Summerhill’s prophet without honour
March 2007
Robert MacKenzie: Charismatic free-thinker and radical with a vision of extricating Scottish education from its Calvinist roots. photo: Nick Georges
by Peter Murphy
I first met Robert MacKenzie in April 1968, just after he was appointed head of Summerhill Academy where, two years earlier, I had been promoted principal teacher of English.
Three years later, in November 1971, I was unexpectedly promoted to the headship of Logie Secondary School, Dundee, and so missed the traumatic events leading up to Mackenzie’s sacking in April 1974.
I was long enough at Summerhill, however, to appreciate the forces which, behind the scenes, led up to MacKenzie’s downfall. It was over 25 years later when I had retired from my post as founding rector of Whitfield High School, Dundee, that I undertook to write his biography with the generous help and cooperation of his widow, Diana, and his family.
By then I had come to realise the significance of MacKenzie as a force in Scottish education, in terms of his credentials as a free-thinker and radical, very much in the mould of Forfar-born A.S. Neill. Both these men were not just great teachers, but were formidable, charismatic characters who learned to communicate their vision to the world in general as prolific writers and as engaging speakers.
That vision was to free up Scottish education from its Calvinist roots and to place the pupil at the centre of their educational philosophy. Neither had any time for corporal punishment. Instead, they saw the child as sacrosanct; each stood for educational principles which promoted freedom for children to develop in a loving and caring environment where learning by discovery was the key to enlightenment and self-belief.
Mackenzie drew inspiration for his philosophy from travelling extensively on the continent in the Thirties, from teaching in an independent, experimental school in the New Forest in his middle twenties, and from his experiences as a navigator in the RAF during the war.
He wondered, for instance, at the potential of working-class recruits taking to the complexities of meteorology and navigation by dint of their natural ability, an ability that had remained untapped at an earlier stage by their minimal, unproductive state education.
His first teaching post at Galashiels Academy in the Borders confirmed his worst suspicions that Scottish education had got stuck in a rut. It was stultified by an over-reliance on out-dated methods, repetitious memory work, dictated largely by the needs of an exam-oriented curriculum with no emphasis whatsoever on life skills.
His promotion to head of Braehead School in 1957 in the coal town of Buckhaven, Fife, gave him a unique opportunity to try out his ideas in the context of what was actually a new Junior Secondary school housed in an old dilapidated building, serving a socially-deprived community. Inspired by key appointments such as Hamish Brown to introduce town-based youngsters to the Scottish wilderness by embarking on what amounted to adventure-training, Braehead School became a byword for experimental, secondary education from the late Fifties until the late Sixties.
Predictably, Mackenzie eventually came into conflict with the local authority, particularly over his resistance to allowing corporal punishment in his school and his failure, as far as the authority was concerned, to give a high enough profile to his pupils’ getting good results in their ‘O’ Levels. It came as little surprise in the late Sixties when the Fife scheme for the introduction of comprehensive education was made public, that Braehead School was to be scheduled for closure and that no alternative headship for MacKenzie was in prospect.
His appointment to the headship at Summerhill in 1968 by the Labour-controlled Aberdeen Council, caused a stir in Scottish educational circles, given MacKenzie’s record as a non-conformist. The Aberdeen councillors who made the decision to appoint him did so in the light of an undertaking on MacKenzie’s part to conform to the expectations of the local authority that Summerhill be developed into a six-year comprehensive with due regard to preparing pupils at the top end of the school for presentation at ‘O’ and ‘H’ level in the S.C.E. exams.
What followed at Summerhill over the next six years of MacKenzie’s headship was a catalogue of misfortunes. Although some of these came about due to circumstances outwith MacKenzie’s control, many of the things that went wrong were due to his own mismanagement and, as time wore on, to an orchestrated campaign by people from both within and without the school, to fatally undermine his tenure there.
What MacKenzie could not have bargained for, not long after he took over, were the grave problems that were about to beset the school because of significant changes made by the authority in the school’s catchment area. These adjustments were made to allow for the opening nearby of a new comprehensive at Hazlehead. The knock-on effects of these changes not only adversely affected the ‘quality’ of the intake, but greatly increased the numbers enrolling into S1. As a result, the school roll in 1970-71 went over the 1,000 mark.
In these circumstances, what the school badly needed was a pragmatic, well-organised individual to manage a rapidly-growing institution. Mackenzie was not equipped to do that. He was at heart a visionary who saw Summerhill as part of a wider crusade to persuade teaching staff to adopt a more compassionate approach to young people, with less use of the belt, along with a curriculum less thirled to the dictates of the examination system.
