The New Statesman
21 June 1913
We must, I suppose, assume that the Summer School is an American invention, although the student of social origins could easily frame for it a European pedigree, and might put in a claim on behalf of those little reading parties among the mountains of Wales or Scotland which, during last century, played their modest part in English university life. But the summer school as we have it today – had a much later beginning. It is just forty years since an American Methodist bishop conceived the idea for the Chautauqua Institution – the first, still the largest, and by far the most astonishing summer school in the world.
In order to reach it you must travel some sixty miles from the peculiarly unideal town of Buffalo. The electric car will put you down at the gate of a noble enclosure – a garden city planted among lawns and woodland by the shining waters of Lake Chautauqua. Here during the two months of high summer, not less than 20,000 holiday students are provided with an overflowing banquet of lectures, classes, debates, concerts, the volume and variety of which suggest unlimited resources.
Chautauqua can command the services – as lecturers, teachers and speakers – of the most eminent men in America, as well as those of the most admired foreigners within their borders. Its original inspiration was evangelical: it was designed by its founder as a summer educational retreat for Sunday-school teachers; and its puritan strictness has been maintained throughout, despite its astounding growth and success. In this city enclosed you may not play cards, or dance, although, I believe, there is no official ban on tobacco; you cannot get, by either purchase or persuasion, a single drop of liquor; you must keep the Sabbath with the rigidity of a vanished New England: while the life of the week day – with its fourteen hours of classes and meetings – is reckoned a quite sufficient safeguard against the slacker who may have found his way in by mistake. Such is the parent institution, which has had an almost unimaginable progeny in the United States.
The pioneer of summer schools in these islands is, beyond question, Professor Patrick Geddes. His school, on Castle Hill, Edinburgh, was the first successful experiment in Britain. Today the schools are so numerous that to frame a complete list would be a practical impossibility. They take every kind of colour – social, philosophical, literary, political and religious. Needless to say, it is the small minorities, the little eager cults, the groups of idealists, who have seen most clearly and exploited most cleverly the possibilities of the summer school as an agency of propaganda.
Consider the delights of the old Irish world presented through the medium of the summer school of the Gaelic League in John Bull’s Other Island. The study of Gaelic in a region where Irish may with truth be described as the language of the people, has a fascination which, one may suppose, is almost irresistible to the young Irish patriot.
The reading of a batch of prospectuses, however, leaves the impression that the inspiration of the summer school is to be sought in one stream or another of the New Thought. Here, to begin with, in the charmingly situated town of Peebles there will be held in July an International Summer School “to promote unity in religion, philosophy, science, and art, and its expression in all branches of social service”. Above the delightful shore of Colwyn Bay the northern Vegetarians foregather. Three times a week some aspect of the humane diet question is made the subject of debate.
But the Social Question is the real and avowed basis of those schools which may claim to be most nearly related to the vital interests of the time. Here, we have the Fabian Summer School, fortunate beyond almost all others in its superb situation on Derwentwater as also in the concreteness of its programme and the surprisingly varied interests represented by the men and women whom it attracts.
Out of the two months of its regular session, one week will be given up to discussions connected with the Control of Industry, and another to a joint conference between the Executives of the Fabian Society and the Independent Labour Party on the forthcoming autumn and winter campaign. For the rest of the time, until the middle of September, the Fabians will roam at large among modern problems of all sorts. They will consider, with Mrs Sidney Webb, the Spheres of Science and Religion in Social Reconstruction, and with Sir Sydney Olivier the momentous interaction of White Capital and Coloured Labour; they will seek to thread the appalling maze of Casual Labour, and turn their holiday experiences to account in piling up the case for the Nationalisation of Railways.
There may be some who suspect that Fabians’ celebrated expertness of organisation is applied not only to the debates in the fine room of Barrow House, but to mountain excursions, to bathing parties, and even fancy-dress balls. The truth is that the school affords a happy illustration of the real democracy – the comradeship of public servant and factory operative, tradesman and journalist, university professor, employer, and trade union official, in an atmosphere far removed from the absurd and deadening snobbery of the professional world.
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