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Suzanne Choo · Deb Sawch
Alison Villanueva · Ruth Vinz Editors

Educating
for the 21st
Century
Perspectives, Policies and Practices from
Around the World
Educating for the 21st Century
Suzanne Choo • Deb Sawch
Alison Villanueva • Ruth Vinz
Editors

Educating for the 21st

Century
Perspectives, Policies and Practices from
Around the World
Editors
Suzanne Choo Deb Sawch
National Institute of Education Teachers College
Nanyang Technological University Columbia University
Singapore, Singapore New York, USA

Alison Villanueva Ruth Vinz

Ridgefield Public Schools Teachers College
Connecticut, USA Columbia University
New York, USA

ISBN 978-981-10-1671-4    ISBN 978-981-10-1673-8 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-1673-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016955537

© Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2017

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information
storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the
editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors
or omissions that may have been made.

Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer Science+Business Media Singapore Pte Ltd.
Preface

The impetus to trade, explore and even conquer new worlds has existed for thou-
sands of years dating to the fifteenth century when Christopher Columbus discov-
ered the new world in the Americas and Vasco da Gama established a sea route from
Europe to the East. Sometime after the nineteenth century, the modern world econ-
omy developed and international trade, previously limited to products catered for
elite classes, now expanded to include basic goods such as wheat and textiles for the
masses. The world economy began to expand geographically to include more terri-
tories as the influence of the merchant capitalist class grew alongside stronger inter-
state relations. Today, the sense of international interaction, interconnectedness and
interchange, encapsulated in the term “globalization”, has intensified more than any
other century in human history. Indeed, the word “global” has become a cliché in
our twenty-first century landscape in which companies increasingly apply global
marketing strategies, financial institutions compete to provide global banking ser-
vices for their mobile clienteles, and education systems are compared globally on
international test surveys while universities continue developing enticing global
exchange programmes and partnerships with overseas institutions. These changes
are fuelled by a race among cities all over the world from Dubai to Shanghai and
Singapore to market themselves as global cities that are highly networked and that
are encouraged to maintain a cosmopolitan openness to immigrants and foreign
investors.
As the world becomes increasingly closer and flatter, it is also pulled apart by
rising instances of global terrorism, xenophobia, inequality among rich and poor
nations, and modern-day slavery. It is this complex and volatile landscape that has
generated growing interest among governments, policymakers and scholars con-
cerning how best to educate students with twenty-first century global capacities so
that they have the requisite skills and knowledge to compete in the global market-
place and at the same time imbibe cosmopolitan sensitivities towards multiple and
marginalized others in the world.
This edited volume provides insights into the different interpretations of twenty-­
first century education and aims to merge theory and practice by including contribu-
tions from scholars as well as educators from schools and those who work with

v
vi Preface

schools. The volume contains three key parts, each with its own introduction. Part I.
“Perspectives: Mapping our Futures-in-the-making” centres on theorizations of the
contradictions, tensions and processes that shape the way twenty-first century edu-
cation discourses are constructed and articulated. Part II. “Policies: Constructing the
Future through Policy Making” focuses on how the envisioning of twenty-first cen-
tury education translates into policies and the tensions that emerge from top-down,
state sanctioned policies and bottom-up initiatives. Part III. “Practices: Enacting the
Future in Local Contexts” discusses on-the-ground initiatives that schools in vari-
ous countries enact to educate their students for the twenty-first century.
This edited volume is timely as governments and policymakers around the world
increasingly emphasize the need to adequately equip students with key knowledge
and skills for the twenty-first century. A range of international perspectives is pro-
vided, including insights into schools and education systems in countries such as
Australia, Canada, Cuba, Finland, Hong Kong, Japan, Kuwait, Singapore and the
United States, among others. It is hoped that readers will be provoked to new ways
of thinking about twenty-first century education through the contributions by key
thinkers in the field of globalization and education as well as get a glimpse into the
ways twenty-first century education is interpreted and translated into specific policy
and pedagogical practices.

Singapore, Singapore Suzanne Choo

New York, USA Deb Sawch
Connecticut, USA Alison Villanueva
New York, USA Ruth Vinz
Acknowledgements

The editors would like to thank Randi Dickson for her help in editing this work and
co-authoring the introduction to Part I.

vii
Contents

Part I Perspectives: Mapping Our Futures-In-The-Making

1 Today’s Children, Tomorrow’s Creatives: Living, Learning
and Earning in the Conceptual Age....................................................... 7
Erica McWilliam
2 Digitalizing Tradition: Staging Postcolonial Elite
School Identities in the Online Environment......................................... 25
Cameron McCarthy, Koeli Moitra Goel, Brenda Nyandiko Sanya,
Heather Greenhalgh-Spencer, and Chunfeng Lin
3 “Players in the World”: Action for Intercultural Competence
in Classroom Pedagogy............................................................................ 47
Ruth Reynolds, Kate Ferguson-Patrick, and Suzanne Macqueen
4 Deliberating Values for Global Citizenship: A Study
of Singapore’s Social Studies and Hong Kong’s
Liberal Studies Curricula....................................................................... 73
Theresa Alviar-Martin and Mark Baildon
5 Signature Pedagogies in Global Competence Education:
Understanding Quality Teaching Practice............................................. 93
Veronica Boix Mansilla and Flossie SG Chua
6 Voices from the Field: What Can We Learn from Leaders
of Diverse Schools in Ontario Canada, Tensions
and Possibilities?...................................................................................... 117
Ann E. Lopez
7 Education for a Better World: The Struggle for Social
Justice in the Twenty-First Century....................................................... 131
Ian Davies

ix
x Contents

Part II Policies: Constructing the Future Through Policy Making

8 Global Leadership Training for High School Students
in Japan: Are Global Leadership Competencies
Trainable, Universal, and Measurable?................................................. 153
Yuko Goto Butler and Masakazu Iino
9 Exploring Top-Down and Bottom-Up Cosmopolitan Traces
in Schools on the West Coast of the United States................................ 171
Eleni Oikonomidoy and Rachel G. Salas
10 Exploring the Transformative Potential of a Global
Education Framework: A Case-­Study of a School
District in the United States.................................................................... 187
Suzanne Choo, Deb Sawch, Alison Villanueva,
and Caroline Chan
11 For Whom Is K-12 Education: A Critical Look
into Twenty-First Century Educational Policy
and Curriculum in the Philippines......................................................... 207
Genejane Adarlo and Liz Jackson
12 Preparing Students for the Twenty-First Century:
A Snapshot of Singapore’s Approach..................................................... 225
Chew Leng Poon, Karen WL Lam, Melvin Chan,
Melvin Chng, Dennis Kwek, and Sean Tan
13 Towards Twenty-First Century Education: Success Factors,
Challenges, and the Renewal of Finnish Education.............................. 243
Jari Lavonen and Tiina Korhonen
14 Imagining the Cosmopolitan Global Citizen? Parents’
Choice of International Schools in Kuwait............................................ 265
Carol Reid and Mohammed Kamel Ibrahim
15 Towards Being a “Good Cuban”: Socialist Citizenship
Education in a Globalized Context......................................................... 281
Denise Blum, Rosemary Smith, and J. Ruth Dawley-Carr

