Pioneer who created a new generation of teachers

Jan 5 2009 by Andrew Baldwin, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

HE began life among Scottish crofting families, speaking only Gaelic at home during his early childhood.

In later years he was to be awarded a CBE for his services and pioneering approach to teacher training in Huddersfield.

The journey had been a long one for Alexander MacLennan – called Mac by virtually all who knew him.

He is being recalled on the 60th anniversary of the foundation of Huddersfield Technical Teacher Training College.

Mac took up his post as director on January 1, 1947, moving from Bolton to take the job.

How Huddersfield came to be identified as the appropriate location for Britain’s third dedicated technical teacher training institution is uncertain.

But history tells us that the case had been pressed as early as 1896 and that lobbying went on right to the outbreak of the Second World War.

Mac was to be the college’s leading light until his retirement in 1974, introducing ideas which earned him his award in the New Year’s Honours of 1971.

Because of his own family background and educational experience Mac was very aware that his students were older and had come up the hard way, through evening classes and day release.

His aim was to give them an educational experience equivalent to the best of university life in a version suitable for adults. He wanted their experience of training to be liberal, challenging, creative, relevant and co-operative.

He was one of the first to do away with exams after winning the argument that adults were self-motivated and could be trusted to learn what they needed to know.

It is likely that there was no other training college in the country at the time that operated without formal examinations.

Outsiders were at first suspicious at what was going on.

One early student was told: “Why have you applied to go to Huddersfield? They’re all mad there.”

Mac was especially concerned that his tutorial staff should not ‘over-lecture’ the student teachers. He pointed out that the teacher trainees should have ample time for reading, writing, thinking and talking with plenty of tutor guidance.

For Mac no lecture should be given unless it was considered really necessary and tutorial discussion was generally better.

He was to oversee a rapid growth in the college and by 1956 there were 109 students at Huddersfield, 101 of them residential.

As student numbers grew, the college came to develop a rich cultural and social life of its own.

Bonds of friendship were formed which lasted many years and a former students’ association became a thriving body.

The seal of approval for a new Holly Bank campus at Lindley came on January 30, 1957 when the tender of a local builder, J B Brooke & Sons, amounting to £56,241 12s.2d was accepted for the first phase.

Mac became an enthusiastic advocate of what we would nowadays call the open-plan workplace.

One tutor involved in setting up new laboratories at Holly Bank remembered: “MacLennan’s philosophy was that you did not have separate labs for different disciplines but everyone had a place within the same laboratory.

“Everyone, including office arts students, builders, physicists and so on rubbed shoulders in the same environment.

“It took about ten years for various groups to retreat into their own laboratories once Mac left. He would have turned in his grave.”

Mac retired in 1974 and was awarded the honorary degree of Master of Education by Leeds University.

The citation said: “His best reward is the college which has grown up under his guidance and has acquired the distinctive MacLennan flavour – lively, radical, piquant, audacious, where no one stands on his dignity, least of all the director.”

Sadly, he was only to enjoy four years of retirement. He died in Huddersfield from heart failure on July 8, 1978 after a severe asthma attack.

Teacher training in Huddersfield has changed in recent years.

Huddersfield College of Technology, as it was then known, joined forces with the short-lived Oastler College of Education in 1970 to form Huddersfield Polytechnic.

Out of that came the present-day university, with teacher training at Lockside on the main campus bordering Huddersfield town centre.

Holly Bank itself is now gone, its site covered by a housing development.

New book Teacher Education At Huddersfield, 1947-2007, written by Michael Cook, Roy Fisher and Martyn Walker, tells the story

If you would like to buy a copy send a cheque for £18 (payable to the University of Huddersfield) to Uniprint, Computing and Library Services Level 4, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate,

Huddersfield, HD1 3DH.

`Everyone, including office arts students, builders, physicists and so on rubbed shoulders in the same environment’