Cecil Reddie

Dr Cecil Reddie (10 October 1858 – 6 February 1932) was a reforming English educationalist. He founded and was headmaster of the progressive Abbotsholme School.

Early life He was born in Colehill Lodge, Fulham, London, the sixth of ten children. His parents were James Reddie from Kinross, an Admiralty civil servant and Caroline Susannah Scott. He spent four years at Goldolphin School in London until his parents' deaths. He attended Birkenhead School (1871–1872) as a day-boy and he then was a boarder at Fettes College, Edinburgh (1872–1878). He studied medicine, physics, mathematics and chemistry at Edinburgh University (1878–1882) before obtaining his doctorate in chemistry at Göttingen University (1882–1884).

Abbotsholme He returned to Fettes to teach science and then moved to Clifton College in Bristol until 1888. His clash with the college over his ideas, particularly on sex education caused him to leave after a breakdown in health. Reddie lived with Carpenter from 1888 to 1889 who helped him found Abbotsholme School in Derbyshire in 1889 with the financial support of Robert Muirhead and William Cassels. The school opened with six students. He made the school his life's work. Apart from two years in the US on sick leave (1906–1907), he ran the school until he retired in 1927. Not only was there intensive study and personal supervision, there was also a programme of physical exercise, manual labour, recreation and arts. Modern languages and sciences were taught. Religious instruction was non-sectarian and covered other religions and philosophies such as Confucianism Reddie believed that being close to nature was important and so the boys worked on the estate providing practical experience on raising animals and vegetables, haymaking, digging, wood-chopping and fencing. Pupils were given great freedom to walk in the country. Reddie devised a uniform of comfortable clothes (soft shirt, soft tie, Norfolk-type jacket and knickerbockers) at a time when boys at public schools wore stiff collars and top hats.

There were conflicts with the founders, until Reddie was in sole charge of the school. He bought the other founders out with borrowed money. Among the teachers was John Badley, who was one of the first masters appointed. In 1893, after two and a half years, Reddie's increasingly autocratic temperament – and the fact that Badley wanted to marry and Reddie said he could not – gave Badley the impetus to leave and start Bedales School. Badley said: "Reddie taught me everything I needed to do and what not to do". By 1900 the Abbotsholme had 60 pupils, many from Europe and the British Empire.

Publications Cecil Reddie: John Bull: His Origin of Character, London 1901 Cecil Reddie: Abbotsholme, 1889–1899, or ten years of work in educational laboratory; London 1900