Part III Practices: Enacting the Future in Local Contexts

16 Teaching Global Citizenship Education with Empathy
Model and Experiential Learning: Case Study
of Action Research on Developing Empathy
in a Hong Kong Secondary School......................................................... 303
Eric K.M. Chong
17 Reimagine Lakeshore: A School Division Change
Initiative for the Twenty-First Century................................................. 327
Jacqueline Kirk and Michael Nantais
Contents xi

18 A Case Study of Curriculum Innovation for Global Capacities:

One Response to the Call of the Twenty-First Century........................ 343
Clayton Massey
19 MEDIAtion: Flexible Literacy Terms, Communication
and “Viral” Learning in 9–12 Classrooms............................................. 361
Natalie Davey
20 A Prototype Twenty-First Century Class:
A School-Wide Initiative to Engage the Digital Native......................... 375
Hui Yong Tay
21 Preparing Students for a New Global Age: Perspectives
from a Pioneer ‘Future School’ in Singapore........................................ 389
Wen Chee Chung, Hwee Joo Yeo, Ai Chin Tan,
Jasmine Tey, Melvyn Lim, and Chiew Weng Hon
22 Problematizing ‘Global Citizenship’
in an International School....................................................................... 405
Emily B. Clark and Glenn C. Savage
23 Being Open to the Other: K-12 Teachers’ Multimodal
Reflections on Hong Kong Curricula..................................................... 425
Zheng Zhang and Rachel Heydon
24 A New Wave of Learning in Finland: Get Started
with Innovation!....................................................................................... 447
Tiina Korhonen and Jari Lavonen

Erratum............................................................................................................ E1

About the Editors............................................................................................. 469

About the Authors............................................................................................ 473

 Part I
Perspectives: Mapping Our
Futures-In-The-Making

It is a mistake to try to reform the educational system without revising ourselves as learning
beings, following a path from birth to death that is longer and more unpredictable than ever
before. Only when that is done, will we be in a position to reconstruct educational systems
where teachers model learning rather than authority.... The avalanche of changes taking
place around the world . . . all come as reminders that of all the skills learned in school the
most important is the skill to learn over a lifetime those things that no one, including the
teachers, yet understands. (Mary Catherine Bateson, 1996.)

In the opening chapter of Part I, Erica McWilliam’s “Today’s Children,

Tomorrow’s Creatives: Living, Learning and Earning in the Conceptual Age”
echoes Bateson’s belief that we cannot “map out” a curriculum or competencies that
anticipate what students in the twenty-first century will need to know. She
cautions:
Given the learning imperatives arising from Big Data, schools cannot provide young people
with the information they will need to live learn and earn well now and in the future. What
counts as useful, relevant or seminal knowledge has an increasingly limited shelf-life.

Where does this belief that we cannot predict educational needs thoroughly and
accurately leave those of us trying to conceive both the whats and hows of education
in the twenty-first century? How might we prepare for the unexplored and unimag-
ined terrain of the future that is before us?
The geographies of cyberspace create new maps that superimpose over the more
time-honored maps where borders are drawn and continents and nations are named
and renamed while, at the same time, illustrating our connecting topographies of
mountain ranges, rivers, and oceans. It is an arresting picture of both connection and
disconnection. Change, flux, movement, disruption seem cornerstones of the
twenty-first century. Acknowledging and embracing change and uncertainty may
suggest we will have no stable map to aid navigation. Is this a condition we can
educate for—one that supports, as Williams calls for, “non-traditional attributes to
learning” such as “risk-taking, self-criticality, a ‘seriously playful’ approach to
problem solving, and the capacity to work alongside high-end digital tools in value-
adding ways”? Yet, it is our connectedness as members of a global community that
2 I Perspectives: Mapping Our Futures-In-The-Making

becomes the strongest image of our new world—a world ripe with possibilities but
also with ethical and social challenges for a planet in near chaos. How do we edu-
cate for the creative, imaginative, and affective capacities we will need for our
futures-in-the-making?
McWilliam states, “The future is something we create together, not somewhere
we are going.” She forecasts the need for different knowledge and skills with the
expansion of digital geographies and technologies. Like many other authors in the
first section of this book, she encourages educators to emphasize more team work,
less desk work, and to use our human and technological resources to “put curiosity
to work in a systematic way.” She calls for teachers willing to “meddle in the mid-
dle”, who are active and engaged themselves—not with knowledge acquired for a
test, but with the disposition to both learn and unlearn.”
In Chap. 2, “Digitalizing Tradition: Staging Postcolonial Elite School Identities
in the Online Environment,” Cameron McCarthy and his research team focus on the
production of information in the digital landscape. As McLuhan famously stated,
“The medium is the message.” But who controls the medium and the message?
While examining how two elite schools constructed elaborate digital presences to
brand the identities of their institutions, McCarthy notes that “digital identity mak-
ing, re-making, and contestation is set against multiple backdrops of education” as
a way to elaborate a global digital presence and construct their brand into the global
education market. Yet, students’ consumption and production of various social
media work to challenge and disrupt the carefully branded institutional identity.
Perhaps one reality of our twenty-first century is that there is no one person, admin-
istration, or government in charge of disseminating information. Young peoples’
lives are lived online, and in-the-moment, “augmented by constant viewer “posts”,
“likes,” “shares,” and “messages” creating an interactive, transnational version of
school life.”
Both chapters emphasize how the powerful networks of cyberspace transform
subject-object relations and interaction capabilities. Letter writing, face-to-face
meetings, referrals, and telephone calls have given way to digital spaces such as
LinkedIn (the digital networking for business referencing) and Xing (with a more
global presence and focus). Facebook and Google + offer users a social site where
content, highlighted topics, creation of small circles of networks generate hundreds
of thousands of networks. In 2004 when Facebook and Flickr were introduced, we
had not yet seen the advent of YouTube (2005) or Twitter (2006). These cyberspaces
have created multi-dimensions to our physical spaces. From Whatsapp to WeChat,
the globe expands, feeling a bit like huge networks of spider webs constantly weav-
ing, repurposing and changing the designs, forms, and images of our global connec-
tive tissues. Global content-creators continue to invent new rhetorical contexts and
sites that make porous the boundaries of continents, nations, cultures, and languages
in the cyberspaces of everyday life. How will these cyber-landscapes affect the ways
we learn, interact, and educate with others?
I Perspectives: Mapping Our Futures-In-The-Making 3

‘Becoming’ in a Global World

Nearly 50 years ago, Marshall McLuhan, philosopher of communication and media

theory, predicted that media would change the way we looked at all aspects of life.
He knew that the new age of electronic information would forever entangle us, so
that the idea of a “global citizen,” one whose identity transcended local and national
boundaries, would compel us to take responsibility for others around the globe.
In an electrical information environment, …Too many people know too much about each
other. Our new environment compels commitment and participation. We have become irre-
vocably involved with, and responsible for, each other (p. 24).