Matters got worse for Mackenzie in 1971-72, for just when he needed him most, his very capable, well-liked and respected depute, Ian Macdonald, was promoted to be head of another Aberdeen school. Furthermore, Macdonald’s departure more or less coincided with the opening of a serious rift between MacKenzie and a significant proportion of the staff at the school.
Unwisely, he set about making a radical change with regard to the use of corporal punishment in the school. Without prior consultation, he suddenly issued an edict stating that, with immediate effect, girls should cease to be belted.
This edict was strongly challenged by the highly unionised members of staff led by Stanley Allan, the principal teacher of Physical Education.
MacKenzie refused to relent and a stand-off was initiated that increasingly led to a bitter feud between MacKenzie and Allan. Allan saw himself as a sort of shop steward, protecting the interests of his members and willing to complain to the local authority about MacKenzie’s undemocratic tactics in dealing with staff issues.
Amid increasing signs of indiscipline in the school, the local authority took upon itself in 1972 to appoint a new depute in place of Ian Macdonald. Their choice was Alex Ritchie, a well-known ‘hard man’ and former Labour councillor. It was a disastrous appointment as it enraged MacKenzie, who felt betrayed by the local authority appointing a man diametrically opposed to all that MacKenzie stood for. It also exacerbated a situation in the school where the staff had, by this time, polarised themselves into two opposing camps.
On the one hand, there was the overwhelming majority who supported Allan’s resistance to the way MacKenzie was running the school. On the other was a group of 14, mostly guidance staff whom MacKenzie had appointed, who supported his philosophy and his deep concern for what he called the ‘dissident minority’ of pupils in the school. The spokesman for this group was John Roberts who had succeeded me as principal teacher of English in 1972.
By 1974, the die was cast. A sincere attempt at intervention by the Education Convenor, Roy Pirie, to placate the two warring factions and persuade MacKenzie to back down on his stance to phase out corporal punishment in his school came to nothing. At a special meeting of the Education Committee, convened to decide MacKenzie’s future, he refused to give an assurance that he would abide by the rules with regard to the use of corporal punishment in his school.
Accordingly, he was suspended from duty. He was 64. He would never return to Summerhill.
MacKenzie, however, lived on to fight another day. The sacking gave him an opportuuity to write a rousing book, The Unbowed Head, which told his side of the story for the benefit of posterity. He continued to wage war against the Establishment, by going on lecture tours and writing articles for the Times Educational Supplement. Two years after his death in 1987, his final and best book, A Search for Scotland, was published. It stands as an eloquent testimony to his stature as a visionary in a land that has a tendency to treat its prophets with disdain.
The 1999 biography of Robert Mackenzie, The Life of R.F. MacKenzie, A Prophet without Honour, published by John Donald, Edinburgh, is sadly out of print.
PETER MURPHY was born in Aberdeen in 1932 from working class stock. He taught at Torry Secondary, Aberdeen Grammar and Summerhill Academy. He is now a councillor for Carnoustie Central (and the only Labour councillor on Angus Council). In his spare time he keeps bees and visits his family who are spread far and wide.
MacKenzie the man:
Robert MacKenzie was born in 1910 into the family of the stationmaster at Lethenty, not far from Inverurie. A lad o’ pairts, he did well at Turriff school and went on to be a bursar at Robert Gordon’s College where he was dux. After graduating with an Honours degree in English from the University of Aberdeen, he toured much of Europe on a bicycle, and later visited Canada, the USA and South Africa, working as he went.
His companion on this tour was Hunter Diack, who shared his ardent socialism, agnosticism and conviction that they could set the world on fire. When war broke out, the two friends, with three others, launched the 2d weekly North East Review which finally closed in 1946, with a dying declaration about ‘the deplorable condition of journalism in the North-East’.
‘R.F.’ spent his war as a navigator in Bomber Command, some time on duty in Canada and South Africa. On leave in London he met his wife, Diana, who was serving in the WRNS. They were married in 1945 and had three children, Neil, Alastair and Diana.
MacKenzie was a great supporter of the Leopard, for which he wrote on several occasions, including a piece in the first issue, a fine profile of John R. Allan, entitled Ban the Belt.
R.F. died in 1987 at his Aberdeenshire farmhouse home, surrounded by the family he loved.
This is an article from the March 2007 edition of Leopard Magazine. To read much more like this every month, see our subscription details.