Malting House School

Creation

Geoffrey Pyke came to public attention when he escaped from interment in Germany during World War I. He had travelled to Germany under a false passport but he was soon arrested and interned. The story of his escape and return to Britain was widely published. In March 1918, Pyke met Margaret Amy Chubb; she was intelligent, pretty, and attracted to Pyke's unconventional good looks and wilful unconventionality. They were married within three months of meeting. After the war, Pyke tried his hand at a number of money-making schemes. For a while, he made a lot of money speculating on the commodity market using his own system of financial management instead of more conventional techniques.

Geoffrey and Margaret Pyke had a son, David (1921–2001). Geoffrey Pyke became preoccupied by the question of his son's education. He wanted to create an education that promoted curiosity and equipped young people to live in the twentieth century – an education that would be utterly different from his own unhappy experience. To do this he set up an infants' school in his Cambridge home. Founded in October 1924, the school was funded by Pyke's City speculations. His wife, Margaret, was a strong supporter of the school and its ideas.

Pyke placed advertisements in a number of journals, including the New Statesman and Nature:

Previous educational experience is not considered a bar, but the advertisers hope to get in touch with a university graduate—or someone of equivalent intellectual standing—who has hitherto considered themselves too good for teaching and who has probably already engaged in another occupation. A LIBERAL SALARY—liberal as compared with research work or teaching—will be paid to a suitable applicant who will live out, have fixed hours and opportunities for a pleasant independent existence. An assistant will be provided if the work increases. They wish to obtain the services of someone with certain personal qualifications for the work and a scientific attitude of mind towards it. Hence a training in any of the natural sciences is a distinct advantage. Preference will be given to those who do not hold any form of religious belief but this is not by itself considered to be a substitute for other qualifications.

Pyke recruited psychologist Susan Sutherland Isaacs to run the school; although Pyke had many original ideas regarding education, he promised her that he would not interfere.

Both Pyke and Isaacs had had unconventional and unhappy experiences of growing up. Pyke's father, Edward Lionel Pyke, was a Jewish lawyer who died when he was only five years old, leaving his family with no money. His mother quarrelled with relatives and made life "hell" for her children. She sent Geoffrey to Wellington, a snobbish private school mainly catering to the children of Army officers; here, she insisted that Pyke maintain the dress and habits of an Orthodox Jew. While there, he was a victim of persecution that instilled him with a hatred of and contempt for The Establishment. After two years at Wellington he was withdrawn, tutored privately and then admitted to Pembroke College, Cambridge to study law. Isaacs’ mother died when she was six years old. Shortly afterwards she became alienated from her father after he married the nurse who had attended her mother during her illness. At the age of fifteen, Isaacs was removed from school by her father because she had converted to atheistic socialism; her father refused to speak to her for 2 years. She stayed at home with her stepmother until she was 22.

Besides Geoffrey Pyke and his wife, the other leading figures in the school were Susan Isaacs's and her second husband, Nathan Isaacs; and Evelyn Lawrence who arrived two years into the experiment.

In April 1927, the school advertised again:

This advertisement indicated that Ernest Rutherford, Percy Nunn and J.B.S. Haldane had agreed to assist the directors of the school in the final selection of candidates.

Premises

The Malting House was originally exactly that: a malthouse, Oast house, and small brewery owned, in the 1830s, by the Beales family – a well-known Cambridge trading dynasty. In 1909, the then Dean of Trinity College (Dr Stewart) bought the buildings and converted most of them into an Arts & Crafts house and two or three years later the remaining buildings were converted into a small hall to host musical evenings. During the 1920s it was the Malting House School. In later years the house reverted to a family home. The buildings were purchased by Darwin College of Cambridge University to serve as student accommodation, the cost of purchase and conversion being estimated as £1.5M.

Maurice and Sylia Dobb lived in a cottage behind the Malting House - he had a position at Trinity College - Ludwig Wittgenstein was lodging with them at the time, at the invitation of Bertrand Russel.

Operation

In an advertisement for residential pupils, in July 1927, some of the operating principles of the school were explained.

It seems very likely that the form of education was influenced by the ideas of John Dewey and Maria Montessori. In the 1920s and 1930s, John Dewey became famous for pointing out that the authoritarian, strict, pre-ordained knowledge approach of traditional education was too concerned with delivering knowledge, and not enough with understanding students' actual experiences. Montessori's ideas gave rise to the Montessori education which the idea of children choosing the means of educating themselves. The Malting House School fostered the individual development of children; children were given great freedom and were supported rather than punished. The teachers were seen as observers of the children who were seen as research workers.

The school attracted the attention of a wide range of intellectuals. The children came from parents with an academic or professional background who had, in many cases, already achieved eminence in their fields. They included two sons of G. E. Moore (Cambridge philosopher and ethicist), the daughter of Edgar Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian (neurophysiologist, nobel laureate), Philip Sargant Florence (post-graduate student and later Professor of Economics). Yvonne Kapp, who described Pyke as "an intimate if entirely unpredictable friend" took her children to the school every day.

Closure

The Pykes took Frank Ramsey into their family, taking him on holiday, asking him to be the godfather of their young son. In 1923, Margaret Pyke found herself to be the object of Ramsey's affection and he made sexual overtures to her. It is not clear what happened, but there began a kind of dance between them.

At the end of 1927, Susan Isaacs left the school. It is not clear exactly why Susan Isaacs left, one possibility is that Pyke began to interfere with the day-to-day running of the school but the developing emotional and sexual tangle of relationships between Susan Isaacs, Nathan Isaacs and Evelyn Lawrence may also have been a factor. Evelyn would become Nathan's second wife after Susan's death in 1948.

In 1927, Pyke lost all his money. The Maltings School was forced to close, Margaret Pyke had to take a job as headmistress's secretary; she left Geoffrey although they were never divorced. Already suffering from periodic fits of depression and burdened with huge debts to his brokers, he now withdrew from normal life altogether and existed on donations from his close friends.

Influence

For a short time The Maltings was a critical if not a commercial success; it was visited by many educationalists and it was the subject of a film documentary.

Visitors to the school included Jean Piaget and Melanie Klein.