In Chap. 3 and 4, Reynolds, Ferguson-Patrick, and Macqueen’s “Players in the

World: Action for Intercultural Competence in Classroom Pedagogy” and Alviar-
Martin and Baildon’s “Deliberating Values for Global Citizenship: A Study of
Singapore’s Social Studies and Hong Kong’s Liberal Studies Curricula” share ways
in which educators challenge themselves to prepare citizens who can participate
effectively in our futures-in-the-making. Subject matter, literacy and numeracy
skills, learning to be discriminating receivers and producers of cyber-information
alone will not provide students with the education they need to traverse the new and
expanded landscapes. It will be how we, as human beings, turn inside to reflect, look
outside to see and feel and understand with others, and commit ourselves to take
action for sustainable and productive futures. As Reynolds, Ferguson-Patrick, and
Macqueen remind us, “. . . for Intercultural Competence to occur there is a need to
act, to do something, to interact and be challenged, to be motivated and to be brave –
to transform.” This will not be achieved simply through learning about other cul-
tures but in finding ways to be with others, to participate in the making of a global
culture together.
Reiterated in many discussions of twenty-first century global competencies is the
need to educate in order to keep a competitive edge in the global market. Students
are frequently seen as human capital—a means to an end where the nation can
achieve economic success in the global economy. As Alviar-Martin and Baildon
observe as a result of their research, these citizenship and civic education curricula
emphasize the production of citizens “possessing marketable skills for changing
global economic conditions who will not raise questions of human rights or social
justice or stridently challenge government policy.” What are other purposes for edu-
cating toward global citizenship? Might these include opportunities to question and
deliberate social or human rights issues? To experience plurality through doing?
Both of these chapters emphasize a call to action for educators—to create experi-
ences for students that engage them in multiple opportunities to act and to imagine
ways to improve relations, communications, and economic and social equality
around the world.
4 I Perspectives: Mapping Our Futures-In-The-Making

Finding Our Way Through the Unfamiliar

There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is

happening. (Marshall McLuhan, 1967)

The opening four chapters help us understand how today’s students will need to
be more digitally savvy, mobile and transitory, and more democratic in their world-
view. This new reality has placed greater demands on educators in all countries to
create learning environments that both reflect and facilitate the pluralistic nature of
life on our globe. In Chap. 5 and 6, Veronica Boix Mansilla and Flossie Chua’s
“Signature Pedagogies in Global Competence Education: Understanding Quality
Teaching Practice” and Ann Lopez’s “Voices From the Field: What Can we Learn
From School Leaders of Diverse Schools in Ontario, Canada, Tensions and
Possibilities?” we are reminded how important it will be for educators to design
classrooms where students experience other cultures, make connections to their
own, and take action both locally and globally.
By understanding global issues and the challenges we face, teachers and students
are more likely to take action to make the world a better place. As Boix Mansilla and
Chua remind us, “Teaching for global competence goes beyond delivering new con-
tent through transmission-centered pedagogies. Rather, we argue here, it calls for a
pedagogical approach uniquely tailored to nurturing deep, relevant, and sustained
global learning.” Their conceptions of “signature pedagogies” “favor an integrated
view of learning, targeting a complement of practices such as “investigating the
world,” “taking perspective,” “communicating across difference,” and “taking
action.”
Of course, changes in educational settings take strong and visionary leadership.
In Chap. 6, Ann Lopez examines the types of leadership that schools will need to
enact culturally responsive teaching and learning. She goes on to describe the tenets
of culturally responsive and transcultural leadership with examples of leadership
in-the-making, where purposeful and speculative leaders supply resources and
encourage classroom environments that generate passion to explore, understand,
and inquire into the issues and problems of the world. This does not come without
tensions, but examining some of the experiences of leaders making their way in this
new terrain will lend support and provide examples for others.

Making the Road by Walking

Mapping is often viewed as an attempt to capture “what is.” That is, a map functions
to give an overview, help us see a panorama, or offer a route for where we want to
go. Nearly every day in Syria, bombs fall, buildings and pipes crumble, faucets no
longer run with life-giving water. A new gps map, developed by the International
Red Cross in conjunction with the local water board in Aleppo, shows citizens
I Perspectives: Mapping Our Futures-In-The-Making 5

where water boreholes can be found. In this sense, we recognize the enormous
power of the maps, especially interactive ones, of “what is” to be literally life sav-
ing—able to harness huge technological resources. But, what of the maps of our
imaginings, the mapping of unexplored landscapes in and for education where we
risk falling off the maps of the known? In Chap. 7, “Education for a Better World:
The Struggle for Social Justice in the Twenty-First Century,” Ian Davies emphasizes
“that education for global citizenship is achieved through—and expressed by—
democratic engagement for social justice. As such I wish to encourage teachers to
be activists for a social and political ideal and to see this as an essential part of their
role as professionals.” And, we could not agree more. The mapping may not be easy
and the road ahead may not be clearly defined. What may be a common character-
istic of our search for purposes and practices to support education for a global future
is the importance of creating learning environments that generate
RESTLESSNESS. As the earth revolves, so, too, do students and teachers need to
feel the revolutions of an education where desire, passion to explore, ongoing
attempts to understand and act on behalf of others, and curiosities beyond all mea-
sure are the qualities we all need as learners and citizens who share and hope to
thrive on this planet, together.

