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 city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

in 1886. He attended a St. John's Wood prep school,

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

in London, and Lincoln College in Oxford. He received

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

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 (He who does things for others does them for himself) , established = , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent day school , religion = Nondenominational Christian , president = , head_label = Head , he ...

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 Army Reserve. Its name is abbreviated to 21 SAS(R). Raised in London in 1859 as a volunteer light infantry unit, the regimen ...

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 Harriet Finlay-Johnson or Harriet Johnson or Harriet Weller (12 March 1871 – 1956) was a British educationalist and schoolteacher known for encouraging children to create dramas to improve their education. Life Finlay-Johnson was born in Hamps ...

.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