Mr Cockerill, Colonel Roy Fairclough, to whom you wrote a letter dated
4 October 2006 seeking information on the QAS, thought that because
I had been involved in army schools work in various tours of duty and
also in the history of the antecedent Corps of the Adjutant General's
Corps (AGC) as a Trustee of its museum, I was perhaps better placed
than he was in making a response to your letter.
I am aware of the outstanding contribution made in the wider context
of Army education by the Queen's Army Schoolmistresses as indeed are
many of my contemporaries and especially older, former members of the
RAEC who are still alive and had served alongside QAS. I am also aware
that in the concentration of RAEC archives in preparation for gifting
them to the AGC Museum, there were certainly artefacts (sic) and archives
related to the QAS. For this reason, I have copied your letter to Mr
Ian Bailey, Curator of the AGC Museum, so that he might look
into your request. It is also copied to Brigadier (Retd) DA Harrison
who is currently the RAEC representative Trustee on the board of the
museum.
In making this reply to you, I also feel obliged to express what is
a personal observation on your letter but is one which I believe would
be shared by others in the RAEC. Your reference to a revered member
of my Corps, Colonel ACT White VC, expressed as 'White wrote in his Story
of Army Education...." with an inexplicit criticism of his
book caused offence to me. Your low regard of Dr Leslie Wayper's book, "Mars
and Minerva", is directly linked to what you perceive as uncritical
acceptance of Colonel White's material. I do not believe your disappointment
over Dr Leslie Wayper's book is going to excite the attention of many,
especially those who delivered Army educational services throughout
their military careers and had a high regard for Dr Wayper whose commitment
to army education over many ears had won him friends and admirers throughout
the Army.
It is likely that your criticisms of Archie White are directed at
him as a military historian rather than as a distinguished soldier.
They are nevertheless insensitive and take no account of the context
in which this book was written. This was at a time when the RAEC had
received its Royal Charter and gained a prestigious headquarters base
at Eltham Palace. It had also established itself as an essential source
of education and training development for the Regular Army as the huge
wartime Army resettled into civilian life and National Service ended.
This required the RAEC to create its own distinct identity as a burgeoning,
graduate and all-officer Corps charged with wide-ranging responsibilities
in an ever-increasing number of roles. Colonel White's book described
these roles against an historical background in a way which the members
of the RAEC, especially its new recruits, found scholarly, entertaining
and inspirational. It gave an overview of army education not to be
found elsewhere.
Those of us who enjoyed full careers in Army education would welcome
the publication of a work which celebrates the contribution made in
this sphere by the Queen's Army Schoolmistresses. If this is your intention,
you are more likely to achieve you aim by a more positive approach
than adopting the derogatory, sneering air of superiority conveyed
in your letter.
Yours sincerely,
(Signed T. Sherry, Brigadier Retd.)
Brigadier Sherry, Thank you for your letter dated 30 November 2006
and your courtesy in asking Mr. Ian Bailey, Curator of the AGC Museum,
to answer my request for information on the Queen's Army Schoolmistresses.
Previous contact with Mr. Bailey on the QAS indicates that the Museum
can offer no information on this subject. Nevertheless, I appreciate
your gesture to help in my search for data on the QAS, especially in
the face of your intimidating reaction to my remarks on the books written
by Colonel A. C. T. White VC and Dr. Leslie Wayper. I am sorry you
were offended. That you found my remark sneerful is regrettable. I
am very well aware of the reverence in which Colonel White is held
and the high regard accorded the scholarship of Dr. Wayper. I admire
these men for their accomplishments, but the respect, veneration and
admiration given them by the Corps does not rule out criticism of their
scholarship. Out of admiration for his generalship, one might as well
hold Wellington blameless for reporting, in his Despatch from Waterloo,
the arrival of 50,000 Prussian allies on the field of battle at 7 p.m.
when he well knew they arrived at 4.30 p.m. and saved the day.
I agree with your sentiment that nothing I write on army education
is likely to cut any ice or win friends in the army education community;
I do not expect to influence its collective thinking either. That is
neither the point nor my intention. What is the point is to discover
the historical truth through available records, a subject I discussed
at length in 1982 with Major General A. J. Trythall, Director of Army
Education, Brigadier J. R. Smith, Chief Education Officer of the UKLF,
Brigadier Harry Shean, Curator of the RAEC Museum, Colonel Peter de
la Haye, Commandant of the Duke of York's School, and other senior
officers of the RAEC, all available on shorthand record. They agreed
without a dissenting voice among them that facts take precedence over
what people say and the claims they make. The Rev. George R. Gleig,
the equally revered 'father of army education', is a good example of
one who made outrageous claims of his deeds and accomplishments without
foundation in fact.
Gleig, whom Shean summed up as "an energetic, intelligent, highly-educated,
dedicated opportunist", had virtually nothing to do with creation
of the CAS. The decision of Minister at War Fox Maule in 1846 to create
the Normal School for training army schoolmasters and the Model School
at the Royal Military Asylum, Chelsea, was based on Dr. Henry Moseley's
confidential report (Doc PRO 43/796/749) to the Privy Council. Fox
Maule formed and chaired the Army Education Committee of three (that
did not include Gleig). It appointed Dr. W. S. O. Du Sautoy (St. Johns,
Cambridge) to head the Normal School and Mr. Walter MacLeod MA (Glasgow
Univ.) to be headmaster of the Model School at the Royal Military Asylum,
Chelsea.
