Outdoor education: the Romantic origins at the University of St Mark and St John

Abstract

PurposeThis paper discusses the history of outdoor education at a university in the South West England, starting in 1840.Design/methodology/approachThis research uses secondary sources of data; original unpublished work from the university archive is used alongside published works on the university founders and first principals, as well as sources on the developments of outdoor education in the UK.FindingsBoth founding principals were driven by their strong values of social justice and their own experiences of poverty and inequality, to establish a means for everyone to access high-quality education regardless of background or means. They saw education as key to providing a pathway out of poverty and towards opportunity and achievement for all. Kay-Shuttleworth, founder of St John's, wrote that “the best book is Nature, with an intelligent interpreter”, whilst Derwent Coleridge, St Mark's first principal, had a profound love of nature and reverence for his father's poetic circle. His father, the famous English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor–Coleridge, made the first recorded use of the verb “mountaineering”. Coleridge was using a new word for a new activity; the ascending of mountains for pleasure, rather than for economic or military purposes.Originality/valueThe Romantic influence on outdoor education, the early appreciation of nature and the outdoors for physical and psychological well-being and the drive for social justice have not been told in any case study before.