36-566: The Malting House School (also known as the Malting House Garden School ) was an experimental educational institution that operated from 1924 to 1929. It was set up by the eccentric and, at the time, wealthy Geoffrey Pyke in his family home in Cambridge and it was run by Susan Sutherland Isaacs . Although it was open for only a few years, the radical ideas explored in this institution have remained influential up until
72-585: A psychoanalytic practice there. Susan Isaacs became principal of Malting House School in 1924. In April of that year, Robbins had dinner with the Isaacs', and found that Nathan was disillusioned with business, looking to retire and move to the country. An advertisement placed by Geoffrey Pyke , who was setting up a progressive school , was drawn to Susan's attention by James Glover, a psychoanalytic colleague who had worked with Pyke. Susan, Nathan and Pyke hammered out an agreement. Pyke and his family moved into
108-668: A London flat in Primrose Hill with her sister Hilda, close to where Susan and Nathan Isaacs were living: her affair with Nathan was ongoing. In 1943 she became director of the National Froebel Foundation. Susan knew of this relationship, and continued to relate well to Nathan intellectually: she concentrated on writing her book based on observations at Malting House. After the outbreak of World War II , Isaacs initially continued to work in London; while Susan
144-465: A factor. Evelyn would become Nathan's second wife after Susan's death in 1948. In 1927, Pyke lost all his money. The Maltings School was forced to close, Margaret Pyke had to take a job as headmistress's secretary; she left Geoffrey although they were never divorced. Already suffering from periodic fits of depression and burdened with huge debts to his brokers, he now withdrew from normal life altogether and existed on donations from his close friends. For
180-400: A false passport but he was soon arrested and interned. The story of his escape and return to Britain was widely published. In March 1918, Pyke met Margaret Amy Chubb ; she was intelligent, pretty, and attracted to Pyke's unconventional good looks and wilful unconventionality. They were married within three months of meeting. After the war, Pyke tried his hand at several money-making schemes. For
216-578: A hatred of and contempt for The Establishment . After two years at Wellington he was withdrawn, tutored privately and then admitted to Pembroke College, Cambridge to study law. Isaacs' mother died when she was six years old. Shortly afterwards she became alienated from her father after he married the nurse who had attended her mother during her illness. At the age of fifteen, Isaacs was removed from school by her father because she had converted to atheistic socialism; her father refused to speak to her for 2 years. She stayed at home with her stepmother until she
252-707: A job in Bessler, Waechter & Co., a firm in the City of London trading in metals, particularly pig-iron and ferroalloys . In World War I , he was a private soldier in the British Army , serving in the Royal Signals . He met during this time Lionel Robbins , to whom he introduced himself as an agnostic , in the winter of 1916–7. He was in the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917 with the 51st Highland Regiment ,
288-534: A short time The Maltings was a critical if not a commercial success; It was visited by many educationalists and the radical ideas explored in this institution have remained influential up until the present day. It was the subject of a film documentary. Visitors to the school included Jean Piaget and Melanie Klein . Geoffrey Pyke Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include
324-424: A subclass of wh-questions : Isaacs proposed a sub-classification, as "informational", "epistemic", "justificatory" and "affective and expressional". In discussion of a lecture of Wolfe Mays , Isaacs commented, on young children's understanding of questions, and Piaget's use of them, that the understanding had to be seen as incremental, depending on the acquisition of concepts. By the early 1930s, Isaacs had joined
360-631: A while, he made a lot of money speculating on the commodity market using his system of financial management instead of more conventional techniques. Geoffrey Pyke and Margaret Pyke had a son, David (1921–2001). Geoffrey Pyke became preoccupied with the question of his son's education. He wanted to create an education that promoted curiosity and equipped young people to live in the twentieth century – an education that would be utterly different from his own unhappy experience. To do this he set up an infants' school in his Cambridge home. Founded in October 1924,
396-413: Is achieved and not given, [...] the book will appear [...] a valuable contribution to philosophy." In the educational field, Isaacs deprecated "empirical psychology". He admired both James Mark Baldwin and John Dewey for their approaches. Under Baldwin's influence, he considered that clarity of speech and thought should early be encouraged in children. Clifford Geertz , writing of a lecture given by
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#1732780645205432-618: The Aristotelian Society : he gave a paper there in 1931 that influenced the Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (1932) by Lionel Robbins. His interest in philosophy was continuing. But he was unsatisfied with typical philosophical discussion. It has been commented that when Isaacs tried to publish about philosophy proper, he met with continual rejection. His paper What do Linguistic Philosophers Assume? (1960)
