A meeting in Stornoway, and the good that followed it
Iain Smith
They were part-owners, amidst thousands of others, of a castle – i.e. a castle which had been bequeathed by Lord Leverhulme in the 1920s to a local community trust; and they were unsure in 1950 what do with their castle. It was a castle with a controversial past: having been built by Sir James Matheson in the 19th century. He is currently described on a poster outside the castle itself as 'an astute trader'. That, I suppose, is indeed one way of describing the biggest and most notorious drug-dealer of the 19th century: for he was responsible for importing vast quantities of opium from India into China. This was a man who, with his business partner Jardine, induced the British government to declare war on China to keep his trade going.
These four people in 1950 eventually reached a conclusion: 'Let us make this castle a place of learning'. And that is how Lews Castle College UHI (now part of the University of the Highlands and Islands) began. Wise people these four were; and their advice was significant in persuading the Stornoway Trust and Ross and Cromarty education authority to establish a college. Out of a building financed from the fruits of infamy, they created an institution for good.
The island of Lewis already had the Nicolson Institute, a school which in 1898 had for the first time acquired the power to send students directly into university. Two students went to university that year, the first two out of many thousands to follow. One of these two, Robert M Maciver, records in his autobiography how he departed from Stornoway on the midnight steamer, knowing that he would never return to live again in Stornoway. (That was one of the side-effects of much advanced education in rural Scotland: it created a good to be exported, not a good for local communities or even for Scotland as a whole.)
Maciver indeed did not return to Stornoway, except on holiday (during one of which he and his father, in 1913, drove the first Ford Model T in Lewis on what is now Stornoway Airport): he had gone to study in Edinburgh and in Oxford; and then in 1913 was already into an illustrious academic career in Aberdeen, then Toronto and then New York.
His story was replicated across much of rural Scotland about the same time i.e. roughly 100 years ago. What the Nicolson Institute had begun to do in 1898 began at approximately the same time (1905 or so) in Portree High School, in Kirkwall Grammar School and in many Scottish rural communities of significant size. (However, it took many more decades before school students in Harris, in the southern isles of the Outer Hebrides and in other small rural communities acquired similar access.)
But, if direct access to universities from a reasonably local school became moderately common from 1900 onwards (and accelerated with the foundation of the Carnegie Trust in 1901 and its ever-expanding provision of university bursaries in the decades of the early 20th century), the story of further education (or for that matter, higher education) provision is much more uneven across Scotland. For the most part it is a story of the years after 1945; and the growth of further education colleges in Scotland's major cities was rapid, even dramatic – but only in cities. The development of further education in rural Scotland was uneven and generally slow. Skye did not acquire a college offering further education qualifications until Sabhal Mor Ostaig started such provision in 1983; Argyllshire had very meagre provision indeed until the establishment of Argyll College in 1997; and the story in Orkney and in Shetland was very similar.
So the decision to create a Lews Castle College in 1953 (with its nine staff and its 83 students) was for its time indeed a far-sighted and unusual one. But, whether we are talking about school education or about further education, there was and is a dilemma in at least some areas of the Highlands and Islands.
I went to school in Ness on Lewis in 1952. Fourteen of us started: I was monolingual in English. The others were monolingual in Gaelic.
The first language of our teacher was also Gaelic. So our teacher taught us in the sensible language: English.
I well remember our first lesson. 'A' is for apple. 'N' is for needle. That was, more or less, fine by us. And then: 'C' is for camel. That concept caused some difficulty, especially for my Gaelic-speaking fellow classmates: at the time, camels were in short supply on the Isle of Lewis even on the sandy machair land. That struck me as strange then; and, 60 years on, it still seems strange – and wrong. So I am glad that the training of Gaelic-medium teachers has been brought into the curriculum of UHI and of Lews Castle College.
When I left education in the Nicolson Institute, I wanted to be good at chemistry. And from university, I went back to teach chemistry in the Nicolson Institute for a bit more than two years. But I had also done something else with my university years: I had studied public speaking, debating and related things. And the Nicolson Institute allowed me one period every Friday afternoon to teach students something of what I thought I knew about public speaking. One 16-year-old student, Maggie, stayed behind one day and said to me:
Mr Smith: I come from a very small Hebridean island. I think that is why I lack confidence. I wondered what to do about it. So I thought I would enrol in your class. Not to become a public speaker but to add to my confidence. And what has gone on in this class has made me more confident. I will never ever be a public performer of any kind. But thank you for what has happened to me.
I left chemistry, the Nicolson Institute and Lewis; and then I left Scotland entirely. Sixteen years later I returned to Scotland. As I drove across the border, I switched my car radio to Radio Scotland. And heard a voice I recognised (that of Maggie, then well into her very distinguished career with BBC Scotland). That was the same person who had sworn to me never to speak in public.
The Hebrides have many more Maggies today than they had when I was a little child in Ness. And that is a change for the good. Both the schools of the Western Isles and its further education provision have contributed to that. There is a confidence in the Western Isles now that was not present in my generation or in the generations before mine. That is good. And the growth of education in the Western Isles both in quantity and in quality has done much for that.
So, what has changed in education in Lewis over the last 50 or even 100 years? Perhaps at least three major things.
Firstly, we observe that 100 years ago, as the story of Robert M Maciver (and of many others) shows, secondary education was to a large extent an export industry rather than in any way being about local civic and community development. Fifty years ago, this was also true of much of the further education at the then new Lews Castle College. This is now much less true. Much of the curriculum of Lews Castle College and of the University of the Highlands and Islands is not a pre-career prelude to migration but early and mid-career capacity-building for those already in local employment.
Secondly, 100 years ago, and even 50 years ago, teachers in Lewis and further afield largely believed that bilingualism and Gaelic-medium education were handicaps to educational progress. That certainly is what was believed by my own parents, both teachers, and by most of their colleagues. That belief is now largely, although not wholly, gone and practice – especially in much of the primary school sector – reflects that. It is now thought that the bilingual student is advantaged, not disadvantaged. Indeed that is the belief throughout much of Europe. Gaelic-medium education improves literacy in Gaelic – and in English.
Thirdly and finally, primary, secondary and further education in Lewis has a greater emphasis today not just on academic knowledge and skills but on higher-order capacities: working in teams, making public presentations, engaging in problem-solving, being active rather than passive students. And so we have a local Hebridean (and indeed Highland) generation which is more confident, more outspoken and more engaged in civic society than were either my generation or the generation of my parents.
There is a refrain that is often thought to have been used constantly across the world for at least 2,000 years: 'The children and students of today are not what they used to be'. Indeed: and for me at least that is a matter for celebration.
Iain Smith was formerly dean of education in the University
of Strathclyde
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