References

Bateson, M. C. (1994). Peripheral visions. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

McCarthy, J. (2016, December 28). How do you find water in a war? For some Syrians, there is
now a gps map. Global Citizen. Retrieved January 1, 2015 from https://globalcitizen.org/…
how-do-you-find-water-in-a-war-for-syria
McLuhan, M., & Fiore, Q. (1967). The medium is the message: An inventory of effects. Berkeley,
CA: Gingko Press Inc.
Chapter 1
Today’s Children, Tomorrow’s Creatives:
Living, Learning and Earning
in the Conceptual Age

Erica McWilliam

Abstract This introductory chapter sets out the challenges all schools face in pre-
paring young people for a world vastly different from the one most teachers grew up
in. It then moves to consider how to design pedagogical activities that are likely to
result in creative learning outcomes. The changes that new technologies are making
to our living, learning and earning are unprecedented. This means, among other
things, that value-adding learning environments will continue to become more digi-
tally resourced, more networked, more self-directed, more software mediated, more
open and more accessible. Yet we need to be thinking more radically about what
children learn and how they learn it than ‘going digital’ in the learning environment.
Fortunately, we are beginning to understand that creativity is a key driver of a sus-
tainable and productive economy for a global and ethical citizenry. Moeover, we
now know that creativity is in many respects both teachable and learnable. In under-
standing how important creative capacity is to the Conceptual Age, teachers can
work towards making it less vaporous and more visible as a set of dispositions and
capabilities that are at the centre of curriculum design and implementation.

It was not so long ago that we thought the future would be filled with Big Machines.
We thought we would be wearing metallic spacesuits and being served by humanoid
robots speaking with metallic voices, much like the robot maid Rosie in the Jetson
cartoon family of the 1960s. We imagined that, 60 years on, our houses, offices and
classrooms would be crammed full of clunky labor-saving gadgets of all kinds, free-
ing up our days so that, like George Jetson, we would be working just an hour a day
for no more than 2 days a week.
We are now experiencing what it is like to live in what Daniel Pink (2005) calls
“The Conceptual Age”. It is a time when the routine accessing of information to
solve routine problems has been displaced by unique cultural forms and modes of
consumption made possible by digital tools and modes of communication. And so

E. McWilliam (*)
Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology,
73 Blandford St, Grange, Brisbane 4051, QLD, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2017 7

S. Choo et al. (eds.), Educating for the 21st Century,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-1673-8_1
8 E. McWilliam

we now know that the future is not what it used to be. Through the affordances of
nano-technology, we have been able to turn Big Machines into small devices, many
so small indeed as to be invisible to the naked eye. We have exponentially increased
their power at the same time as decreasing their bulk. Such high-powered devices
have allowed us to access a world of continuous information flow, a relentless ecol-
ogy of interruption and distractibility that is both our servant and our master. It is a
world that makes unprecedented demands on our time and attention at the same
time that it affords instant access to more and more information. The key marker of
new times, in other words, is the way in which the data we access is being trans-
formed, and is transforming us. We now know that the future is not Big Machines –
it is Big Data.
Big Data, the exponential proliferation and transformation of information across
the globe, is making for massive social and cultural transformations. Most of us now
have multiple ways of connecting and engaging with each other, with work, with
government and with a host of organisational systems. And those same organisa-
tional systems that once relied on vertical hierarchies of management and vertical
supply and demand chains have been transformed into horizontal networks in which
the flow of data is unprecedented and in which any node that does not add value can
and will be by-passed. This means, among other things, that young people can sleep
their way through their school physics class, but continue their learning in physics
via any number of on-line courses and websites that can be accessed at any time. It
follows that teachers who continue to work as a cog in the supply chain of school-
ing, delivering and assessing disciplinary content in traditional ways, will find
themselves outside their students’ learning networks. In other words, school offer-
ings perceived as tedious or irrelevant will be side-stepped.

New Pathways, New Identities

The social and cultural transformations of the Era of Big Data are overturning not
just the cultural logic of the supply-and-demand chain, but other linear-cumulative
patterns of living, learning and earning. An aspirational life trajectory is no longer a
predictable pathway in which learning is completed before long-term salaried work
begins. Instead, according to sociologist Richard Sennett (2006), we are all under
pressure to improvize a life-narrative without any sustained sense of self or continu-
ous identity. Professions that have evolved historically from craftsmanship, through
standardization and systemization, have now entered a fourth stage of externaliza-
tion, with complex tasks “decomposing” into constituent fragments, many of which
are performed on-line or elsewhere beyond the immediate context (see Susskind &
Susskind, 2015). (The complex task of curriculum design, for example, can be ‘out-
sourced’ to a package of educational materials that is ready to be ‘delivered’ to any
school, any time, anywhere.) This ‘externalization’ imperative disrupts the sense of
a stable and predictable identity that once accompanied professional work.
1 Today’s Children, Tomorrow’s Creatives: Living, Learning and Earning… 9

With on-line affordances making it possible to outsource and atomize complex

work to make it cheaper and more efficient (and sometimes of better quality), pro-
fessional work cultures are less willing or able to reward craftsmanship – that is, to
reward an individual’s talent for doing expert work extremely well. Therefore hard-­
earned skills have an increasingly brief shelf-life, particularly in fields closely
related to technology, sciences and advanced forms of manufacturing. As long-term,
stable employment recedes, and fast-paced work transitions become the norm, we
now find ourselves paying closer attention to managing short-term relationships
while migrating (virtually or literally) from place to place, job to job and task to
task, re-developing new talents as economic and skilling demands shift.
Among all the attributes that are needed for enterprising engagement in this cen-
tury, agility of movement, is likely to be among the most valuable. The ability to
move at speed across disparate geographical, virtual, disciplinary and socio-cultural
landscapes is now a key capacity of the global workforce, demanding as it does an
enhanced cognitive capacity to learn, un-learn and re-learn. With micro-jobs and
micro-revenues displacing ‘tenure’, and ‘9-to-5ism’, twentieth century scripts about
how to educate for a future ‘career’ are looking decidedly dated. Careers, according
to many young people, are things that old people have! Self-management towards
an enterprising future is about travelling light, jettisoning the old information and
traditional ways of doing things that have weighed down workers in the past. It is
about knowing what to do when there are no blueprints or templates, and it is about
having sufficient cultural and epistemological agility to learn ‘on the run’ through
robust and flexible social networks.
It goes without saying that traditional schooling, with its egg-crate classrooms,
lockstep progression and standardised testing is sub-optimal as a springboard to this
sort of fast-moving future. While high levels of literacy and numeracy still matter,
these categories are themselves expanding. Consistency and conformity are less
useful now than curiosity and scepticism. The sort of young people who are thriving
in the Conceptual Age are those who exhibit a range of non-traditional attributes to
learning – risk-taking, self-criticality, a “seriously playful” (Kane, 2005) approach
to problem-solving, and the capacity to work alongside high-end digital tools in
value-adding ways. They are likely to be multi-lingual, ideas-oriented, fun-loving
and error-welcoming. They are practised at ‘editing’ their real and virtual worlds in
ethical and value-adding ways. And they have a capacity for design that enables
them, alone or as part of a team, to hold incompatible ideas together to imagine and
create innovative ideas, services and products. In other words, they are ‘creatives’
(Florida, 2012).

