Edmond Gore Alexander Holmes

Posts in The Copybook credited to ‘Edmond Gore Alexander Holmes’

Edmond Gore Alexander Holmes (1850–1936) was an Irishman who pursued a career in England as an inspector of schools, rising to Chief Inspector for Elementary Schools in 1905. A leaked memorandum criticising fellow inspectors forced his resignation in 1911, but he fashioned a new career for himself writing on education and comparative religion. Holmes, who was one of the country’s earliest and most ardent advocates of Maria Montessori’s libertarian approach to education, repeatedly expressed alarm at the obsession with meeting targets and at treating the classroom as a drill-square, where teachers must always be ‘working against the grain of the child’s nature.’

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The Dogmatist by Edmond Gore Alexander Holmes

Schools inspector Edmond Holmes expressed frustration with those who think that society at large owes them unthinking obedience.

‘Dogma’ is merely a Greek word meaning ‘teaching,’ but the word has acquired a negative connotation, associated with narrow-mindedness and invincible ignorance. However, the jibe is often undeserved. A dogmatist is not the man who believes passionately that other people are dangerously wrong, and sets himself apart from them; as Edmond Holmes said, he is the man who sets himself over them.

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Free to Grow by Edmond Gore Alexander Holmes

Edmond Holmes, a former inspector of schools, reported back to the Board of Education on a pioneering system being developed in Italy.

Edmond Holmes resigned from the Board of Education in 1911, after his trenchant critique of fellow Elementary school inspectors leaked out. He took the opportunity to visit Maria Montessori’s pioneering schools in Italy, and prepared a paper for the Board (his experience was still highly valued there) in which he urged them to lose no time in adopting her methods.

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