The Life of Dean Scarfe
Neville Vincent Scarfe, the first Dean of Education at UBC, was born in Essex, England in 1908. He attended King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford, and then went on to the University of London in 1925. He graduated two years later with first-class honours in geography and obtained his teaching diploma one year later. At the age of 20, Neville began his career in education at Bemrose Grammar School in Derby, England.
After teaching geography in both secondary and post-secondary institutions, Neville became Senior Lecturer and Head of Geography at the Institute of Education at the University of London in 1935. One year later, in 1936, Neville married Gladys Hunt. The young couple would go on to have three sons – Colin (1940–), Brian (1943–2017), and Alan (1946–).
During WWII, Neville took a hiatus from teaching and worked for the war effort, holding a high ranking position in the Ministry of Information. Neville’s career in North America began after the war with a brief stint at Syracuse University and the coordination of the UNESCO International Seminar at McGill University. In 1951, he undertook the deanship of the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba.
Now internationally recognized for his research work in the teaching of geography and in the philosophic principles of education, Neville became the founding Dean of Education at UBC in 1956. The consolidation of UBC’s School of Education and the Provincial Normal School produced the new Faculty of Education, and it opened up the opportunity for Neville to foster an entire faculty with his years of research. Throughout his career, Neville wrote over 100 articles and gave numerous speeches on education around the world. His intuition and progressive understanding of post-war learning instilled in the Faculty the idea that teachers are made, not born. With this spirit in mind, he created rigorous, specialized streams taught by enthusiastic professors to produce dynamic and informed educators. Always an advocate for educational reform, Neville was particularly critical of the findings of the 1960 Report of the Royal Commission on Education (the “Chant Report”), calling it “contradictory and conservative”*. He took particular issue with its recommendations for harsh discipline in classrooms and the assumption that children will behave belligerently unless taught otherwise.
Q&A with Scarfe Family
How did philanthropy play a role in supporting your relative’s education?
Neville Scarfe was born on a farm as the oldest son of a farm bailiff and his wife. Being the farm bailiff —managing the 500-acre farm for the landowner—was very good employment for his parents, neither of whom had much more than an eighth-grade education (or equivalent thereof). While his father had a short apprenticeship with a plumber and pipefitter, he never pursued the profession due to being needed on his stepfather’s farm; his mother left school at 12 and was sent into service in a wealthy home. This meant that neither of them had any opportunity to gain more education nor travel far from the villages in which they were born. They worked extremely hard, but unfortunately, they never had much extra money.
Neville Scarfe attended the local village school, located 2.5 miles away from his farm, from age five until he was just over ten. He was then told that he had learned “all that was offered”. Had he followed in his father’s footsteps, he might have left school then to work and help his father on the farm. But in 1918, the headmistress of the school and the parish rector saw his capacity and ability as the top student of the school, and they travelled out to the farm to ask his parents if they would be willing to send him to King Edward VI Grammar School—founded by its namesake in 1551—in the nearest town, Chelmsford. The parish had a scholarship—shared by several parishes and endowed for promising children of poor families by the Butler Charity Foundation—that would pay his way. They, of course, leapt at the opportunity. They bought Neville Scarfe a secondhand bicycle and school clothes, and he bicycled seven miles each way to town and back every day, partly on dirt roads and under any weather conditions, until he completed school. Even beyond these challenges, he had more responsibilities than most of his classmates. Each day after school and on weekends, he was still expected to help on the farm—he repaired equipment, fed animals, and tended to the crops.
He wrote extremely fondly of the teachers at the Grammar School. One of the masters, he wrote, taught him to “speak properly, behave reasonably, and study effectively”. It was this master who encouraged Neville Scarfe to attend university. When he graduated from the school as the head of the Class of 1925, he wrote that the master “made sure [he] got a scholarship”—the only one available. It was a war memorial scholarship, and it gave him £50 per year to attend the University of London. Despite continuing to receive the parish scholarship, which allowed him an extra £21 per year, the scholarships did not cover his entire expenses, and he came home each summer to work on the farm earning “small sums, about £5 [per summer]”. In comparison, his father earned £3 per week.
His parents were hugely supportive of Neville Scarfe’s education. They read all his textbooks in case they could help with his work, and discussed the subjects at home over dinner. They attended every school speech day, encouraged and enabled his studies, and rejoiced over every one of his successes. At the same time, it is clear that he would never have accomplished all he did in life without his supportive first teachers and the kind, anonymous gifts he received from strangers. Without the mentorship and guidance of his teachers who taught him, encouraged him, recognized his ability, and advocated for him; and without the generosity of donors who contributed towards his scholarships, he would never have left rural Essex or the farming life, never have met his wife, never have earned a Master of Arts, never have lectured internationally, never worked for MI6, never participated in the creation of UNESCO, never wrote more than 100 papers advocating for educational reform, and certainly never would have been Dean of the UBC Faculty of Education for 17 years.
What was Neville Vincent Scarfe’s legacy?
If you had ever asked him what his legacy was, he may well have said his family. He was extremely proud of his three sons, and he loved their wives and his grandchildren devotedly. Almost fifty years after he married his wife, he still wrote about her as adoringly as he might have as a newlywed.
He was, of course, very proud of his many accomplishments in life. He travelled a long way, both physically and mentally, from his first years on a rural Essex farm, and I am sure that he far outstripped his parents’ wildest dreams that probably began from his grammar school days. He was very proud of his work at UBC and the tremendous team of people he brought together to create one of the best faculties of education in the world. He remained friends with many of these people well into our own childhood. I think if he were still alive today, he would be immensely proud of planting the seeds and laying the foundation for the Faculty of Education to develop into what it is today.
What was his main interest in education? (Early childhood, indigenous education, rural education?)
After World War II, Neville Scarfe returned to the Institute of Education of the University of London, where he taught the principles and practices of the teaching of geography. This sparked his interest in the philosophy of education—this was a pursuit he continued for the rest of his life, so it was probably what could be considered his main interest.
He did show a great deal of interest later in life in early childhood education: one of the first UBC childcare centres was, I believe, founded in the Faculty of Education in the 1960s, and his most famous paper, “Play is Education”, discussing the importance of play in the early years, was published November 1962. However, his memoirs show that this interest began much earlier, in December 1940. Not coincidentally, this was when his son was born, and there are copious meticulous and obviously delighted notes that Neville Scarfe made on his son’s growth and development. His interest continued through all three of his children and all five of the grandchildren he lived to know. My own memories of Neville Scarfe are so fond because he clearly enjoyed spending time with me and my cousins, talking to us about school and watching us draw pictures, play games, or tell stories. He showed a kindness, a patience, and an interest that I now realize was probably very unusual for men of his era.
Here is an article from 1961 about the involvement of Dean Scarfe.