Going Digital

Most of the dramatic cultural shifts we have seen in recent times have been spawned
by the Internet. Jana, a hypothetical young adult born in 1994, the same year as the
Internet, has never known a pre-internet world. She grew up alongside Hotmail
10 E. McWilliam

(1996), Google (1998), Napster (1999), the iPod and the xBox (2001). She has had
access to the iPhone, Playstation3 and Tumblr since she was 13, and at 14 added
Facebook, Twitter and the iPad to her growing list of available digital tools and
technologies. Since 2010, Youtube has been Jana’s primary source of information.
She has never learned about world events from reading a newspaper or watching
free-to-air television. To Jana, the world looks, feels and sounds like Youtube.
Being connected via her social networks is as important to Jana as it is to her
peers and to all those who come after her. She now uses Snapchat to send her friends
a regular stream of quick pics that self-destruct in ten seconds or less, and she is one
of the billions of people chatting on Facebook, more indeed than the entire popula-
tion of the world a century ago. In the year 2012, she and her fellow global citizens
contributed to and engaged with 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day, most of
which were created in the previous 2 years. Whether she lives in Zambia or Sweden,
Jana can find out the current temperature in Ulaan Bator, or the closing price of BHP
stock, or the name of Barak Obama’s Secretary of State as quickly as the head
librarian at Bodleian Library in Oxford. She does not think it’s a miracle to search
100 billion pages in 15s – indeed, she is increasing frustrated by what she perceives
as a delay or slowness of access or delivery. Whether it’s hair-braiding or horse-­
breeding, algorithms or anklets, she finds whatever information she wants and finds
it precisely at the time she needs it.
Or does she? According to prediction analyst Nate Silver (2012), it is highly
likely that, in a complex and unpredictable world, Jana will struggle to differentiate
the information that is really useful to her from the overwhelming amount of use-
less, extraneous, impeding or misleading information that is proliferating globally
at a much greater rate. As Silver explains it, information growth is rapidly outpacing
our understanding of how to process it. We are less and less likely to distinguish
Signals – the very small amounts of useful information we really need, from Noise –
all the rest of the trivial, misleading and useless information that continuously bom-
bards us.
There are real dangers, Silver asserts, for Jana’s generation and all other genera-
tions if and when ‘learning’ is equated with accessing bits of information that are
most readily available on the internet. Consider, for example, the information that
appears on the first page or two of a Google or Yahoo search. The fact of data over-
load will mean that Jana needs to be highly selective and subjective in deciding what
information she pays attention to. Unfortunately, she is more likely to ‘cherry-pick’
the information that best aligns with her preconceived views of the world and those
of her friends. She will ignore the rest. In doing so, she will contribute to the grow-
ing trend to sectarianism that is an effect of information overload. She will find
political, religious and cultural allies in those who make the same choices. By
­implication, those who make different choices she may well consider alien, even
dangerous. If neither her family nor her school provide her with opportunities to
engage with a wider range of values and ideas that she finds on social media, she is
likely to struggle when it comes to her capacity to engage with the complex con-
cepts necessary to global citizenship.
1 Today’s Children, Tomorrow’s Creatives: Living, Learning and Earning… 11

Doubting the Data

Big Data, then, is by no means an unmitigated blessing when it comes to the future
of learning. Its affordances and opportunities come wrapped in barbed wire. Those
like Jana who have grown up with the Web as a constant in their lives – those that
Marc Prensky (2001) calls “digital natives” – have lived with a constant and unre-
lenting bombardment of marketing hype and misinformation each and every minute
of their on-line day. Every automated message that tells them ‘your call is important
to us’, every bit of spam promising massive lottery wins or inherited millions, every
packaged deal of ‘unbeatable’ offers, adds to their mistrust of all but perhaps the
messages that come from a handful of their closest peers.
It is a sorry condition of our times that Jana and those who follow her will need
to keep building their capacity to mistrust and dismiss most of what they read, see
and hear on the internet. With so much data being generated so fast and for so many
purposes, judicious decision-making about the credibility of data will be a key fac-
tor in whether and how the next generation can live optimally in their world. At least
80 % of the data being generated on the Internet is either misleading or unreliable,
according to Moshe Rappoport (2012), Executive Technology Briefer with the
Zurich-based IBM Research Laboratory. So the capacity to judge data veracity will
need constantly to be the subject of updating.
The disposition to mistrust can be a useful one, as all good scientists know, as
long as it can be harnessed as the sort of robust skepticism that underpins the pursuit
of both confirming and disconfirming data. Skepticism of this sort is a far cry from
cynicism. The world-weary ‘whatever’ shoulder shrug, satirized so often as typical
of young people’s responses to the constant pushes and pulls they experience in
their lives, may well be symptomatic of the latter. So those who promise to prepare
young people to meet the unparalleled challenges they will face in the future – and
most schools make just that promise in their glossy brochures and mission state-
ments – really have their work cut out to deliver on that promise.
For our schools are to be responsive to the challenges of the Conceptual Age, it
will take an epistemological shift in the design of our curricula, pedagogy and
assessment. The imperative to ‘ask better questions’ will become more focal than
‘giving correct answers’. With the design of ‘better questions’ re-positioned at the
center of the educational enterprise, educators can generate enhanced opportunities
for thinking in ‘design mode’, not just in ‘truth mode’ (See Scardamalia & Bereiter,
in press). Such a shift of focus will invite everyone – teachers and students – to ask
more compelling questions than can be answered by means of a Google or Wikipedia
search. ‘Should the Allies have bombed Hiroshima?’ has no correct answer but it is
a question that has haunted us for more than half a century. ‘How would you explain
plastics to Henry VIII?’ is a more playful query, once again having no ‘correct
answer’, but some responses will better – more thoughtful, more informed, more
elaborate – than others. Those who can develop useful criteria by which to differen-
tiate the quality of answers to such questions will be advantaged in their learning
over those still dependent on ‘cramming for the exam’.
12 E. McWilliam

