Arthur John Pressland

Arthur John Pressland (1865–1934) was a British educational theorist, linguist, schoolmaster and writer. He was for most of his life a mathematician but after Cambridge spent time in Germany and became a committed linguist and educational theorist, the author of a Royal Commission Report on Physical Training in Switzerland in 1902, the translator of Kerchensteiner’s Education for Citizenship in 1911 and the author of Education and Social Welfare in Switzerland in 1927.

Pressland’s obituary written by Sir Michael Sadler in The Times in 1934 stated that ‘Few men in England knew so much as he did about the educational experience of Switzerland, which has had repercussions in this country from the days of Pestalozzi and Emmanuel von Fellenberg to the publication in 1898 of Sir Robert Morant's Special Report on "The National Organization of Education of all grades as practised in Switzerland"’. He was educated at Bedford Modern School where he was a senior exhibitioner in 1881 and made Head of School in 1882.

In 1890, Pressland was elected a Fellow of the Mathematical Society of Edinburgh and in 1892 a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were John Steggall, John Sturgeon Mackay, Peter Guthrie Tait and Sir John Murray.

Later years In 1925 Pressland retired to Cambridge where he died on 8 October 1934.

Sir Michael Sadler wrote in The Times that ‘The comparative study of systems and atmospheres of education has lost an ardent and purposeful worker. From his long experience as a schoolmaster, Pressland had drawn up a plan for a staff college for English teachers in higher schools-a rough sketch to which administrators are not unlikely to turn in future’.

Selected works On The History And Degree Of Certain Geometrical Approximations: Part I by Arthur John Pressland. Published 1892 Geometrical Drawing by Arthur John Pressland. Published by Rivington, Percival & Company Limited, London, 1897 Elementary Trigonometry by Arthur John Pressland and Charles Tweedie. Published Edinburgh, 1899 Elementary Trigonometry II by Arthur John Pressland and Charles Tweedie. Published by Oliver and Boyd in Edinburgh and Simpkin Marshall & Co Ltd, London, 1899 The Annual Report Of The Central Board Of Education For Zürich by Arthur John Pressland and Francis Galton. Published by Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh and London, 1902 An Introduction To The Study Of Geometry by Arthur John Pressland. Published London, 1904 Murray’s School Arithmetic For Pupils Between The Ages Of Ten And Seventeen by Arthur John Pressland. Published by John Murray, London, 1907 Education For Citizenship by Georg Kerschensteiner and Arthur John Pressland. Published by Rand McNally & Company, Chicago, 1911 A Primer Of Geometry by Wilfrid Parkinson and Arthur John Pressland. Published by Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1923 A Second Geometry by J Davidson and AJ Pressland. Published by Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1926 Education And Social Welfare In Switzerland: to commemorate the Pestalozzi centenary 17th February 1927 by Arthur John Pressland. Published by George G. Harrap and Co., London, 1927