Brian Jackson rose from a working-class background, through a scholarship to Huddersfield College, to gain a first in English at Cambridge. Though now largely forgotten, his was one of the most innovative voices to influence the major changes in educational thought and practice which occurred during the 1960s and early '70s. This thesis examines his achievements and attempts to explain his failure, ultimately, to find a role for himself. Brian Jackson's main talent was to give substance to ideas, but once a thing was running he seems to have lost interest, anxious for a new challenge. In 1962 he published, with Dennis Marsden, Education and the Working Class: a seminal influence on the acceptance of comprehensive education by the Left. He went on to become director of the Advisory Centre for Education [1962-1974] which he built into a powerful lobbying force, using the media to good effect. A notable success was his creation of the Universities Clearing House scheme in conjunction with the Sunday Times. In 1963 he founded the National Extension College in Cambridge as a prototype for the Open University, pioneering all the new techniques the OU was to use subsequently. He became increasingly concerned with pre-school care and founded the National Children's Centre in Huddersfield in 1975, which spawned a TV Series for childminders; Other People's Children. In 1978 he pioneered the Childcare Switchboard, a forerunner of Childline, on Radio Nottingham, which led to his founding Contact Inc. in Australia in 1979. Jackson wrote innumerable articles and books, including Streaming and Childminder, on education and childcare. From 1975 he repeatedly called for a Minister for Children, a position he possibly craved, but sadly, as the economic climate hardened in the late 1970s, his career tailed off, his drinking increased, and he died, unemployed and virtually unemployable, on a 'Fun Run' for the NCC in Huddersfield, aged 50. His considerable talents were probably spread too widely for his own good and his status as a 'loose cannon' prevented him from pursuing a more formal, and profitable, career
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:285668 |
| Date | January 1997 |
| Creators | Hardwick, Kit |
| Publisher | University of Huddersfield |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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