Key pedagogic thinkers: R. J. Harris

R. J. (Roland) Harris (1919-1969), English teacher and poet, was deputy head of the flagship London comprehensive school Woodberry Down in the 1960s. He was perhaps best known in the educational field for the findings of his PhD thesis (1962) which was an experimental enquiry into the teaching of grammar in the early secondary school years. He also worked for the Schools Council, where he was instrumental in the raising of the school leaving age to 16; and for the last two years of his life he taught psycholinguistics at Brunel University. Many of his child-centred ideas on education were honed in association with his wife, Martha Harris, who was head of the Child Psychotherapy training at the Tavistock Clinic; his group work and administrative experience lay behind her restructuring of the training in the 60s. In 1968, after a pilot project conducted at Woodberry Down, they started a pioneering Schools Counsellors' Course at the Tavistock