Together, Du Sautoy and MacLeod developed the teacher-training programme
for army schoolmaster sergeants and interviewed all applicants for
places on the two-year course. It took ten years before the changeover
from monitorial teaching to Du Sautoy-trained schoolmasters had a measurable
effect. This replaced monitorial teaching introduced to the RMA by
Joseph Lancaster and soon after replaced by Dr. Andrew Bell's virtually
identical Madras monitorial system (c1807). Monitorial teaching served
its purpose well for the next forty years. Using child monitors from
the RMA, monitorial teaching spread to numerous parochial church schools
of Britain and the British Army in the Home Command and abroad.
During the period of Du Sautoy's and MacLeod's pioneering work, Gleig,
appointed Inspector of Schools (not Inspector-General) in July 1846,
proved himself an overbearing nuisance to commanding officers of units
of the Home Command. This prompted Wellington, then C-in-C, to send
a circular to unit commanders of Home Command, instructing them to
treat visits by the Inspector of Schools with extreme caution. With
Wellington's death in 1852, Gleig's fortunes improved. He became Inspector-General
of Military Schools and took over as head of the newly-formed Corps
of Army Schoolmasters, but had no record of influence on the programme
of the Normal School. His National Education article in which
he claimed credit for the revolutionary change in army education appeared
in the June 1852 issue of the Edinburgh Review. Interestingly,
he identified himself in that same article as 'Inspector of Military
Schools'.
The charges against Gleig are many and serious: in the Gem Magazine for
October 1829, he published an eye-witness account of the funeral of
General Crauford, killed in January 1812, which occurred a year before
he arrived in the Iberian Peninsular; he plagiarised Siborne's History
of the War in France and Belgium in 1815 in his own book on A
Short history of the War(?); he published the memoir of a trooper
of cavalry as an original work of his own. There are other recorded
instances of misrepresentation. His main transgression in my view was
in falsifying the record regarding the history of military education
from 1846 on. He was, agreed, a prolific writer, but in a clear conflict-of-interest
position when he published his Gleig's School Series beginning
in 1851 (The Times for 21 August 1851) for use in military
schools to his own considerable profit; not to be debated at this remove
in time, but decidedly indicative of his opportunism.
Concerning White's The Story of Army Education 1643-1963,
you misrepresent me for 'inexplicitly criticizing' its author.
I did no such thing. I merely stated that Wayper 'accepted without
criticism everything White wrote in his' (book). White wrote the Story
of Army Education. Wayper wrote a History of Army Education.
Story and history are different concepts. White's story served its
purpose well. It told the story in a lively, active, scholarly, but
not overly-academic, style. That is not say it is without fault or
beyond criticism.
Wayper's Mars and Minerva book is a different matter, which
is not to question the high regard in which the author was held by
his peers during his lifetime or the value of his service to the cause
of military education. Regard for his reputation and achievements are
not the issue. I question, and have questioned, a single chapter: The
Origins of Army Education.
Of 124 chapter notes, not a single reference to the registers, correspondence
or documents available in the National Archives appears; nor for that
matter to original sources archived in numerous national institutions.
Why? The RAEC Association, presumably, commissioned the proctor, chancellor
or life fellow (I may have his designation wrong) of Fitzwilliam College
to write a history of army education. He might not have been obligated
to research original sources, but in relying on secondary sources he
risked criticism for repeating the errors, omissions and misconceptions
of other academics and scholars. Given also that he cited one of my
books in the bibliography, he must have been aware of the contradictions
stemming from Gleig's article in the Edinburgh Review and
the doubt cast by others as well as myself on his record. In Dr. Wayper's
prestigious position, he would have had at his beck and call the services
of researchers with access to the same records that I and my colleague,
Peter Goble, have.
I would hope that I have provided enough evidence here to justify
my comment about Wayper accepting without criticism what White
wrote in his Story of Army Education. Further, and in the
face of this explanation, I contend, with all respect to your rank,
service and experience, that your suggestion of a derogatory, sneering
air or superiority on my part is unjustified. The only supremacy to
which I can lay claim is the superiority of a wholly military education
in the hands of the RAEC from the age of ten to commissioned rank in
the Corps of Royal Engineers. This said, I'll express my sorrow for
offending you; it is not I, however, who should apologise for the use
of intemperate language.
Reverting now to the RAEC Museum Trust, I wish to remark that I would
have thought that the museum trustees and membership of the RAEC Association
would welcome any and all contributions to the brilliant history of
the Corps. Peter Goble, has transcribed and analyzed the available
ledgers under WO143/50 and all sources on schoolmasters. The results
passed to Mr. Ian Bailey were used to construct a data base. Goble
has sent a considerable amount of data, not all of which has been acknowledged.
We know that the punishment ledger, which we are now transcribing,
was sent to Eltham Palace and, from there, transferred to the safe
keeping of the National Archives. We are also transcribing the correspondence
of the Normal School.
Yours sincerely
A. W. Cockerill
