Henry Caldwell Cook (1886–1939) was a British educator known for his book ''The Play Way'', which contended that doing was a better learning method than reading and listening, and that youth study through play.

Early life and career

Henry Caldwell Cook was born in

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

in 1886. He attended a

St. John's Wood St John's Wood is a district in the London Boroughs of Camden and the City of Westminster, London, England, about 2.5 miles (4 km) northwest of Charing Cross. Historically the northern part of the ancient parish and Metropolitan Borough ...

prep school,

Highgate School Highgate School, formally Sir Roger Cholmeley's School at Highgate, is a co-educational, fee-charging, private day school, founded in 1565 in Highgate, London, England. It educates over 1,400 pupils in three sections – Highgate Pre-Preparato ...

in London, and Lincoln College in Oxford. He received

second class honours The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading structure used for undergraduate degrees or bachelor's degrees and integrated master's degrees in the United Kingdom. The system has been applied, sometimes with significant var ...

from the school of English language and literature in 1909 and an Oxford Diploma in Education with distinction in 1911. Caldwell Cook served as the English master at the

Perse School The Perse School is a private school (English fee-charging day and, in the case of the Perse, a former boarding school) in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1615 by Stephen Perse, its motto is ''Qui facit per alium facit per se'', taken to mea ...

in Cambridge from 1911 to 1915 and 1919–1933, and served his country with the

Artists Rifles The 21 Special Air Service Regiment (Artists) (Reserve), historically known as The Artists Rifles, is a regiment of the British Army Reserve. Its name is abbreviated to 21 SAS(R). Raised in London in 1859 as a volunteer light infantry unit, ...

division in France. During this time, he wrote ''Littlemans Book of Courtesy'' (1914) and ''The Play Way, an Essay in Educational Method'' (1917), his magnum opus. Caldwell Cook saw the current schooling system to impede "true education". He used drama to teach English, building a room, called 'the Mummery', in his school based on an Elizabethan theatre, and students improvised plays based on dramatic literature. This idea had been used and publicised by Harriet Finlay-Johnson.Process Drama in Education
Gustave J. Weltsek-Medina, 2008, Retrieved 30 January 2016 He called this method the "play-way". ''The Play Way'', the book, argued that learning came from experience doing instead of from listening and reading: "The natural means of study in youth is play." The claim was debated for a generation. The book began as articles for ''The New Age'' in 1914 destined for the "Papers for the Present" series, but became a book reflecting on his experience at Perse. A 1922 unpublished Board of Education report made the recommendation to not support grants for his program or its imitators. In 1939, he died a bachelor "in comparative obscurity".

References

External links

''The Play Way'' (1917) full text at Archive.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Caldwell Cook, Henry British educational theorists 1886 births 1939 deaths Alumni of Lincoln College, Oxford People educated at Highgate School Headmasters of the Perse School Artists' Rifles soldiers