468-682: The Montessori education which the idea of children choosing the means of educating themselves. The Malting House School fostered the individual development of children; children were given great freedom and were supported rather than punished. The teachers were seen as observers of the children who were seen as research workers. The school attracted the attention of a wide range of intellectuals. The children came from parents with an academic or professional background who had, in many cases, already achieved eminence in their fields. They included two sons of G. E. Moore (Cambridge philosopher and ethicist),
504-655: The Child (1924). The project was financed by Geoffrey Pyke, and resulted also in a 1927 anonymous editorial by Isaacs in Nature , under the title "Education and science", alluding to the curious child. He agreed with A. S. Neill that the assumption of curiosity in the education of children turned out in practice to be dependent on social class. The work was published in the form of an appendix to Susan's Intellectual Growth in Young Children (1930). "Why" questions are
540-522: The age of six, Pyke extended the remit of the school and expanded its ambition. He supported the school lavishly and employed Nathan Isaacs the school's researcher at large on a salary of £500 per year. At the end of 1927, Susan Isaacs left the school. It is not clear exactly why she left, one possibility is that Pyke began to interfere with the day-to-day running of the school but the developing emotional and sexual tangle of relationships between Susan Isaacs, Nathan Isaacs and Evelyn Lawrence may also have been
576-533: The cost of purchase and conversion being estimated as £1.5M. Maurice and Sylia Dobb lived in a cottage behind the Malting House – he had a position at Trinity College – Ludwig Wittgenstein was lodging with them at the time, at the invitation of Bertrand Russell . Geoffrey Pyke came to public attention when he escaped from internment in Germany during World War I . He had travelled to Germany under
612-405: The daughter of Edgar Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian (neurophysiologist, nobel laureate), Philip Sargant Florence (post-graduate student and later Professor of Economics). Yvonne Kapp , who described Pyke as "an intimate if entirely unpredictable friend" took her children to the school every day. The Pykes, the Isaacs and those around them were dedicated to the teachings of Sigmund Freud. The ethos of
648-427: The details below. Request from 172.68.168.237 via cp1104 cp1104, Varnish XID 196966412 Upstream caches: cp1104 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 07:57:25 GMT Nathan Isaacs Nathan Isaacs (1895–1966) was a British educational psychologist. He worked in the metals trade, but after his marriage to Susan Sutherland Fairhurst , they were partners in her work on early education. Isaacs
684-528: The earlier work of Susan Isaacs. Over a long period, Isaacs worked on an essay that would be a major statement of his views. It appeared after his wife Susan died, as The Foundations of Common Sense (1949), bearing the subtitle "A Psychological Preface to the Problems of Knowledge". It had a hostile review from J. J. C. Smart , stating that "nowhere does he describe an experiment". Another reviewer wrote "[...] to those who are willing to grant that certainty
720-491: The godfather of their young son. In 1923, Margaret Pyke found herself to be the object of Ramsey's affection and he made sexual overtures to her. In 1924, Geoffrey became infatuated with Susan Isaacs and before long they began an affair with Margaret blessing and encouraging the relationship – although Nathan was kept in the dark. Margaret eventually turned down Frank Ramsey's advances. A year or so after it had started, Geoffrey and Susan's affair petered out. As young David reached
756-624: The house containing the school, rented from Hugh Fraser Stewart , in Newnham village , a Cambridge suburb. The Isaacs' rented a flat on Hills Road, Cambridge in autumn 1924, but Nathan continued to work in London, where he spent most of the week. Jean Piaget , the Swiss educator and theorist with whose thought Susan and Nathan Isaacs were closely involved, paid a visit to the Malting House School in 1927. The personal arrangements at
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#1732780645205792-468: The operating principles of the school were explained. It seems very likely that the form of education was influenced by the ideas of John Dewey and Maria Montessori . In the 1920s and 1930s, John Dewey became famous for pointing out that the authoritarian, strict, pre-ordained knowledge approach of traditional education was too concerned with delivering knowledge, and not enough with understanding students' actual experiences. Montessori's ideas gave rise to
828-516: The philosopher George Raymond Geiger (1903–1998) on "cultural foundations of common sense", called it a "fine Deweyian subject". But in The Foundations of Common Sense Isaacs expressed the view that those authors had not gone far enough. With Dewey, Isaacs is now cited as one of the founders of progressive education . Isaacs wrote Children's Why Questions , as a response to, and criticism of, Jean Piaget 's The Language and Thought of
864-631: The present day. Since 2004 it has been owned by Darwin College, Cambridge and used as accommodation. The Malting House is a building in Cambridge on the corner of Newnham Road and Malting Lane in and overlooks the Mill Pond and Sheep's Green . It was originally a malthouse , Oast house , and a small brewery owned, in the 1830s, by the Beales family, a well-known Cambridge trading dynasty. In 1909,
