ideals and expectations that lay behind the founding of the civic universities in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Focusing particularly on the case of the University of Sheffield, it explores what founding a university ‘for’ the people meant at that time, and the support from all sides for an education that was not only open to all, but encompassed Literature, Music Education (following the Hadow Reports) and Philosophy as well as the Sciences and more technical instruction. Public engagement, in multiple forms, lay at the heart of these conceptions of a civic university. Considering our current situation, the paper suggests it is time to overturn misplaced conceptions of a ‘useful’ education, and to return to earlier ideals of a university that was truly for the people. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—views from Fellows of the British Academy’, edited by Isobel Armstrong.)
Keywords
crisis in Humanitiescivic universitiespublic engagementmusic educationHadow Reports We appear to be at a point of crisis in Humanities at present, with entire university departments closing at an unprecedented rate. The case for such demolition was succinctly put by J. Meirion Thomas, a cancer surgeon and writer for The Spectator, in a piece for that journal two years ago, provocatively titled, ‘Is it Time to Defund the Humanities?’ (2022). He argues that ‘Science and technology look forward to a progressive future while English and history look back into the past and at best, attempt reinterpretation and revision.’ The declaration is staggering in its levels of misunderstanding, not least of science itself, many of whose disciplines are profoundly historical: how could evolutionary biology, earth sciences, or climate science, for example, function without analysis of the past? This devaluing of history, and the work explicitly of the humanities, arises from a culture which seems to place no faith in the powers of reflection. I will respond by a foray into history.
The origin of this paper lies some years back, when I was browsing in a late-19th-century periodical and came across an article on the founding, in 1879, of Firth College (which later became the University of Sheffield). The article observed that it had been the assumption when it was founded that the workers of Sheffield would want coalmining, and industry-related courses, but in fact they had been more interested in humanities courses. It is important for our current debates around university education to understand the thinking behind the founding of the civic universities, and the communities they were designed to serve. In this paper I will focus specifically on the case of Sheffield, from the creation of Firth College to the inauguration of the university itself in 1905 as one of the new civic universities. There is an element for me of personal interest in this story since it is the city where I was born and brought up, and to which I later returned, as a chair in the School of English at the University.
It is striking how much the rhetoric around higher education at this earlier period resembles our own, not least in the concerns about the need to improve the nation’s economic competitiveness, and the requirements for ‘utility’ in the subjects taught and studied. The Victorians’ understanding of utility, however, appears to have been more capacious than our own. Thus Arthur Balfour (then First Lord of the Treasury, and subsequently Prime Minister, Founding Fellow, and later President of the British Academy), gave a speech in Manchester, in 1891, at what was then Victoria University on the need for the union of science and industry. He also notes, however, that ‘He was perfectly certain that any great centre of academic education which was to ignore philosophy as an essential branch of its studies, would thereby condemn and stultify itself (“Cheers”)’ (report in the Sheffield Telegraph, 22 October 1891). It clearly helps in the funding wars if you have influential finance ministers on your side.
The founding of the civic universities in the late 19th century follows on from the passionate campaigns fought by T.H. Huxley and other scientists for an overturning of the dominance of the classics in the universities (campaigns brilliantly analysed by both Collini (2012a, 2012b) and Small (2013)). In the later decades of the century, anxieties around the fact that British industries appeared to be being eclipsed by both Germany and America led to determined calls for a more extensive higher education system. Many eminent scientists joined in these debates, arguing for the urgent need to build Britain’s science capacity. But they also often made common cause with champions of the arts and humanities, holding out against the narrow notions of technical utility espoused by many industrialists. The debates here also touch on the founding of the British Academy. Thus the astronomer Norman Lockyer, FRS and founding editor of Nature, argued strongly that the Royal Society was too narrow in its remit. In a letter to the Times in 1901 he observed: ‘Human history and development are as important to mankind as the history and development of fishes. The Royal Society now practically neglects the one and encourages the other.’ He queried whether the creation of the British Academy as a separate entity was good for either party—a question we might still want to ponder.
Firth College in Sheffield was created by an enlightened industrialist, Mark Firth, the son of a smelter, who had built his own highly successful steel-manufacturing firm. From the start, the College was to teach both arts and sciences, with classes in the early years including French and German, History, English Literature and Classics, as well as Chemistry, Physics and Maths (I was delighted to see that a permanent position was created in English Literature before Maths and Physics). The College also ran coalmine engineering and other more practically oriented courses in the evenings in outlying districts.
