#angloscottish

[scotianostra]

Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe was born in Edinburgh, on June 23rd 1940.

As a youngster Sutcliffe's father moved the family to Liverpool, where Stuart grew up.He attended Park View Primary School, Huyton, and Prescot Grammar School where he developed a love and aptitude for art.

While earning money as a bin man, he attended the Liverpool College of Art and was regarded as one of the best painters in his class, working mainly in an abstract expressionist style.

It was at college that he met fellow student John Lennon, who became his flatmate. After one of Sutcliffe's paintings sold for the then-massive sum of £65, Lennon convinced him to buy a bass guitar — which he could barely play — and join the band Lennon had formed with his friends Paul McCartney and George Harrison.

The band’s name had already changed numerous times. Upon joining, Sutcliffe and Lennon lit upon the idea of "beetles" as a nod to Buddy Holly and the Crickets. Over the next few months, that name evolved into the Silver Beetles, then the Silver Beatles, and finally to the Beatles.

Along with hastily recruited drummer Pete Best, Sutcliffe and the Beatles traveled to Hamburg, Germany to play clubs and hone their skills. There, Sutcliffe fell in love with photographer Astrid Kirchherr, who became his fiancee just two months after meeting him. She gave him the mop-top haircut the rest of the band would soon adopt.

In 1961, Sutcliffe left the Beatles to focus on his painting and life with Astrid. He won a postgraduate scholarship to attend the Hamburg College of Art, eager to study under Edinburgh sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi.

His artistic career was cut short, however, when after a series of increasingly severe headaches, he died of a sudden cerebral hemorrhage on April 10, 1962, at the age of 21.

His fiancee and former bandmates were devastated. Sutcliffe’s face can still be seen on the far left side of the album cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

[scotianostra]

Alexander Sutherland Neill was born on October 17th 1883 in Forfar.

Another man you might not be a name you are familiar with, but A.S. Bell, as he was known, was a pioneer, or indeed a rebel against the conformists views of the era in education. The son of a schoolteacher, Neill graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an M.A. degree in 1912 and became headmaster of the Gretna Green School in 1914. He recorded his initial teaching experiences in the autobiographical novel A Dominie’s Log (1916) and wrote several sequels to this work, with some of them being reprinted in 1975 as The Dominie Books of A.S. Neill, dominie being the old eclesical word for schoolmaster.

Neill and others founded an international school near Dresden., in 1921. The school was moved to Sonntagberg, Austria, three years later but was soon closed because its unconventional curriculum and teaching methods were opposed by the local authorities. In 1924 Neill moved the school to Lyme Regis, Dorset, in England, and named it Summerhill after the building he had leased for its quarters. In 1927 he moved the school to its permanent home in Leiston, Suffolk. Summerhill School became internationally known for its self-governing student-teacher body and its flexible curriculum that emphasizes the student’s own motivation to learn. Neill drew considerable criticism for his permissive attitudes toward academic discipline, but by the 1960s his school had become popular for its progressive approach to child rearing.

Neill’s principal book about his educational methods, Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing, stimulated debates about alternatives to conventional schooling. The book was more influential in the United States, West Germany, and Japan than in the British Isles

His other books include The Problem Child, The Problem Parent, The Problem Family, The Free Child, and an autobiography, Neill! Neill! Orange Peel!

In 1973 his health declined and he was admitted to Ipswich Hospital. Later he was taken to the small local hospital where he died peacefully on this day1973.