St Christopher School: A Short History

By Chris McNab

In 1915 a new school opened in Letchworth. Based upon Theosophic values, it offered a very progressive form of education, with children encouraged to develop their own personal interests, and emphasis placed on tolerance towards all races and religions, and physical health and well-being. Discipline was largely self-imposed and students were able to influence the running of the school. The school's philosophy has enabled it to weather a century of change, including two world wars, economic depressions, and many shifts in national education policy. St Christopher School is now a unique and dynamic school where education continues to be based upon the concept of treating children as individuals. This book explores the school's history and philosophy, offering a concise but fascinating insight into the first hundred years of St Chris.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Dec 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784420451

Chris McNab

Chris McNab is an author and editor specializing in military history and military technology. To date he has published more than 40 books, including A History of the World in 100 Weapons (2011), Deadly Force (2009) and Tools of Violence (2008). He is the contributing editor of Hitler's Armies: A History of the German War Machine 1939–45 (2011) and Armies of the Napoleonic Wars (2009). Chris has also written extensively for major encyclopedia series, magazines and newspapers, and he lives in South Wales, UK.

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School.

FOUNDATIONS 1915–18

THEOSOPHY WAS , AND REMAINS , an arcane philosophy to the uninitiated. In its broadest terms, it explores the interaction between the physical universe, humanity and the divine. It therefore might seem an unlikely foundation for an educational institution, but in many ways its values, ideas and practitioners sowed the seeds of St Christopher School in Letchworth Garden City.

Jiddu Krishnamurti, Indian mystic and philosopher, was connected to the life of St Christopher via the Theosophical Society.

On 26 December 1912, George Arundale delivered a speech at the annual convention of the Theosophical Society in Adyar, India. Arundale was an influential theosophist and the head of the Central Hindu College at Benares, a fusion of responsibilities that produced an especially progressive vision of education. The topic of his speech was ‘Education as Service’, the theme making reference to the book Education as Service by Jiddu Krishnamurti, a young Indian lauded by the Theosophical Society as a future ‘World Teacher’. Krishnamurti’s book would become a conceptual foundation for much of the early educational development at St Christopher. The content of the speech struck a chord with many of the listeners attending from the United Kingdom, not least Ada Hope Russell Rea. Along with a group of other inspired signatories, Rea composed a letter to the Theosophical Society leadership in Britain asking for support in establishing ‘a school definitely and openly on Theosophic lines’.

The idea was generally well received, and fundraising efforts began in earnest in 1913, under the leadership of theosophists Josephine and Sidney Ransom. An initial whip-round collection of 8 guineas was an insufficient start, but then the project gathered the direct support of Annie Besant, president of the Theosophical Society in Adyar, and George Arundale himself. In early 1914, a twelve-man committee was established to oversee the financial and practical challenges of establishing the new school. Letchworth was the natural venue. Not only was it the home of several key committee members, including the Ransoms and Rea, it also had a significant theosophical local community, a fact that would oil the wheels of the school’s foundation.

Arundale, one of the landmark buildings of the St Christopher site, here seen as it was when taken over from Letchworth School in 1916.

An appeal for funds eventually bore fruit, and two semi-detached houses (28 and 30 Broadwater Avenue) were found in Letchworth as the new school buildings. The school also received a skeleton staff of five, including the indomitable new headmaster, Dr John Horace Armstrong Smith. The Garden City Theosophical School opened on 20 January 1915, with fourteen pupils ready for a new style of education.

A school certificate for passing a spelling test, printed on the school press, issued by the ‘Garden City Theosophical School’ and signed by Armstrong Smith himself.

A Eurhythmics display by school girls in 1917. The eurhythmics dance/exercise system was pioneered by Swiss musician Jaques-Dalcroze in c. 1905.

Armstrong Smith was a capable man to guide the school through its early years. He was a true internationalist, having worked at diverse locations around the world either as an educator or in medical service (he was a surgeon as well as a teacher). He was also a dedicated theosophist, and a man fundamentally dissatisfied with the rote-learning strategies and grim discipline that pervaded much of the British school system during the early twentieth century.

It is worth reflecting in some detail on the educational principles Armstrong Smith brought to the school in those early days, because in many ways they still inform the school today. Some aspects of school life were extremely forward-looking. On top of what Armstrong Smith called ‘a sound general education’, each child was encouraged to ‘develop his own special talent’ through subjects in which the child held a particular personal interest. In this way, education became a reward in