It is important to note the significant role played by the University Extension Movement, inaugurated by academics at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford in the 1870s, in the development of the civic universities. The huge success of these Extension lectures in Sheffield led directly to the founding of Firth College, and the college then worked in partnership with the Extension Movement, taking evening classes out to working people in poorer areas of the city (for free), as well as offering core teaching in the college. Saturday-night lectures at the college, and later the university, attracted audiences of over 400. In a reflective article on ‘University work in great towns’, the educationist J.G. Fitch noted the great enthusiasm shown in Sheffield, by employers, trade unions and workmen, for these lectures, adding that ‘The scissor-grinders’ union purchased tickets for the Political Economy lectures for all the youths in their trade between the ages of 18 and 21’ (Nineteenth Century, 1878). The union clearly valued a political education over more technical classes. It was essential, Fitch argued, for universities ‘to pursue truth, and add to the sum of human knowledge, without any reference to the possible marketable uses and value of such knowledge’.
In an address on the opening of the Sheffield Technical School by the College in 1889, the College Principal, the Mathematical Physicist William M. Hicks FRS, gave a stirring speech on the need to distinguish education from mere instruction, and to develop all the students’ faculties:
This was all the more necessary now because in many respects our modern civilisation was inimical to intellectual life. In the hurry and pressure of today there was not time to weigh and consider; and thoroughness, a necessity of the true cultured mind, was stifled by the superficiality and shallowness of this age of show and advertisement. (Hear, hear) (Sheffield Telegraph, 2 October 1889).
Hicks, an outstanding principal, who was to lead the college to university status in 1905, had a clear vision of the college’s role in removing the class divide and extending education to all labouring men and women who would form, he believed, the great readers of the future. He also fulminated against the iniquities (created by government pressures), of teaching merely to an exam, in order to obtain grants, and publishing the successes of scholars, thus degrading the nature of education.
The campaign to create a university in Sheffield was one that drew heavily on the engagement of the local community. It is worthwhile giving in full the leaflet which was circulated to raise funds and support. Beneath a picture of the proposed university buildings, it gave six reasons as to why ‘You should support the University’:
1.
The UNIVERSITY will be for the people.
2.
The UNIVERSITY will bring the highest education within the reach of the child of the working man.
3.
The UNIVERSITY will help the local industries.
4.
The UNIVERSITY will be the centre where the treatment of accidents and diseases will be studied.
5.
SHEFFIELD is the only large City in England without a University. Sheffield cannot afford to remain in this position.
6.
The UNIVERSITY will not only benefit this district, it will assist the nation in its trade competition with other nations.
There is a real sense of civic pride, and community endeavour, with opportunities for education for all ranking above the more utilitarian reasons for creating a university. The City Council levied 1d in the pound to pay for the development; wealthy steel merchants stepped in, but so too did lots of working men’s collectives, paying in their pennies over extended periods.
From the start there was a strong sense that the university was not merely in the city, but of the city, there to serve its people. In this early period, 97 per cent of the students were local and, although sciences and more technical subjects were on offer, by 1914 Arts was the largest faculty. As with the college beforehand, there was continued commitment to offering evening classes in the poorer areas of the city. The work of the university at this period is perhaps best exemplified by two figures. The first, George Charles Moore Smith (1858–1940), arrived in Sheffield in 1896 as Professor of English Literature. At Cambridge he had helped raise money for Toynbee Hall, and had worked in the University Extension Movement. He brought the same commitment to adult education in Sheffield, lecturing for the WEA (Workers Educational Association), supporting settlements in poorer districts, and for a time he established and helped to maintain a hostel where men on low incomes could live and find opportunities for study in their spare time. He also used his networks over the years to acquire 10,000 books to establish the university library (and he became Sheffield’s first FBA in 1933).
My other example is that of Sir (William) Henry Hadow (1859–1937), a renowned scholar of music, and Vice Chancellor of the University from 1919 to 1930. He appears to have been a remarkable man, transforming the discipline of music criticism, and working hard nationally to establish music as an essential subject in both schools and universities. As chair of the Consultative Committee of the government’s Board of Education, he oversaw the publication of the six influential Hadow reports on school education (1923–33), which advocated that children should enjoy ‘the free and broad air of a general and humane education’, that would include developing the ‘aesthetic side of education’, having books and musical instruments available to all, and the acquisition of a foreign language in secondary school. Nationally and locally, he seems to have been on every cultural committee going, from the Royal College of Music to the Sheffield Amateur Music Society, and to have spread his messages through lectures across the country (including at the British Academy). In 1918, he had published The Needs of Popular Musical Education and was keen to establish musical education as a life-long pursuit.
