The thesis examines the career and professional philosophy of Philip Morris. Starting in schools management in Kent in the 1920s, Morris subsequently devised a huge wartime educational programme for the Army and then spent the remainder of his career in higher education as the Vice-Chancellor of Bristol University. He served on several important committees concerned with teacher training, school examinations and adult and Commonwealth education, and held senior positions in the BBC and the British Council. The culmination of his career was his vital contribution to the report of the Committee on Higher Education chaired by Lord Robbins. For thirty years these activities enabled him to influence the development of education at home and abroad. He was able to put into practice his belief in the value of a liberal education made available throughout life to all who could benefit from it, without regard to social class or the immediate economic interests of society. Despite a natural modesty and preference for avoiding public attention, the conformity of his views with mainstream political and academic opinion, combined with his administrative ability, resulted in an acknowledgement by his peers of his eminence in his field. Within British governance he came to epitomise the effective though informal ruling elite known as ‘the Great and the Good’. Towards the end of his career, however, his authority and his ability to direct the course of events began to decline, and many of his principal objectives appeared to fail in the period after his retirement. The thesis concludes by examining the reasons for this, suggesting that it was caused by changing attitudes to paternalist administration and to the value of liberal education, arising from a range of factors including the very expansion of educational opportunity that he had helped to bring about.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:340321 |
| Date | January 2000 |
| Creators | King, Peter Graham |
| Contributors | Lowe, Rodney |
| Publisher | University of Bristol |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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