Sixth-Form College with a Difference
Ity A, I) C.
PETERSON
T is often said that independent public schools 'should be centres of experiment. One at least, the Atlantic College, which the Queen visited this week, is already beginning to demonstrate the feasibility of two very important educational ideas. The first is that it is possible to run a sixth-form college, and a boarding school at that, for boys who come from a wide variety of countries: the second is that in such an en- vironment it is possible to eschew the grinding concentration on specialised `A'-level work which affects most of our sixth-formers, without en- dangering the pupils' chances of university entrance. Neither of these was a self-evident fact when the college was founded in 1962. The inter- national nature of, the college is implicit in its history. Its foundation was an act of faith largely inspired, like so many other educational ex- periments, by Kurt Hahn. Most of the money has been raised in this country, but the first large donation, which made possible the purchase of St. Donat's Castle, came from a Frenchman, Antonin Besse. Two more came from the Ford Foundation and the German government. And, finally, no one who knows it can doubt that its
i practical success is due to its British headmaster and initially British staff. Britain, France, Ger- many and the US contributed to the venture; yet none of those in the four countries who be- lieved in it could be sure that it would work.
The first doubt was probably academic. In a world where the extension of genuine inter- national co-operation matters so much and where personal contacts play so large a part in that extension, the possibility of bringing together able boys in the formative i years between seven- teen and nineteen was immensely attractive. Memories and friendships from one's student years last long, particularly if they are spent in surroundings of great natural beauty. But could boys, whose native language was German, Dutch or Norwegian, work together with English boys on our 'A'-level syllabuses and in two years hope to master the course? Could they do it, more- over, without sacrificing the greater breadth of the European curriculum which their own system demanded and which was one of the experimental attractions for English boys? The
i proof of the pudding was in the eating. Every boy at the college, including the science special- ists, keeps up the study of two foreign languages as well as the language and literature of his own country. Every arts specialist continues the study of some science and some do as many as five periods of mathematics. Yet the 'A'-level results of the first entry, the only ones yet available, were well above the national average of British `A'-level candidates as a whole.
This success has certainly not been the result of 'piling on the pressure.' The purpose of the founders was not just to establish a new type of international school. It was to provide for boys of all nations an education in which the forcing
of the intellect and 'bourrage de crane' were relaxed and time allowed for the development of physical fitness in response to the challenge of adventure and a sense of compassion in response to the challenge of human need. The interaction here is one which underlies the intention of Outward Bound and the Duke of Edinburgh Award, both of which also owe much to the ideas of Kurt Hahn. There is a clear danger that the education of many of our modern urban youth, particularly perhaps the intellectually ablest, will leave them so physically unfit that they mistrust their own powers to meet a physical challenge. This mistrust can set up a serious, if subconscious, sense of inadequacy. It is no good simply offering such people 'the chal- lenge of adyenture.' Too often their reaction is the natural, defensive one of rejection and cynicism, and they are left perhaps apparently self-satisfied on the surface, but underneath ill at ease with themselves. Because they shrink from committing themselves to action, in which they fear they may fail, their sympathy with other people in distress, who can only be helped through action, is stifled and soured. Hence the 'decline of compassion' to which Kurt Hahn often refers.
The safeguard against this danger, with which the Atlantic College and a good many other organisations are experimenting, is a form of physical education which is related to a real 'challenge,' but which develops the skill and fit- ness to meet the challenge as it is presented. The medium in this case is training in cliff and sea rescue along a dangerous stretch of coast. The reality of both the challenge and the training is exemplified by the fact that the college has been accepted by the Coast Guard Service as providing a competent year-round watch on this coast and appointed as an official Inshore Rescue Station by the RNLI, but above all by the record of two adult lives saved at sea and one boy rescued from a dangerous cliff in the three years of its existence. This is not just 'walking up Snowdon in bare feet.' Nor does it preclude a development of the creative arts at least on a level comparable with that of a normal school. All this has implied a limitation of teaching hours in 'school' to five hours per week for each advanced-level subject and a school year of some forty weeks of which two are spent on project/expedition work of a wide variety. The second doubt, whether youths of many nations would accept the monastic and hierarchical structure of an English boarding school, has been partially solved by breaking away from any sort of 'prefect' system: monasticism is still a problem.
It is, of course, expensive to run, as any sixth- form college is bound to be, but the cost per place, whioh works out somewhere between that of a public school and of a 'teacher training
college, can be regarded as normal for the age and ability range. The prospects of extending the experiment to other countries (Canada or Germany seems likely to be the first) are there- fore reasonably good.
This prospect would, of course, be much less interesting if the Atlantic College were, what Salem once was, an elite school largely patron- ised by the aristocracy and the rich. It is not. Just as it has developed on its own lines, accept- ing from Salem and Gordonstoun the Platonic tradition of physical education as an element in moral development, but rejecting their concept of leadership and moral self-scrutiny, so it has insisted from the start that recruitment should not be based on the capacity of parents to pay fees. Today, of the sixty-eight English boys at the college fifty-three come from local authority grammar schools on local authority or trade union scholarships. Of the twenty-one other nations which have sent boys to the college twelve have already established scholarship funds and six more are considering them.
The Atlantic College was planned as the first of a series to be established in many countries. Much of the work being done is pioneer and experimental—whether it is in the negotiation of equivalence agreements to make movement between secondary school in one country and university in another more practical, or in de- signing an activities programme to meet modern needs. If this work is successful its relevance extends far beyond St. Donat's Castle. The first three years' experience in Wales not only strengthens the confidence of the international council directing the project but also has a lot to contribute to the study of sixth-form educa- tion in general.
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