Great Scot Archive
Issues from 1998
Issues from 1998
 
 
 
 

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Education and the cause of freedom

The Rev James Forbes was acknowledged by his contemporaries as one of the true leaders of the young colony around Port Phillip Bay, especially, but not only, in education.

Words: Dr David Kemp – Chairman, Scotch College Council

James Forbes, the founder of Scotch College, was born 200 years ago this year. We do not know the exact date of his birth, but he was baptised on 4 April 1813, which means he was probably born a week or so earlier, in late March of that year.

Forbes was one of the 'best and brightest' of the well-educated and idealistic young men who came to Australia in its early days to build a better society than the one they had left in Britain. It is apparent in hindsight that he was one of the more brilliant of the new arrivals, and Victoria (or Australia Felix as it was often called at the time) was fortunate in his choice of colony.

Before establishing the School that became Scotch in 1851, Forbes had already established a primary school known as The Scots School in Collins Street, and in 1842 led the first commission of enquiry into public education for all the children of the colony. He has been recognised by Edward Sweetman, in the most comprehensive study of his work, as Victoria’s first public educationist. Scotch (first called The Melbourne Academy) was his venture into secondary education, and it was due to his efforts that the School’s first principal, Robert Lawson, was sent from Scotland.

As a leader in a new colony, Forbes did not confine his efforts to primary and secondary schooling. Technical education also attracted his efforts, and he was Secretary of the School of Arts and Mechanics Institute in 1839. He was involved in the foundation of the Royal Melbourne Hospital and was one of its early secretaries. He was dedicated to improving the position of the aboriginal people, and was a friend of George Robinson, who managed the ill fated Aboriginal Protectorate. Aboriginal students won two of the prizes at the first graduation at his Scots School.

Forbes saw education as an essential foundation for a high quality public life and for people’s right to choose their own course in life. Education, he wrote, 'must be regarded as the great remedy for the ills of the body politic, the basis on which must be mainly rested all hopes of its amelioration, and of its future generations being better than the present'.

In his view it fell to the churches and the schools to lay the basis for a society in which all could be respected. 'Public liberty and public virtue have almost universally been found together', he wrote in a series of articles in the Port Phillip Gazette in 1842. In a paper on ‘Colonization’ he advocated representative government of the colonies.

Forbes had no doubt that if a decent society were to be achieved in the new land it would be by the efforts of the colonists themselves. He wrote in The Port Phillip Gazette:

'The present Secretary of State for the Colonies is a man of enlarged views, and what is better, a man of Christian principles. But let not the colonists of Australia Felix forget that their main source of confidence must be their own efforts, and the benignant blessing of our God They can, I apprehend, do more for themselves than all the Rulers and Governors on earth are likely to do for them; and unless they exert themselves for the promotion of their own interests, and the interests of their posterity, the doom of our adopted country is sealed. [Unless public education is provided] the cause of knowledge and the cause of freedom will be lost together.'

Forbes was born in a village about 40km west of Aberdeen, and graduated Master of Arts at Kings College, Old Aberdeen University, in 1836. Aberdeenshire was the heartland of the Clan Forbes. James was persuaded to come to Australia by the redoubtable John Dunmore Lang on one of the latter’s recruiting expeditions for ministers, and was ordained for Australia by the Presbytery of Glasgow in 1837. His first church service in Melbourne was in 1838.

Forbes was a man of firm but balanced views, and considerable moral courage. He split from Lang, and when the Disruption in the Presbyterian Church in Scotland occurred in 1843, he supported the Free Church. It was as a Minister of the Free Church that he worked to establish the secondary school that became Scotch College. He believed deeply in religious tolerance and hated sectarianism. His schools were open to all.

Forbes was but the first of a number of educational leaders who were to come from Aberdeen in Scotland to bring the moral values, egalitarianism and teachings of the Presbyterian church and the tolerant, humane and rational views of the Scottish Enlightenment to Australia. Robert Lawson, the first Principal of the School that became Scotch College, was appointed because he was a member of the Free Church. Alexander Morrison, his successor, was, like Forbes, a graduate of Kings College, Aberdeen, as was Dr Littlejohn, who followed him.

Australian culture today in many ways reflects these values, and owes a considerable debt to men such as Forbes, and to the scholars of Aberdeen whose principles of rational thought and moral integrity bore fruit in a new land.

Tragically, James Forbes died in 1851 at the age of 38 years. The cause of his death is uncertain, possibly tuberculosis or a throat cancer. He is buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery. His epitaph reads:

'Amidst bodily weakness he was abundant in his labours for many years. A man of inflexible integrity. A minister of untiring devotedness.' All of us who are the beneficiaries of Rev James Forbes’ great vision for his new country will remember him with special thanks this year.

References

Edward Sweetman, Victoria’s First Public Educationist, MUP 1939
Rowland Ward, James Forbes (1813-1851): ‘Abundant in Labours', in Presbyterian Leaders in the 19th Century, pp.37-53

Updated: Monday 24 June 2013