Sir Robert Bowden Madgwick (10 May 1905 – 25 March 1979) was an Australian educationist. He was the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of New England and served two terms as Chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Commission. Madgwick was an influential proponent of adult learning and extension studies in tertiary education. At the University of New England, he directed the development of several degree programs, including rural science, agricultural economics, and educational administration which were the first of their kind in Australia. In recognition of his contributions to education, Madgwick was appointed to the Order of British Empire in 1962 and knighted in 1966.
Born in North Sydney, New South Wales, Madgwick trained as a schoolteacher before attaining degrees in economics and economic history from the University of Sydney and University of Oxford. Appointed as a lecturer at the University of Sydney, Madgwick worked in the school's extension program which gave him experience and interest in adult education. With the onset of World War II, Madgwick and his colleagues proposed an adult education plan for the Australian Army. The government accepted the plan and, from 1941 to 1946, Madgwick served on active duty as Director of the Australian Army Education Service, which provided adult education services to the Army's 250,000 members during the conflict.
After his release from active duty in 1946, Madgwick was selected as Warden of the New England University College in Armidale, New South Wales. Assuming the position in 1947, Madgwick guided the school, then a college of the University of Sydney, to independence as the University of New England in 1954. Until his retirement in 1966, Madgwick presided over the school's expansion of its curriculum and facilities while promoting closer ties with the local community. Under Madgwick's leadership, the university took an early and leading role in adult education, extension degree programs, and agricultural research. After his retirement, Madgwick served from 1967 to 1973 as Chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
Early life and education Madgwick was born on 10 May 1905 in North Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He was the second of three sons of Australian-born parents Richard Charlton Madgwick and Annie Jane Elston. Madgwick's father was a tram-driver in Sydney and his mother a dressmaker. Both were active members of an Anglican church. Madgwick stated later that his parents taught him that, "all men and women were sacred, and poverty and injustice were in some way contrary to God's teaching." Madgwick described the most important things in his young life as family, church, and school.
Madgwick attended public school in Naremburn and North Sydney Boys High School. After graduating, he entered the University of Sydney in 1923 on a Sydney Teachers College scholarship. Madgwick graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics with first class honours in 1927 and shared the award of the first Sydney University Medal in Economics with (Sir) Hermann Black.While at the college, Madgwick, Black, and (Sir) Ronald Walker participated together in a debating team. Black later became Chancellor of the University of Sydney.
Teacher and lecturer After receiving his degree, Madgwick obtained employment as a schoolteacher, first at Nowra High School in 1927, then at Parkes High School from 1927 to 1928. He later stated that his short stint as a secondary schoolteacher provided him invaluable experience because it taught, "that all young people are not equal either in ability or motivation, but that each one was a worthy object of my endeavours because each one was interesting in himself and because he had a right to be helped to achieve his potential."
In February 1929, he was appointed to a temporary position as a lecturer in economics at the University of Sydney. In this position, Madgwick participated in the university's adult education (called "tutorial") program, teaching several evening tutorial classes at the main Sydney campus as well as in Bondi and Manly. Madgwick said that this experience in adult education, "was to have a profound influence on my later career and on my attitude to education." In 1931, Madgwick and former classmate (Sir) Ronald Walker published a textbook titled An Outline of Australian Economics. The following year, Madgwick received a master's degree in economics from the University of Sydney. Madgwick's colleagues during this time included H. C. Coombs, who joined the faculty in 1932, Stephen Henry Roberts, and Ian Clunies Ross.
With assistance from economist R.C. Mills, in 1933 Madgwick was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. Beginning that year, he attended Balliol College, Oxford, returning to Australia in 1935. In 1936 Oxford accorded Madgwick a doctor of philosophy. His thesis, published in London in 1937, was titled Immigration into Eastern Australia 1788–1851 and was one of the few scholarly works on Australian history to appear in print before World War II.The book treated immigration as distinct from convict transportation and focused on the former.
In 1936 Madgwick was a visiting Harbison-Higginbotham Scholar at the University of Melbourne. The same year, Madgwick took an appointment as a senior lecturer in economic history at the University of Sydney. In this capacity, Madgwick frequently worked with the university's department of tutorial classes and helped found the Sydney University Lecturers' Association. In 1937, he accepted appointment as Secretary of the Sydney University Extension Board (SUEB), which focused on adult education in surrounding communities, including lectures, tutorial classes, and study circles. Madgwick held the position until 1940, often travelling to rural communities in the Northern Rivers and New England areas of New South Wales to present lectures. Many of the lectures took place at the New England University College (later to become the University of New England) campus in Armidale.Other communities visited included Abingdon, Casino, and Lismore. During this time, Madgwick often collaborated with Edgar Booth, first (foundation) warden of the college, in bringing lecturers on different subjects to the northern area of N.S.W.
