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Like other Rectors of his time Maurice Paterson was appointed to
the Rectorship of the Free Church of Scotland Training College (Moray
House) after a successful period in teaching. He was 28. He retired
in 1907 after 43 years of service.
He was born in Edinburgh on the 5th March 1836. His father was
a bookbinder and seller. Following the Disruption of 1843 the family
joined the Free Church. From the age of ten he attended the Edinburgh
High School. He was a hardworking and brilliant classical scholar |
becoming Dux in the fourth year class. In his final session in
1851/52 he was awarded gold medals as the Dux in Latin and in Greek.
At
the Edinburgh University’s Faculty of Arts he studied Latin,
Greek, Mathematics, Logic and Moral Philosophy for his BA which was
awarded in 1856. A fellow student, Rev Andrew Crichton, wrote of him:
"…I never knew one who so habitually
grasped the very matter in hand and searched it to the core."
Committed to becoming a teacher he was appointed in 1856 to the post of
Assistant at the Blair Lodge Academy, Polmont, Stirlingshire. This was
a private secondary boarding school where Robert Hislop was Principal.
His first teaching responsibility was to take charge of the Classics department.
After seven years he was appointed joint Principal of the school. Robert
Hislop made a significant impression on Maurice Paterson no doubt because
of his earlier experience as Rector of the Free Church College in Glasgow
and the influence of the work and teachings of David Stowe.
In 1863 James Sime submitted his letter of resignation from the post of
Rector of the Free Church’s Normal and Sessional School, Edinburgh.
The Committee of the Church agreed to appoint a new rector and Maurice
Paterson applied for the post. He was appointed on 28 January 1864, aged
28, and installed at a ceremony held in the adjacent Moray Free Church.
The Rector was expected to undertake a wide variety of tasks. An 1878
report recorded that Maurice Paterson carried out a number of teaching
duties as ‘Master of Method’. He instructed male and female
students in scripture, school management (‘Education’ as it
came to be termed), and the practice of teaching. As ‘Classical master’ he
taught classics to male students and ran voluntary classes in advanced
Greek. His annual salary was £600.
He was renowned amongst his students for the width and depth of his knowledge:
"To many of us Mr Paterson gave almost
the first practical conception of what culture meant, and his influence
in this direction has been an abiding one.’
Another student recorded:
"He gained…the greatest respect
and esteem…because of his thorough and extensive knowledge and
great ability as a teacher. In his lectures he brought before us the
best principles and latest and most approved methods of teaching… But
what I valued still more…was the noble earnestness combined
with a certain indescribable power, which pervaded all Mr Paterson’s
teaching…. Maurice Paterson supported the gradual widening of the curriculum
for his student teachers. This was no doubt as a result of the significant
restriction of the curriculum during the period 1862 – 1872 when
the ability of a senior student to study a chosen subject in depth was
dropped. This was the period he called ‘the Dark Ages’. In
the 1880s a third year was added to the training course and 1899 saw
the restoration of greater autonomy to the training colleges.
The maintenance of links with Edinburgh University was one of his priorities.
In 1873 it became possible for students to combine attendance at university
courses with the Normal School curriculum. However, the work at the training
college remained as the core of the training for teachers. With this
emphasis on professional and academic work the courses at Moray House
developed a reputation for their quality and their demanding nature.
Interestingly he applied for the newly founded Bell chair in Education
at Edinburgh University, but was unsuccessful. Should he have been appointed
teacher training in Scotland would have lost one its most stimulating
and committed practioners. He enthused generations of his students with
the importance of their work, arguing for the centrality of the professional
side to the training of teachers.
A number of his lectures were published and he was the editor of a standard
series of reading books for schools. In 1889 he was awarded an honorary
LL.D by Edinburgh University. At his presentation it was recorded that:
"…the great and all – absorbing
work of his life has consisted in practical teaching, a sphere in which
he has achieved triumphant success. For five and twenty years past
his college has sent forth to every part of the British Empire an unbroken
series of accomplished teachers and scholars, who trace their success
in the battle of life to Mr Paterson’s admirably sound and scientific
tuition…." Moray House, although a very formal institution at this time, was also
well regarded as a close community by the students. During his rectorship
nearly 5000 students passed through Moray House. He was an imposing figure,
yet valued highly personal contact with his students. The high esteem
in which he was held is reflected in the establishment by former students
of the Moray House Club in 1877. In 1883 he suggested that the Club should
set up a library and this developed into a circulating library with over
2000 volumes. In 1901 the Club agreed to establish a free Kindergarten
school for the poor of the area and this was opened in 1903. Membership,
which by this time had reached nearly 1,600, was closed after he had
taken his last class and retired in 1907. His retirement was associated
with the major changes made at this time to the training colleges: the
handing over of responsibility for teacher training by the churches to
the newly established Provincial Training Committees.
Dr Paterson had a clear view of what the teaching at Moray House set
out to achieve. In a lecture to students shortly after the opening of
the new Building he said:
"The chief end of a Training College is
not to prepare you for a Government or any other examination. We teachers
are not intended to be coaches or crammers…. Government examinations
are the doors by which you enter professional life. They procure you
admission to the ranks of a privileged community…. It is what
lies beyond these examinations – this responsible and arduous
yet superlatively important work of the profession in whose ranks you
have already enlisted yourselves… on which our eyes and yours
should be most set. It is from the fact that you are to have a share
in shaping the future of our country and people – are to be called
upon to guide uprising generations of men and women how to live…."
His portrait by H W Kerr ARSA and presented to Dr Paterson on his retirement
still hangs in the Board Room at Moray House. He died
on 6 June 1917.
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