Singular Times

While the digital revolution has made it possible to access both useful and useless
information at the touch of a keyboard, there are many more educational implica-
tions than this. As Rappoport (2012) explains, it is not just the issue of Veracity that
creates a problem for educators, but the Volume, Variety, and Velocity of on-line data
make it impossible for educators to create a knowledge base that will prepare young
people to live well now and into the future. Volume matters because the current rate
of data generation will continue to grow exponentially. Variety will matter, because,
of the two broad types of data we currently engage with, data ‘at rest’ and data ‘in
motion’, the latter is exploding as more smart objects are developed (eg, storage
spaces that make business decisions) and as software becomes more adept at deep
analytics. The evidence is now in that, for the first time, the Jeopardy game is done
better by a machine than a person – computers are starting to ‘get’ nuance. The
Velocity or speed at which data moves is also growing exponentially; it is predicted
to be 10,000 times faster than today if it is to meet the needs of entrepreneurial busi-
nesses in the next decade.
According to educational reformer and entrepreneur Lee Crockett (2013), there
is no doubt that, in just a few years, our technology will be billions of times more
powerful than it is today. Unbreakable, wearable devices are already being com-
bined with long-term permanent storage in the form of batteries that are virtually
transparent, allowing nano-generators not only to be sewn into clothing but inserted
into body organs. So we will soon see molecular robots that can be injected into the
body to kill cancer on a cell-by-cell basis, but we will also run the risk of other
‘intelligences’ being introduced into our biological make-up without our knowledge
or consent. Put simply, the blurring of the internet and reality – the Singularity – is
very close indeed.
All this creates unprecedented problems when it comes to the issue of the rele-
vance of education for life beyond school. It is likely, according to futurist Ray
Kurzweil (2005), that the imminent Singularity will see our planet’s intelligence
becoming increasingly non-biological as well as trillions of times more powerful
than today. In other words, the current capacities of computers are evolving in such
a way that computing intelligence is becoming more pervasive, merging with human
consciousness to change our very ontology as human beings. And they are doing so
at a time when global crises of one sort or another threaten the planet’s very ­survival.
As James Martin (2006) makes clear in his important book, The Meaning of the 21st
Century, this is the century of mega-problems all of which have resisted previous
push-or-pull solutions. A well-developed capacity for moral deliberation is thus cru-
cial in this century and it will not come about through more standardized testing.
Rather, it will require a conscious commitment to building the skills of systematic
inquiry and ethical reasoning at every educational level.
1 Today’s Children, Tomorrow’s Creatives: Living, Learning and Earning… 13

The ‘Too Hard’ Basket

As our global problems become more complex and intertwined, there are some who
argue that the shift in our shared culture is in quite the opposite direction. Philosopher
Michael Foley, for example, has drawn attention to what he sees as a disturbing
tendency of Western cultures in particular, namely the retreat from difficulty and
challenge. In The Age of Absurdity, Foley (2010) makes a strong case that we are
seeing a more widespread preference for ‘low challenge’ living at the very time the
need for higher order thinking about Big Data and its uses has never been greater.
He sees difficult thinking for deep understanding as repugnant to a fast moving,
pleasure-seeking, self-absorbed world because it denies entitlement, disenchants
potential, limits mobility and flexibility, delays gratification, and distracts from dis-
traction. Complex reasoning, on the other hand, demands responsibility, commit-
ment, attention and thought, qualities he sees as very much in the ‘too hard’ basket
of an increasingly self-absorbed social world.
Foley is not alone in expressing concerns about the trend in popular culture to
reject difficult thinking. A growing body of neurological and sociological research
is now focusing on the downside of living in the era of Big Data, noting in particular
the not-so-welcome effects of the Internet. Nicholas Carr (2010) writes in his book,
The Shallows, that the internet works as an ecology of disruptive and distracting (as
well as highly seductive) technologies for changing what counts as intellectual work
and, indeed, what is coming to count as thinking capacity. Carr sees the sort of deep
and sustained thinking that we have associated with intellectual achievement as
being problematically undermined by the Net’s invitation to “the permanent state of
distraction that defines the on-line life” (p. 112). His concern is that the “buzzing
mind” is an effect of the Net’s capacity to “seize our attention only to scatter it”
(p. 118). While Carr acknowledges the unique contribution of digital tools to an
expanding social universe, he is unequivocal about the dangers he sees in the emer-
gent character of a Net-based social and intellectual world. The threat, according to
Carr, is the Internet’s capacity to turn us into the human equivalent of lab rats, con-
stantly pressing levers to get the next tiny pellet of gratification with which to fill our
lives.
Of course, there are those who would dismiss both Carr and Foley as grumpy old
curmudgeons generating moral panic out of their own personal discomfort with the
digital age. Whether or not we agree with Foley’s thesis that the retreat from diffi-
culty is a problematic effect, at least in part, of society’s narcissistic obsession with
the self, or Carr’s thesis that thinking itself is being re-shaped by a digital environ-
ment of “cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking and superficial learning”
(p. 116), there is little doubt that the era of Big Data is replete with complexity and
becoming more so. Earning a living in a highly competitive global marketplace
demands engagement with more technology-enhanced processes, more complex
design problems, more speedy non-routine transactions, more scrutiny of individ-
ual, team and organizational performance, less certainty of tenure and less career
linearity, particularly in high-tech industries and those most exposed to frequent
14 E. McWilliam

market fluctuations. So too, civic participation in debates about global futures

demands higher levels of scientific and systems literacy. Any trend to ‘easy success’
in the present can only serve to exacerbate the challenges that will inevitably have
to be faced in a more uncertain and complex future.

W(h)ither Schooling?

Given the learning imperatives arising from Big Data, schools cannot provide young
people with the information they will need to live learn and earn well now and in the
future. What counts as useful, relevant or seminal knowledge has an increasingly
limited shelf-life. Yet despite this fact, the cultural logic of formal education is still
very much about loading young people up with yesterday’s facts and templates,
rather than helping them to be “clever wanderers” (Bauman, 2006) in a complex and
unpredictable world.
This does not mean that nothing from the past is worth knowing. We still rely on
our nineteenth century disciplinary categories to think with, and they continue to
offer us starting points for organizing information into fields, but they are insuffi-
cient, in terms of explanatory power, for engaging with a twenty-first century world
of Big Data, with its unprecedented challenges and possibilities. The disciplines
de-limit our children’s capacity for holding incompatible things together to make a
third creative space. The sort of “high concept, high touch” disposition that Daniel
Pink (2005) insists is so valuable to a creative future is best developed in trans-­
disciplinary learning environments where young people are invited to see the value
of marrying high functioning with aesthetic sensibility. They also learn that they do
not have to ‘cover’ all the associated skills and capacities if they avail themselves of
the team-building possibilities that exist for them to share with other who are differ-
ently skilled – those who can speak a different language, who can do complex algo-
rithms, who can provide the artistry or speak and write to an audience with greater
fluency. In the Conceptual Age, teaming does not only enhance community and
ethics but also commerce and enterprise. So pedagogy that mobilizes ‘the classroom
brain’ – where students and teacher work together to produce successful, improv-
able learning outcomes – is more valuable than pedagogy still predicated on singu-
lar, silent deskwork.
In the context of data explosion, it is self-evident that asking young people to
spend a great deal of their time memorizing bits of disciplinary data (for example,
those needed to perform well on standardized pencil and paper tests of static disci-
plinary knowledge), is a ludicrously dated activity. This does not mean that there
should be no curriculum content in the program offerings of schools and universi-
ties, but it does mean that the ‘coverage’ culture of the twentieth century class-
room – the idea that we can and should educate young people by asking them to
remember lots of discipline-bound ‘stuff’ – is a side issue when it comes to building
capacity to thrive in a very different world of knowledge production. Smart editor-
ship, by contrast, is a set of capacities that is built from long-term practice in dis-
1 Today’s Children, Tomorrow’s Creatives: Living, Learning and Earning… 15

