Michael Ernest Sadler

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Michael Ernest Sadler
Born	1861 Barnsley
Died
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	British
Subjects	Education
Influences John Ruskin

Sir Michael Ernest Sadler (born July 3, 1861 - died October 14, 1943) was a British historian, educationalist and university administrator. He worked at the universities of Manchester and Leeds. He was a champion of the public school system.^[1]

Contents 1 Biography 2 Career 3 The Sadler Commission 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Biography

Michael Ernest Sadler, born into a radical home in 1861 at Barnsley in the industrial north of England, died in Oxford in 1943.^[2] He is the father of Michael Sadleir.

His early youth was coloured by the fact that one of his forebears, Michael Thomas Sadler, was among the pioneers of the Factory Acts. His early memories were full of associations with the leaders of the working-class movement in the north of England. Remembering these pioneers, Sadler recorded: ‘I can see how much religion deepened their insight and steadied their judgement, and saved them from coarse materialism in their judgement of economic values. This common heritage was a bond of social union. A social tradition is the matrix of education’. ^[3] Sadler’s schooling was typical of his times. It gave him a diverse background, which was to be reflected throughout his life in his interpretation of the process and content of education. When he was 10 years old, he was sent to a private boarding school at Winchester where the atmosphere was markedly conservative. Sadler recalls:

Think of the effect on my mind of being swug from the Radical West Riding…where I never heard the Conservative point of view properly put, to where I was thrown into an entirely new atmosphere in which the old Conservative and Anglican traditions were still strong.^[3]

From this preparatory school he moved to Rugby in the English Midlands, where he spent his adolescence in an atmosphere entirely different from that of the Winchester school. His masters were enthusiastic upholders of Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan Revolution. The young Sadler soon found himself in critical revolt against the Cavalier and Anglican traditions.

He went to Trinity College, Oxford in 1880. There he soon came under the spell of leading historians such as T.H. Green and Arnold Toynbee. But it was John Ruskin who completely overwhelmed the undergraduate. Sadler has left on record how, in his second year at Trinity, a short course of lectures was announced, to be given in the University Museum by Ruskin. Tickets were difficult to get because of the popularity of the speaker. After a warm description of Ruskin’s picturesque appearance, Sadler articulates a favourite conviction when he writes:

Nominally these lectures of Ruskin’s were upon Art. Really they dealt with the economic and spiritual problems of English national life. He believed, and he made us believe, that every lasting influence in an educational system requires an economic structure of society in harmony with its ethical ideal.^[3]

That belief persisted to the end of Sadler’s life and is recurrent in his many analyses of foreign systems of education.^[2] When, in July 1882, the examinations lists were issued, Sadler had gained a first-class degree. A month earlier he had become President Elect of the Oxford Union, a field of public debating experience that has produced many an English politician.

[edit] Career

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[edit] The Sadler Commission

In 1917 to 1919, he led the Sadler Commission which looked at the state of Indian Education.^[1]

Towards the end of the First World War, the Secretary of State for India, [[Austen Chamberlain]], invited Sadler to accept the chairmanship of a commission the government proposed to appoint to inquire into the affairs of Calcutta University. Chamberlain wrote:’ Lord Chelmsford [the Viceroy] informs me that they hope for the solution of the big political problems of India through the solution of the educational problems’.^[3] After some hesitation Sadler accepted the invitation. Under his direction the Commission far exceeded its initial terms of reference^[4]. The result was thirteen volumes issued in 1919^[5], providing a comprehensive sociological account of the context in which [[Mahatma Gandhi]] was campaigning for the end of the British Raj and the independence of India. From the lines of inquiry pursued it is possible to deduce a conception of expanding higher education that goes far beyond the traditional university image in its search to relate higher education to the twentieth century, with its increasing availability of educational opportunities to women. Prior to the publication of the Calcutta University Report, Sadler delivered a private address to the Senate of Bombay University. He put forward his personal conclusions as he surveyed The Educational Movement in India and Britain. It was a far-sighted address, characteristic of Sadler’s belief in the inter-relationship of all the various levels of education and the importance of teacher training. He warned his listeners about producing an academic proletariat with job expectations that could not be fulfilled. And finally he told the members of the Senate:

And in India you stand on the verge of the most hazardous and inevitable of adventures—the planning of primary education for the unlettered millions of a hundred various races. I doubt whether the European model will fit Indian conditions. If you want social dynamite, modern elementary education of the customary kind will give it to you. It is the agency that will put the masses in motion. But to what end or issue no one can foretell.^[3]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

The text above calls freely on the text published by UNESCO below which "may be reproduced free of charge as long as acknowledgement is made of the source."^[1]

• A detailed biography from UNESCO