English educationist and historian (1915–2002)
Brian Simon |
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| Born | 26 March 1915 |
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| Died | 17 January 2002(2002-01-17) (aged 86) |
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| Nationality | British |
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| Citizenship | United Kingdom |
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| Occupation(s) | Professor, soldier, teacher |
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| Known for | Communist activism, educational activism |
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| Political party | Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) |
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| Spouse | Joan Peel |
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| Parents | |
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Brian Simon (26 March 1915 – 17 January 2002) was an English educationist and historian. A leading member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, his history reflected a Marxian interpretation.
Background and early life
The younger son of Ernest Darwin Simon, 1st Baron Simon of Wythenshawe and Shena, Lady Simon, he was the brother of the second Baron Simon of Wythenshawe, Roger Simon, the solicitor and writer on Gramsci.
After Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk, where he was a contemporary of Benjamin Britten and Donald Maclean, and two terms at Schule Schloss Salem, under the headship of Kurt Hahn, Simon went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1934, becoming a leader of the University Education Society. In 1935 he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (as his brother Roger would do a year later) and the student Marxist Study Group.
In 1940 Simon wrote to Joan Peel, his future wife, that at Gresham's most of his creative instincts had been driven out of him or deep underground.[1]
After Cambridge, he went to the University College London's Institute of Education to train as a teacher.
Career
In 1938, he was appointed to the newly formed Labour Party education advisory committee and was elected secretary of the National Union of Students branch at the Institute of Education, going on to become President of the NUS in 1939. He travelled to international student conferences, one such visit being with Guy Burgess to Moscow in the summer of 1939.
During the Second World War, Simon served in the Dorsetshire Regiment and the Royal Corps of Signals and was attached to the Phantom regiment (General Headquarters Liaison), which took him to many places and led to a lifelong friendship with the actor David Niven.
After the war, Simon taught in a Manchester primary school, then at Varna Street Secondary Modern, and for three years at Salford Grammar School, where he produced a play that gave Albert Finney his first stage role. From 1950 to 1980 he taught at the University of Leicester as a lecturer, becoming reader (1964), and professor (1966), retiring as an emeritus professor in 1980.
Simon emerged as a major figure in the world of education, writing on the history and politics of education and advocating a national system of comprehensive schools.[2]
Anne Corbett, in her obituary of Simon in The Guardian said that he came under increasing attack in the late 20th century:
Simon, who to many of my generation was a humane and perceptive voice, was criticised, even reviled by critics of comprehensive schools, as an upper-class intellectual who misunderstood the needs of the working-class child. He was also attacked as the education spokesman for the Communist Party, which was campaigning in the 1950s and 1960s for the end of intelligence testing.[3]
The Guardian obituary also said that Simon's writing had reflected a Marxian interpretation of history.[3]
Personal life
On 12 February 1941 Brian Simon married Joan Peel, assistant editor of the Times Educational Supplement, the daughter of Home Peel, a civil servant in the India Office and descendant of Sir Robert Peel.
They had two sons, Alan (born 1943) and Martin (born 1944).
Primary sources
- Simon, Brian. The two nations and the educational structure, 1780–1870 (1960) a scholarly history in 4 volumes
- Education and the Labour Movement, 1870–1920 (1965)
- The Politics of Educational Reform 1920–1940 (1974).
- Education and the Social Order 1940–1990 (1991).
- Simon, Brian. A Life in Education (1998), autobiography
Simon's personal papers are held in the Archives at the Institute of Education, University of London.[4]