I realise I am painting an overly rosy picture of the early years of the civic universities, and of their leaders who championed a broad, humane education. It is hard, nonetheless, not to feel a deep sense of loss at the seeming disappearance of so many of these educational ideals. One such loss is the devastation of Continuing Education or Extra-mural Departments from the Thatcher era onwards—departments which had continued the earlier work of the University Extension Movement, and had produced such influential figures as E.P. Thompson and Raymond Williams, whose major works were first delivered as Continuing Education lectures. The emphasis was now on vocational skills, and on making courses self-funding, and credit-bearing; the arts and humanities courses in universities, and voluntary organisations, inevitably suffered.
Reflecting on the position we find ourselves in today, it is clear that changing models of funding, and of student recruitment, have broken to a considerable degree the sense of community between the university and the city which was fostered in the early days of the civic universities. Calls for public engagement in research have in small part started to mend that breach, although it is worthwhile noting that in fields such as literary studies, music and history, there have been continued traditions of strong links with local communities.
Civic universities also continue to have firmer ties to their cities. I was astonished when I arrived in Oxford in 2005 to find how few links there were between town and gown (a situation which is slowly changing). At a ceremonial level, city dignitaries in Sheffield always attended degree days, but more importantly there were deeply embedded connections in both cultural and economic planning and activity. In the early 1990s, the Vice Chancellor, Gareth Roberts, built on the work of his early predecessors by establishing an outreach programme to local schools, with students at the university mentoring over a thousand students at twenty-two schools, over a three-year period, and across the disciplines. Unlike current schemes, with linked schools, the aim was to raise pupil expectations, and to help them to apply to whatever university or college they chose—an echo of the more altruistic schemes of earlier educational reforms. In the School of English, courses were developed in Drama and in Narrative which involved students working with local schools, as part of their core studies, again opening up possibilities for pupils from deprived areas, none of whom had been to the university before. These were forerunners of the current explosion in public engagement work (of which the Being Human Festival, co-funded by the British Academy, forms a part). With the development of digital media, such engagement no longer has to be confined to the local. ‘Science Gossip’, a citizen science project I was involved with, in association with Zooniverse, attracted nearly 10,000 participants from across the globe to read 19th-century natural history journals, with most of these ‘citizens’ having no prior training or interest in history, or the 19th century.
The possibilities of extending university research into arts and humanities to both local and global communities are tremendous. Government mandates, and impossible systems of supposed measurement, however, can sour the whole experience of public engagement and its darker double, impact. It is important to remember, however, that with regard to the civic universities, they were created for the people. It is the more recent lack of engagement on the part of universities with their surrounding communities which is the aberration. As I have argued, the early civics were created in a rather similar political climate to our own, with anxieties about a fall in national economic competitiveness leading to calls for an extended higher education system. Concerns were expressed in many quarters that an emphasis on utility would lead to a dominance of scientific and technical subjects to the detriment of the humanities. Instead, the reverse proved to be true, with working men and women, unions, employers and university and political leaders all calling for a more rounded vision of education which encompassed arts, humanities and the development of the whole individual. Political and administrative thinking at present seems to have regressed to a narrow vision of utility in education which the Victorians themselves rejected. Some historical reflection might help. It might even create a ‘progressive future’. Our challenge is to match the ardour and political astuteness of our forebears, and to overturn outdated and regressive models of a ‘useful’ education.
Acknowledgements
The thumbnail image that accompanies this article is by Sam Balye on Unsplash.
References
ColliniS. (2012a), ‘‘Introduction’, to C. P. Snow’, in The Two Cultures (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).
ColliniS. (2012b), What are Universities For? (London, Penguin).
FitchJ.G. (1878), ‘University work in great towns: the useful activities undertaken by Oxford and Cambridge outside the recognised sphere’, in Nineteenth Century.
HadowW.H. (1918), The Needs of Popular Musical Education (Oxford, Oxford University Press).
SmallH. (2013), The Value of the Humanities (Oxford, Oxford University Press).
ThomasJ.M. (2022, 4 September), ‘Is it time to defund the humanities’, The Spectator. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-it-time-to-defund-the-humanities/
Cite
DOI: 10.5871/jba/012.a36
Published on: 17 September 2024
Volume: 12
Issue: Issue 3
Article view count: 131
Article download count: 13
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© The author(s) 2024. This is an open access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International LicenseCite this article
Shuttleworth, S. (2024), ‘“The UNIVERSITY will be for the people”: arts, humanities and the founding of the civic universities’, Journal of the British Academy, 12(3): a36 https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/012.a36Crossref
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Received
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July 2023
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