Trouble House Halt was the first station you came to if you travelled by train from Tetbury to Cirencester. It is close to what is usually regarded as the source of the Thames. Though now long gone, the Halt was immortalised by Flanders and Swann in their song Slow Train which elegised the closure of many railway branch lines across Great Britain in the 1960s. But what, you will be wondering, has any of this got to do with education?
The connection is Dr Richard Beeching whose eponymous report to the British Railways Board (which valorised economic but not social value) paved the way for the closure of many such lines and stations.* The same Richard Beeching chaired the Organisation Working Party of the 1963 Study Conference which was part of the Countryside in 1970 initiative. This brought together almost 90 organisations interested in the countryside and/or the conservation of nature to respond to the question: What sort of countryside do we all want to see in 1970? One of the remits of the Organisation Working Party was to focus on education.
There was a ~300 page report on this conference. I have a copy that was originally in the University of Lancaster library. It was borrowed 10 times between 1965 and 1994 before being withdrawn and sold on; rather like the Cirencester to Tetbury railway line. It is a treasure-trove of 1960s organisations, issues and values, but it says little about education (with just 13 pages out of 300 devoted to it). There is no reference to 'environmental education' which is not surprising as it had hardly been invented in 1963: CEE was still 5 years away, and NAEE only emerged from its rural studies origins in 1971. But there was a focus on activities that many would now see as parts of environmental education, and which actually might better be described as simply 'education': fieldwork in science and geography, practical conservation activities, farm visits, mountain exploration, and outdoor activities more generally. And a focus, too, on informal education through, for example, TV.
The Organisation Working Party followed two themes: [i] problems and conflicts; and [ii] the way ahead, where discussion focused on education, consultation and intercommunication, and administration. Opening the discussion and representing the Development Commission, a quango, JL (Sir Jack) Longland, said:
– "[a] very curious paradox about the English [is] that they combine a perfectly genuine passion for the countryside with an almost unequalled skill in destroying it. This has given us, I think, a permanently guilty conscience and nowadays when you have a guilty conscience instead of taking it to a priest you say that it's up to education to do something about it, ...".
Longland, who was Director of Education for Derbyshire at the time, went on to agree with Beeching that there were very many conflicts that education could do nothing directly to resolve. His initial focus was on litter in the countryside and its causes. He blamed the attitudes that give rise to litter on the bitter social legacy of the industrial revolution: blighted communities, squalid housing, limited vision and a loss of hope. He saw housing reform as offering scope for a new litter-free Jerusalem. I read this vapid wishful thinking with a sigh as (some 60 years on) I'd just seen pictures of thousands of tents abandoned by their owners at the bank holiday Reading festival. No home squalor for those litterati; no dark satanic mills; no lurking tuberculosis; just affluence, entitlement and disdain.
Longland was less starry-eyed when thinking about the recreational uses of the countryside. He painted a positive picture:
"It is becoming an accepted part of the education of normal boys and girls that this part of education outside and beyond the classroom in wild country should be regarded as a perfectly normal bit of schooling in more exciting surroundings, a method ... of developing – perhaps the best method – initiative and self-reliance. It is a good and undamaging outlet for curiosity and adventurousness which are two qualities we neglect at our peril ... ."
Implicit in all this was the value of these activities in the inculcation of good habits of mind, body and social responsibility: no littering on mountains. And a social responsibility that would extend from the mountains to the plains, from away to home, so no littering in local streets or parks either. But what about the majority who'd ever remain unmountained? How will they be learning good (non-littering and other) habits? By example, of course. Longland termed this by "infection and contagion".
Just as we saw at Reading on the bank holiday, in the countryside more widely as lock-downs were eased during the pandemic, and every time at Glastonbury. I'll give Longland the last word:
"Children can learn quite easily in good hands to care for natural beauty and from that to try to prevent its despoilment. ... I believe this job can be done, but that we have not worked nearly hard enough at it in the past."
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Notes *
* On page 282 of the report, one of the functions of the British Railways Board is recorded as "railway undertakers". I'd say more about this were this post not supposed to be about (environmental) education.
* There was another conference (this time at Keele) and another report. More on that next time.
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A History of Environmental Education: 21 / 9 / 10
This is the latest in a series of articles about early environmental education in the UK. Others will appear here every month or so. You can read previous essays here:
Liberty Hyde Bailey and Environmental Education
Environmental Education in Derbyshire
Celebrating Earth Day with Philip Larkin
Environmental education in England 1960 to 1979 – a pen picture
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