900-517: The school lasted until that the end of that year. They were undermined by two love triangles. Susan had an affair with Pyke: it was a short fling, around the end of 1925, about which Pyke's wife Margaret knew at the time, but Nathan did not. It was followed by unreasonable behaviour on Pyke's part. Nathan, subsequently, had an affair with Evelyn Lawrence , who joined the staff as psychologist in 1926. Nathan became her lover in August 1927, as Susan knew at
936-585: The school was funded by Pyke's City speculations. His wife, Margaret, was a strong supporter of the school and its ideas. Pyke placed advertisements in a number of journals, including the New Statesman and Nature : Pyke recruited psychologist Susan Sutherland Isaacs to run the school; although Pyke had many original ideas regarding education, he promised her, that he would not interfere. Both Pyke and Isaacs had had unconventional and unhappy experiences of growing up. Pyke's father, Edward Lionel Pyke,
972-448: The school was that children should, as far as possible, not have harmful inhibitions pressed upon them. This philosophy extended to permitting the children to express a full range of feelings including aggression and curiosity about bodily functions. The adults also tried to live their lives without reference to traditional, outmoded, norms of behaviour. The Pykes took Frank Ramsey into their family, taking him on holiday, asking him to be
1008-465: The then Dean of Trinity College (Dr Stewart) bought the buildings and converted most of them into an Arts & Crafts house and two or three years later the remaining buildings were converted into a small hall to host musical evenings. From 1924 to 1929, it was the Malting House School. In later years, the house reverted to a family home. In 2003, the buildings were purchased by Darwin College of Cambridge University to serve as student accommodation,
1044-580: The time. The Isaacs' left the school soon after. By that period, Pyke was running out of money and sold his interest in the school to Edgar Obermer (1895–1958), one of the parents; with further funding Pyke kept the school going to 1929, when he had a serious breakdown and it closed. Nathan Isaacs continued to work as a metals merchant, and during World War II was a civil servant in the Ministry of Supply . Evelyn Lawrence left Malting House School in 1928. After some time outside London, she started to share
1080-552: Was 22. Besides Geoffrey Pyke and his wife, the other leading figures in the school were Susan Isaacs and her second husband, Nathan Isaacs ; and Evelyn Lawrence who arrived two years into the experiment. In April 1927, the school advertised again: This advertisement indicated that Ernest Rutherford , Percy Nunn and J.B.S. Haldane had agreed to assist the directors of the school in the final selection of candidates. In an advertisement for residential pupils, in July 1927, some of
1116-429: Was a Jewish lawyer who died when he was only five years old, leaving his family with no money. His mother quarrelled with relatives and made life "hell" for her children. She sent Geoffrey to Wellington, a snobbish private school mainly catering to the children of Army officers; here, she insisted that Pyke maintain the dress and habits of an Orthodox Jew . While there, he was a victim of persecution that instilled him with
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1152-944: Was based in Cambridge. During The Blitz the Ministry of Supply was moved out of London, and Isaacs was posted to Ashow in the Midlands for most of the rest of the war. Susan travelled there at weekends. Nathan saw little of Evelyn during this time: she had been evacuated at Torquay . In 1945 Isaacs returned to London, with a job at Derby & Co. He was awarded the OBE for his war work, in 1948. In 1946 Susan began to succumb to recurrent breast cancer , and she died in October 1948. She made clear her wish that Nathan, her carer, and Evelyn should support each other. They were married in April 1950. While Piaget's early books met with criticisms formulated by Susan and Nathan Isaac, his later methodology
1188-584: Was born in Nuremberg , Germany, (or Frankfurt ) in 1895, into a Jewish family of Russian background, who moved shortly to Switzerland. His father was Orthodox , had philosophical interests, and did not work: his mother traded in garments from Eastern Europe. He was the middle child of three, having two sisters. In 1907, when Nathan was aged 12, the family migrated to the United Kingdom. Isaacs attended school in London for about four years. He then had
1224-514: Was gassed, and was invalided out of the army. After the war ended, Isaacs again worked for Bessler, Waechter & Co., where he became a manager. He and Lionel Robbins in 1919 attended the psychology course at London University given by Susan Brierley, née Fairhurst. Isaacs married Susan, after her first marriage to William Broadhurst Brierley ended in divorce, in 1922. He rented a flat in Hunter Street, Bloomsbury , and she carried on
1260-460: Was published, when Oxford philosophy was topical. Lydia Smith, biographer of Susan Isaacs, as a Professor of Education writing about the work of Susan and Nathan Isaacs on educational psychology and child development , stated that "Nathan Isaacs was primarily a philosopher; he was interested in the sources of knowledge, and especially in the relationship between language and thought." Isaacs published in 1960 A Brief Introduction to Piaget , in
1296-517: Was somewhat different. Isaacs and Evelyn Lawrence promoted his work in the United Kingdom, in alliance with the National Froebel Foundation, who in 1955 published a booklet Some Aspect's of Piaget's Work . Isaacs gave evidence to the committee compiling the Plowden Report on education (commissioned 1963, published in 1967 after his death), as an authority on Piaget. The Report adopted a progressive line, reflecting much of Piaget's influence and
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