cerning Signals from Noise, in being able to look at the first pages of a Google
search and ask questions about what is not there that we might have expected to see,
and why. Productivity is about a highly developed capacity to prune back from
excess, to grow ideas rather than proliferate them.
Our Conceptual Age demands that young people (and, it follows, their teachers)
aim further and further ahead of a faster moving target. Little wonder that there is
growing disquiet among commentators from both within and outside the educa-
tional community about a formal education system that seeks to plan the future by
relying almost exclusively on the lessons and habits of the past. According to soci-
ologist Zygmunt Bauman (2004), such cultural logic is deeply flawed because a
relevant learning culture must map directly onto what he calls the liquid-modern
social world for which young people learn – that is, the world that can no longer be
relied upon to maintain its predictable social shape. Bauman evokes the ‘rat-in-the-­
maze’ experiments that were the basis of traditional behavioral notions of learning
to ask what would happen if all parts of the maze were to melt, warp and move.
What if the partitions and the rewards were continuously shifting within the maze
instead of being in fixed and predictable positions, asks Bauman (2004), and if the
targets were such that they “tended to lose their attraction well before the rats could
reach them, while other similarly short-lived allurements diverted their attention
and drew away their desire?” (p. 21).
For Bauman, the warping, shifting and melting of the predictable structure and
rewards of the maze is a metaphor for what has happened to learning. The capacity
to learn and reproduce appropriate social behaviors is no longer the key to success
that it once was. Going to a ‘good’ school, getting ‘good’ grades, doing a traditional
degree in a ‘good’ university – all this is no longer a guarantee of the good life.
Instead of opening up possibilities, much formal education is actually unhelpful
because it assumes a fixed or predictable social world that no longer exits. For
instance, in many schools we still prioritize memorization of facts at the expense of
strategic agility when it comes to what and how we assess children’s learning. Yet
now that there are no predictable pathways to guaranteed social rewards, we cannot
sustain the notion that our children can and should learn as former generations did.
Schooling systems that put standardized testing at the center of educational enter-
prise replicate the educational world in which pre-millennial generations came to
the classroom rather than the present world.
This is a scenario familiar to those who have read Peddiwell’s 1939 classic satiri-
cal text, ‘Sabre-Tooth Curriculum’,1 in which what is taught in schools has little or
no bearing on a world utterly transformed beyond the classroom walls. To continue
the sort of literacy practices and knowledge platforms which made for success
decades before is to short-change our k-12 cohorts at every level. On the other hand,
those teachers who are active learners themselves model what it means to be sys-
tematically curious. They actively support student learning by helping them steer a
path as knowledgeable users of information. In an ecology of distraction and inter-
ruption, effective teachers know that controlling and commanding is as unhelpful as

1
See http://sabertooth-curriculum.wikispaces.com/
16 E. McWilliam

setting students adrift in a sea of information, most of which will be of dubious

value. The shift, then, is from Sage-on-the-Stage and Guide-on-the-Side to
Meddler-in-the-Middle.2
A teacher who ‘meddles-in-the-middle’ is active and engaged. They seek to
introduce their students into the pleasure of the rigor of complex thinking. With high
expectations about the capacity of all of their students, they take responsibility for
inducting them into communities of creative practice, regardless of their ethnic or
social background, or their past performances on standardized tests. Meddlers-in-­
the middle do not rush in to save students from the struggle that higher order think-
ing involves, but they do see ‘giving access to complexity’ as fundamental to their
planning. Moreover, they do not presume that the highest achievers in the class are
the best learners. Indeed, they anticipate that many of the students who are on the
margins of the school culture may have more to offer in terms of creative effort.
Students of teachers who are Meddlers-in-the-middle become practiced in staying
in the grey of ‘not knowing’ and ‘not yet’. They do not rely on or expect constant
praise: they learn as much from the instructive complications of error-making and
uncertainty as they do from finding solutions and getting rewards.

What Price Relevance?

As the Conceptual Age continues to make unprecedented demands on what and how
students and teachers learn, schools are becoming more important and less relevant
than ever. Research tells us that formal education is still important because of the
weight of evidence that a more highly educated population means a better lifestyle,
better health, a bigger pay packet and a more productive economy. It makes for
stronger workforce participation and a better chance of re-entering the workforce
after redundancy.3 We also know that that young people still need high levels of
traditional literacy and numeracy as a platform from which to build high level func-
tioning in a ‘super-complex’ economic and social order. Yet much of the daily activ-
ity of schools is of dubious relevance when it comes to such a fast-paced and
uncertain world.
As social scientist Mark Warschauer (2007) points out, we live in paradoxical
times in relation to literacy. Whether we call this the Digital Age, or the Late Age of
Print or the Post-Typographic Society, information literacy still depends to a large
extent on print literacy. Indeed, Warschaeur insists that competence in traditional
reading and writing is often a springboard to success in the world of new literacies.
In doing so, he (2007) challenges “romantic notions of the empowering potential of