Madgwick disapproved of the SUEB's approach to its education program, finding it too rigid and conservative to appeal to a community of people with many different backgrounds and goals. Madgwick felt it was better to provide adults the education that they wanted, not what the university thought "they needed or should have." He described his goal as "genuine liberal adult education." Based on his observations, Madgwick, as secretary of the program, helped implement a plan to redevelop the university's adult education program. The changes included following-up tutorial classes with extension lectures, widening the SUEB board membership, developing contacts to involve the local business community with the program, and more lectures on international affairs. Later, Madgwick explained more on his thoughts on adult education, saying,
In 1938, as a member of the Australian Institute of International Affairs Madgwick attended the British Commonwealth Relations Conference in Lapstone, New South Wales. From 1931 to 1940 he participated in the Round Table movement.
Madgwick married Ailsa Margaret Aspinall, daughter of H. J. Aspinall, at St Stephen's Presbyterian Church in Sydney on 19 May 1937. The marriage produced three daughters. Margaret Ann was born in March 1938, Ailsa Mary in June 1940, and Helen Millicent was born in June 1943.
Army Education Service From September 1939 to March 1940, Madgwick designed and managed an adult education scheme for the Sydney University Regiment, commanded by Victor Windeyer, based at Menangle. As Australia in 1940 became increasingly involved in World War II and expanded its military forces, Madgwick and colleagues David Drummond, C.E.W. Bean, (Sir) Robert W. Wallace (Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney), Richard Charles Mills, W. G. K. Duncan, Alf A.J. Conlon, and others began to publicly call for the Australian Army to install an adult education program to combat illiteracy among its members and educate them in the political history of Australia. Beginning in May 1940 and culminating in a special conference on 20 August 1940, Madgwick and the others cooperatively drafted an adult education scheme for the Army. Colonel F. J. Alderson, Education Officer on the Army's General Staff, also attended the 20 August conference. Long, p. 84 states that the effort to draft the education scheme actually began in December 1940 and included the Army's Adjutant General, Major General V.P.H. Stanke.
Early in November 1940, Army Minister Percy Spender solicited ideas from Australia's universities for an adult education program for the Army and suggestions on who should lead the program. In response, the University of Sydney submitted and recommended the plan prepared by Madgwick and his colleagues. The Army accepted the plan and on 1 March 1941 the Army Education Service (AES) was established. Madgwick was selected as its commander, titled "Assistant Adjutant General (Education)", and commissioned with the temporary rank of lieutenant colonel. The plan was given final approval by the Australian War Cabinet in May 1941. As implemented, the program covered the 250,000 Army troops stationed in Australia and Australian territories or protectorates in the East Asia/South Pacific area. The goals of the program included improving morale, fostering civic responsibility, providing diversion from the tedium of military life, and preparing servicemen and women to enter the workforce after demobilisation. Australian servicemen serving overseas, such as in Europe or Africa, were in a separate formation called the Second Australian Imperial Force which was not covered by the AES. The AES was supervised by the Australian Military Education Council, for which Madgwick served as secretary. The council's members were representatives from universities and state education departments. A list of council members is in Ryan (1992), p. 20. At least initially, the program consisted of extension lectures, tutorial classes, and discussion groups.
"Education should be an adventure, something that we undertake because it is interesting as well as instructive. Democracy cannot survive if decisions are to be made by the people and the people do not understand what they are asked to decide. To me the success of our scheme will be measured by the number of men who become more tolerant of the other man's opinion."Robert Madgwick, editorial in the first issue of Salt, 29 September 1941 Based at the Army's headquarters in Melbourne, the AES started out with 43 assigned personnel, 14 officers and 29 non-commissioned officers and typists, but expanded as the war progressed. By 1944 the unit comprised 963 staff, including instructors, teachers, and administrators and had established offices down to the regimental level. Each brigade usually contained an AES officer and a sergeant who maintained a library, gave lectures on current affairs, supervised correspondence courses, wrote newsletters, and ensured that Salt and Current Affairs Bulletin were distributed. Each Army base usually also had a larger reference library. In 1943 the AES established two schools, one in Western Australia and the other in New South Wales, to provide education in basic education skills to illiterate Army recruits.