User:Liondandy/Cecil Reddie

Cecil Reddie (* 10. Oktober 1858; † Mai 1932) is the founder of Abbotsholme boarding school in England and english progressive school movement.

Reddie grew up in a Scottish, middle class family and his father was a civil servant. Both his parents died when he was 13 years of age, leaving him an orphan. He attended Fettes College as a boarder which he completed in 1878. He subsequently studied medicine and chemistry at Edinburgh University and the University of Göttingen where he obtained a doctorate in Chemistry. In 1885 he returned to teach as an assistant science master at Fettes and in 1887 moved on to become master of Clifton College in Bristol. Again his tenure was short-lived and he decided to spend six months with the poet Edward Carpenter, who he had met at Edinburgh, at Millthrope near Sheffield. There he drew up plans for a new, progressive school and enlisted collaborators like the Scotsmen William Cassels who contributed the inital capital of £2,000. With this contribution Reddie leased a house and estate in Derbyshire by the River Dove in 1889 and opened the Abbotsholme school. Elitist in outlook he was convinced that "national regeneration must come from the top, not from the bottom" (Skidelsky) also a staunch supporter of imperialism. main criticism of public school education was that it failed to nourish child's potentialities. Led school until 1927, when it had just two pupils. "Bizarre autocrat" (skidelsky,p115) who became more unpredictably tempered in later years. Abbotsholme was also visited by the German educator Hermann Lietz who published his experiences in a book entitled Emlohstobba (Abbotsholme in reverse) in 1897. Lietz in turn went on to found the land school movement in Germany. J.H. Badley founder of Bedales school was one of the first staff, but left after two years as he found Reddie 'impossibly autocratic' (Skid, p119)