Notes for: George Birtwistle
From http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/17th-june-1899/9/the-ladder-of-learning:
17 June 1899, page 9
THE LADDER OF LEARNING
A REMARKABLE and unique event has happened at the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge this year. Not only is the Senior Wranglership bracketed between two students, but these students represent the nouvelles couches sociales whose presence at our Universities is transforming, and, as we hope and think, transforming for the better, the character of our seats of learning. One of the Senior Wranglers, Mr. George Birtwistle, began life as a poor boy at Burnley, his father having died when he was young, and his mother having to support her young children. The boy went to a Wesleyan day-school where be acquired the rudiments of learning, and then secured a scholarship at the Burnley Grammar School, where his career was of a remarkable kind. He won two exhibitions which enabled him to go to Owens College, Manchester, where he took a degree in science, and then he won an entrance scholarship at Pembroke College, Cambridge. And now at the age of twenty-two the poor Burnley youth finds himself at the head of the learned and promising young men of England of the present year. His colleague in the Senior Wranglership, Raghernath Paranjpye, is a Hindoo. educated at Poona and at the University of Bombay, where he secured a Government scholarship, and afterwards went to St. John's College, Cambridge, as a Foundation Scholar. His subtle Hindoo intellect, combined with hard work, has enabled him to become Senior Wrangler, and we are glad to note that when the lists were read out in the Senate House this Hindoo triumph was greeted with enthusiasm. We think we are right in saying that this double event constitutes a very important fact.
The career of Mr. George Birtwistle is the best illustration that could be found of the educational ladder leading from the primary school to the University, on the necessity for which we have so often insisted. Backward as England unhappily still is in comparison with Scotland, Germany, or Switzerland as regards educational methods, it is gratifying to find that such an ideal as the educational reformer has in his mind can be realised in the case of Mr. George Birtwistle. The small Wesleyan day-school, the Burnley Grammar School, Owens College, Cambridge University, constitute a great educational chain, the links of which fit in with one another even better than one might expect. They correspond roughly with the primary school, the gymnasium, the real schule, and the University of Germany. That culture of the mind by classical literature on which Mr. Bryce has very wisely insisted, and which a merely utilitarian ideal would ignore, is conveyed both through the grammar school, whose foundation culture is properly classical, and through the University, which still, with equal propriety, insists on a certain minimum of classical learning in all her pupils. The mind thus broadened and elevated is all the better fitted to grasp the problems of physics and pure mathematics studied both at Owens College and at Cambridge. We can conceive hardly any better mental training than that of Mr. George Birtwistle, or of any training likely to make of him a better and more fully rounded man. We have little doubt that this young man is an exceptional person, from whom we shall probably hear in future years; at least we shall be grievously disappointed if this is not the case. But, apart from what the future may bring, we admit that the result of his training up till now speaks better for our system, even as it is, than we could have supposed likely. It is the exact fulfilment of the Scottish ideal when the poor boy wins his way by his own industry and intellect to the highest academic position, that ideal which has rendered Scotland so strong, so healthy, among the nations of the earth. It was time for England to follow in her steps ; she has now begun to do so