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Sanderson of Oundle School. 
Sanderson of Oundle. Pp. viit366+16 plates. 
(London: Chatto and Windus, 1923.) 12s. 6d. net. 
EW schools have passed through a more interest- _ 
ing development in modern times than Oundle. 
It is an old foundation and it has had periods of dis- 
tinction in its long history, but its real rise to import- 
ance began in 1892 when Frederick William Sanderson 
went there from Dulwich to take charge. It was no 
light undertaking. There had been an unsuccessful 
period : the numbers of boys had gone down, and what 
was worse, the standard of work was low. Sanderson 
put all his tremendous energy and enthusiasm into 
_ the task and never paused till he had raised the school 


to its present high position. Then came his tragic 
death last June with the sudden break of all his plans 
for future development. 
Some of Sanderson’s colleagues welcomed the 
happy idea of writing down while still fresh in their 
minds what they knew of his methods and ideals, 
- and these impressions have been brought together 
and interpreted in this book under the simple and 
sufficient title of “Sanderson of Oundle.” The 
purpose was not so much to praise and honour Sander- 
son; it was the much more important one of saving 
all that could be saved of him for the world. 
The task has been well done, and no man could 
wish for a nobler memorial. We see Sanderson 
~ entering Oundle as a young man of thirty-five—a very 
downright, uncompromising, and resolute personality— 
with perfectly definite ideas of what he wished to do 
and a perfectly definite intention of doing it. The 
development of the boy was his purpose, not the 
fostering of pure scholarship: if the classical method 
- would ndét serve some other means must be found. 
To him no boy was in the first instance stupid or 
beyond training, though he might be made so by a 
wooden educational system or a stupid teacher : every 
boy, even the reputedly dullest, had in him a desire 
to make or do something—some creative instinct— 
and if only this could be reached the boy could be 
trained. So Sanderson sought to discover each 
boy’s bent ; for the ordinary boy it was used as a 
means of developing his mental powers; for the 
really clever boys full opportunities were provided for 
the study of their special subjects. He set up shops 
for wood and iron work, where real things were made 
(he always disliked instructional futilities), engineering, 
chemical and physical laboratories, biological depart- 
ments, an experimental farm and an art room; he 
_ developed music. He had always the latest big thing 
_ in science on show or at work ; a motor-car engine 
and chassis which the boys could dismantle and re- 
NO. 2796, VOL. 111 | 
assemble, an aeroplane engine for the same purpose, 
a big wireless set with which they could transmit 
their concerts, and a score of other things to awaken 
the boys’ interest and enthusiasm. 
To the purist in education it all seemed very up- 
setting—the multiplicity of forms, the rapid changes 
in books and subjects, the refined and delicate apparatus 
entrusted to only partly trained schoolboys. But 
there was method in it all. Sanderson looked on all 
his subjects—shops, laboratories, and sides—as so many 
resonators by which to test each individual boy. If 
he had enough resonators he could find the one to 
which each boy responded ; and so he never hesitated 
to start some new side or to drop it when it no longer 
served a useful end. Once he found a way in to the 
real boy the training became easy. 
But Sanderson was more than a trainer of the mind. 
He loved life and he wished that all might have more 
of it. Many of his boys were to become captains of 
industry in the large industrial towns. It was not 
enough for him that they should understand and be 
interested in their future work: he saw that the 
surest way to the enriching of their lives was to uplift 
it all. To him the meanest tasks of daily life had 
in them something divine so long as they were honour- 
able and ministered to some need of the community, 
and he set himself to find this. He therefore made 
his workshops and laboratories serve a higher purpose 
than the awakening of strivings for knowledge. “I 
want not so much to teach engineering,” he once said 
to me, “as to find the divineness of it.” So he would 
never recognise the supposed conflict between science 
and religion or the limitations usually imposed on 
scripture lessons. The Bible was to him a handbook for 
daily life, not merely an exercise for Sundays, and he 
always regretted that people knew so little of it; his 
‘scripture lessons covered the whole range of human 
activities. He was always on the look-out for copy for 
them. One might be telling him of some recent de- 
velopment in science and he would listen with deep 
interest ; suddenly his eyes would twinkle and he would 
pull out an envelope and jot down on the back some 
note for his next scripture lesson. He would go up toa 
boy working in a workshop or laboratory and ask him 
his views on some new thing—his own views, for all 
Sanderson’s efforts in library, laboratory, and study 
were directed to the development of the boy’s powers 
of thinking for himself. It might be relativity, the 
possibilities of “ wireless,’ or something else; he 
would listen and encourage the boy to talk. He would 
then give some wider turn—probably sociological—to 
the conversation ; for it was always his aim to train 
leaders of men rather than mere scholars, and he 
knew that no one can lead if he lacks wide sympathies. 
