Outdoor education: The Romantic origins at the University of St Mark and St John

Leather, Mark, Fewings, Gill and Porter, Su (2020) Outdoor education: The Romantic origins at the University of St Mark and St John. History of Education Review, 49 (1). pp. 85-100. ISSN 0819-8691

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1108/HER-04-2019-0009

Abstract

Purpose: This paper discusses the history of outdoor education at a university in the south west of England, starting in 1840. Methodology: This research uses secondary sources of data; original unpublished work from the university archive is used alongside published works on the university founders and first principals, as well as sources on the developments of outdoor education in the UK. Findings: Both founding principals were driven by their strong values of social justice and their own experiences of poverty and inequality, to establish a means for everyone to access high quality education regardless of background or means. They saw education as key to providing a pathway out of poverty and towards opportunity and achievement for all with outdoor education as an essential part of that process. Kay-Shuttleworth, founder of St John’s, wrote that “the best book is Nature, with an intelligent interpreter”, whilst Derwent Coleridge, St Mark’s first principal, had a profound love of nature and reverence for his father's poetic circle. His father, the famous English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor-Coleridge, made the first recorded use of the verb “mountaineering”. Coleridge was using a new word for a new activity; the ascending of mountains for pleasure, rather than for economic or military purposes. Originality: The Romantic influence on outdoor education, the early appreciation of nature and the outdoors for physical and psychological well-being, and the drive for social justice have not been told in one case study before.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Archive, Nature, Social Justice, Romanticism, Outdoor Education, Mountaineering
Depositing User:	Ms Raisa Burton
Date Deposited:	02 Apr 2020 09:28
Last Modified:	10 Dec 2020 16:16
URI:	https://marjon.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/17543
Related URLs:	https://www.eme ... -0009/full/html (Publisher URL)

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