British educationalist, writer, and poet
Edmond Gore Alexander Holmes (17 July 1850 – 14 October 1936) was an educationalist, writer and poet.
Biography.
Holmes was born in Moycashel, County Westmeath, Ireland. His father was Robert Holmes and his mother was Jane Henn (1824-1905).
His "The Creed of the Buddha" (1908) is well known; he also wrote a pantheist text "All is One: A Plea for a Higher Pantheism".
In 1901 he was a school inspector. Katherine Bathurst who had a troubled career was transferred from Wales to work under his supervision. Disputes between them includes expenses, timetables and Bathurst's objections to Holmes amending her reports. The Oxford Education Committee complained about her and she was given six months probation in February 1904 and in the following month female inspectors were moved to a new organisation as proposed by Robert Morant. Bathurst was sent to Manchester.
Holmes rose to become chief inspector for elementary schools in 1905. He resigned in 1911, over a confidential memorandum criticising school inspectors who had formerly been elementary school teachers. This angered the teachers' union and it led to the downfall of Robert Morant the permanent secretary to the Board of Education when it became public.
Holmes subsequent writings on education are taken as an early statement of "progressive" and "child-centred" positions, and are still cited. Later works come close to theosophy. For example, even a 1914 book review of his "In Defence of What Might Be" describes it as "pregnant with possibilities for the untrammeled soul of the growing child. A draft of fresh air into static pedagogy."
Words from his "The Triumph of Love" were set to music by the composer Charles Villiers Stanford, a friend.
Personal life.
Holmes married Florence Mary Syme (d. 1927) in 1880 and they had three children, two daughters and a son. Daughter Verena Holmes went on to become a leading early woman engineer and only son Maurice Gerald Holmes(1885–1964) became a British civil servant.
References.
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