THE \ ILLAGE COLLEGE AND ITS FUTURE
By CHRISTIAN BARMAN
THE Village College has now been established in Cambridgeshire for eight years, long enough to have turned what was an experiment into a fixed and tested institution. Old pupils are growing into adult men and women, and already its main principles are fikding their way into the official educational scheme. Many people have a vague idea of what is meant by a Cambridgeshire Village College, and there are some who see in it a development that is clearly going to have incalculable results. Among its many points of interest, its approach to the problem of leisure is perhaps the most important.
Before I try to describe very briefly what a Village College is, let me just mention some of the things it is not. It is a school, but not the kind of school where children are skilfully reared in an atmosphere of sharpened intellectual stimulation. Nor are the children in any way selected ; there is no special appeal to the enlightened parent with humanitarian or Left- wing views. It is not in any sense a private hobby or adventure : it has no place for the wealthy enthusiast or the " advanced " psychological crank. It is also an evening school for adults, but not the kind where the adult is expected to make use of classrooms built and equipped for children and exclusively used by children during the day. Again, it is a social centre, but not the kind of social centre that is created by well-meaning organisations for doing good to the poor. Indeed, the odours of welfare and charity are conspicuously absent. It is and has none of these things, for the simple reason that it is a part of the established system of national education, adminis- tered by a County Council and a representative managing body to the plan approved and financially aided by the State. Because of this the Village College is doubly significant, and because of this, too, the amount of publicity it has had is exceedingly small.
Here, then, is a single institution in which are combined a number 'of activities, some statutory and some voluntary, that are usually carried on in isolation from one another, and most often without suitable accommodation. On a site of twelve to fourteen acres, under (roughly speaking) one roof and under one management (acting through a warden) are found elementary schools for children and in one case a junior school; evening schools for adults ; a village hall with modern stage and cinema equipment ; a community centre with com- mon-room, lecture-room, a county library and canteen. In one college, at Bottisham, a maternity welfare centre and a nursery and junior school have been added. At Impington the buildings designed by Professor Walter Gropius have rooms for indoor games. Each village college serves a rural population of 6,003 to 7,003 spread over an average of ten individual villages. For these villages it is, in the words of its founders, " a community centre serving the people at all points and at all ages," It can safely be said that in none of the 32 Cam- bridgeshire villages that now lie in the orbit of a village college does the problem of leisure exist as we find it in the towns.
Note, in the above definition, the expression community centre. It is an important one. The whole point about the Village College is that it does something more than introduce a proper conception of leisure into a school of the familiar type. It requires the re-orientation of the school towards a concrete and visible goal of communal adult existence. It starts with a comprehensive organisation for the proper use of adult leisure and to this it grafts its provisions for child education. Admittedly the origin of the Village College goes back to the central or senior school, which supplied the administrative foundations. No doubt that is why there are people who even today regard the Village College as a kind of improved and elaborated central school. But this view misses the most important contribu- tion the Village College has made to our educational ideas. This is the dominant position of the adult social activities in the functional group. It is here, on the community side, that the centre of gravity lies. The pattern of a good adolescent and adult life is held to be the one thing needed to give direction to the work of the teacher : it is, if you like, the horse to which, in the Village College philosophy, the cart of education should be hitched.
One sometimes hears a fear expressed that in the people's use of leisure the Village College may mean regimentation, the imposing of an organised activity from above. Adult education and recreation, it is said, should run themselves without authoritative aid. But what is it that has cat:sed the lamentable collapse of these things except the weakening or withdrawal of external aid from people unprepared for doing without it ? When the first Village Colleges came into existence the neighbourhood was often littered with the remains of extinct recreational clubs. Here a flower show had disappeared some years before ; scouts and guides and Girls' Friendly Societies were gone, and the lives of the lawn-tennis, football and cricket clubs hung by a thread. In one place, the bowls club was saved only by the intervention of a multiple brewery. The Village College, and all that it means by way of educated leadership, has stopped the spreading decay. Those who think it a pity that official machinery was used should consider what other means were available for doing this work. But in any case, it does not look as though the official hand was meant to continue its hold. The revived scout troop at Bottisham Village College is organised on a village basis, and unless there is a serious setback it seems certain that the boys will in time manage new troops in their own villages. Already groups like the Bottisham District Horticultural Society and the Eleven Villages Musical Society are admirable examples of self-government by local folk. The 1938-39 programme of University Extension Lectures was made up mostly in response to views and wishes of the students themselves. As a background to these and other activities, a Young People's Association and a Students' Association for adult students are now already taking form. Once these beginnings are allowed to grow, it is difficult to see how the autonomous village group can fail to flourish. If there is one thing the Village College would seem fitted above all others to develop, it is the capacity for self-government in local affairs. Now that a way has been found, is the Village College plan being adopted in other parts of England ? Nowhere. so far, in full. A complete Village College cannot, of course. be built without some private addition to grants and local authority funds. It is a matter of time. There must be many hundreds of people who would be willing to help a movement so strikingly beneficial, though a few will always object to co-operating with statutory enterprises founded out of public funds. But in the latest building regulation, of the Board of Education, local education authorities arc invited to have the community ideal in their minds when designing rural senior schools. So far as is possible within the four corners of the grant regulations, many of them will wish to do so. They are officially warned that in rural areas all schools that take seniors will inevitably " become social and cultural centres for the interests of their former pupils," and they are urged to realise the Village College pattern as far as means allow. Further, in the Physical Training and Recreation Act of 1937 the powers conferred under Housing and Education Acts are amalgamated and widened, so that today any local authority may build com- munity centres such as formerly might only be built as part of housing schemes or schools. The extent to which the idea has gained official acceptance is really remarkable. It now remains for those of us who live in the country and who care about such things to see that local authorities are not allowed to ignore so plain a request. And very soon somebody will have to explore the question how far Village College methods can be made to relieve the plague of loneliness and frustration that ravages our towns.
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