2
See ‘The Creative Workforce’ (McWilliam, 2008) for a chapter on this shift and examples of
working as a Meddler in the Middle.
3
See for example, the World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 4122 (February, 2007) that
amasses a large amount of empirical evidence to show that a strong relationship exists worldwide
between educational quality, economic growth and social stability.
1 Today’s Children, Tomorrow’s Creatives: Living, Learning and Earning… 17

digital tools and new media in and of themselves” (p. 44). It is not enough,
Warschaeur argues, to be able to create multi-media presentations with the latest
digital tools, or to spend increasing amounts of time in front of a computer screen.
While the capacities associated with ‘going digital’ are useful and important, they
are insufficient when it comes to the skills needed to detect the valuable Signals
amongst the burgeoning Noise. They can even be counter-productive if they are
relied on to take the place of higher order thinking. The urgent imperative for
schools and universities is to build the capacity to discern what is really worth
knowing amongst all the misleading or poor quality information being generated
from nano-second to nano-second. It also implies the need to ‘unlearn’, not just to
learn. Templates that are useful one day become obsolete the next.
‘Unlearning’ is harder than learning. It means re-examining those things that
have gone without saying as ‘true’ or relevant or important. Once we have been
rewarded for particular skills, capacities or dispositions, it is counter-intuitive to
jettison them and unsettling to see them displaced by a new set of priorities. For
example, Lawrence Lessig’s (2008) insistence that text, image and sound are equally
crucial to “remix technologies” and thus ought to have parity of esteem in the evalu-
ation of student learning, is a bridge too far for those teachers for whom the written
word, correctly delivered, is the ‘roast’, and sound and image the ‘garnish’. Likewise
Lessig’s view that literacy in and for this century is better understood as the knowl-
edge and manipulation of multi-media technologies. This is a far cry from literacy
as correct spelling and punctuation!
By implication, then, the point of learning in the era of Big Data is neither ‘cov-
erage’ (how many spelling) nor mastery (how hard was the spelling). Both become
meaningless and unachievable fantasies when information growth outstrips human
capacity to discern the helpful from the hollow. What counts more than ever is to use
the fullest panoply of human and technological resources at hand to put curiosity to
work in a systematic way. And this means, in turn, paying attention to disconfirming
evidence – to ideas that run counter to familiar concepts, time-honoured templates
and personal intuition.
To illustrate, let us look at a website that is available to all interested in unusual
creatures of land and sea. The website http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/ is dedicated
to helping save the endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus from extinction.
There is nothing about its appearance or the formatting of its contents that betrays
its status as a Big Data hoax, beyond its assertion of the existence of such a creature
as a tree-dwelling octopus. It has all the hallmarks of a bona fide site for investigat-
ing animals – with data provided about ‘sightings’, and scientific data provided
about its ‘brain to body ratio’, its capacity to adapt to the arboreal world, and so on.
Quite simply, the information on the website would be hard to distinguish as bogus,
given the apparent authenticity of the presentation. It looks like a trustworthy
account from beginning to end. As education technology consultant Brian Mull
points out, many young people (and older ones too) would ‘consume’ the contents
of this and other dubious websites without any sense that they were being conned.
It is only when ‘the truth’ is brought in from elsewhere that the uncritical web-­
reader is undeceived. For this reason, Mull (2013) argues, building the sort of skep-
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
 35^ HISTORY OF PENISTONE. under the " Parliament
Oak," a magnificnt remnant of the forest, situated by the side of the
Ollerton and Mansfield high road, King John held a Parliament on an
occasion when despatches reached him from London when he was
engaged in hunting. Whether any of our royalty when there,
however, got so far as Penistone in following the chase we have no
record to show, but what then was called Sherwood Forest would
extend beyond Penistone. There is a tradition alluded to by Johnson,
the antiquary, that Henry VIII. was entertained at Bretton Hall, the
seat of Sir Thomas Wentworth, in one of his northern progresses
made in 1540, and Godfrey Bosville, of Gunthwaite, who married
one of the Wentworth family says that a bed, having the arms of
Wentworth and Dronsfield carved thereon, was made for his
reception. He might then visit the Wortleys, and enjoy the sports of
the field in Wharncliffe chase. Sir Thomas Wortley, of Wortley, having
been a knight of his body, as well of those of three of his
predecessors. When King Henry the Eighth (Anno 1548) made his
progress to York, Doctor Tonstall, Bishop of Durham, then attending
on him, showed the King a valley (being then some few miles north
of Doncaster), which the Bishop avowed to be the richest that ever
he found in all his travels through Europe. For within ten miles of
Hasselwood, the seat of the Vavasors, there were — 165 Manor
houses, of lords, knights, and gentlemen of the best quality. 275
severall woods, whereof some of them contain five hundred acres.
32 parks and two chases of dear. 120 rivers and brooks, whereof five
be navigable, well stored with salmon and other fish. 76 water mills
for the grinding of corn on the aforesaid rivers. 25 cole-mines, which
yield abundance of fuell for the whole country-. 3 forges for the
making of iron and stone enough for the same. And within the same
limits as much sport and pleasure for hunting, hawking, fishing, and
fowling as in any place of England besides. — Fitllers Worthies. The
Virgin Queen, according to the authority of Rowland White, in a
letter to Sir Robert Sidney, was " well and exceedingly disposed to
hunting ; for every second day," says the writer, *' her Majesty is on
horseback and continues the sport long." At the date of the above
(Sept. 12th, 1600) Elizabeth was in her seventy-seventh year. James
I. of England, who, according to Wellwood, divided his time between
his standish bottle and hunting, is famed in sporting annals for a
letter addressed to his son in which, among other excellent advice
respecting " bodilie exercises and games," he says, " I cannot omit
heere the hunting — namelie with running houndes, which is the
most honorable and noblest sort thereof ; but because I would not
be thought a partiall praiser of this sport I remit you to Xenophon,
an olde and famous writer who had no minde of flattering you or me
in this purpose, and who also settleth down a faire pattern for the
education of a young king under the supposed name of Cyrus."
James I. was an enthusiastic sportsman. Although in his various
kennels he had little short of two hundred couple of hounds, and the
cost of their maintenance was a serious draught on his privy purse,
yet he never seemed satisfied that he had enough so long as he
heard of any good hound in the possession of a subject. Among the
State Papers is an amusing letter relative to a piece of ill-luck that
befell a favourite dog. "The king is at Tibbalds, and the queen gone
or going to him. At this last meeting being at Tibbalds, which was
about a fortnight since, the. queen, shooting at a deer with her
 PENISTONE HARRIERS. 357 crossbow, mistook her mark
and killed Jewell, the king's most special and principal hound, at
which he stormed exceedingly awhile, swearing many and great
oaths. None would undertake to break unto him the news, so they
were fain to send Archie the fool on the errand. But after he knew
who did it he was soon pacified, and with much kindness wished her
not to be troubled with it, for he should never be the worse, and the
next day sent her a jewell worth £2,000 ' as a legacy for his dead
dog.' Love and kindness increase daily between them, and it is
thought they never were on better terms." Referring to the extensive
level of Hatfield Chase, which is said to have contained within its
limits 180,000 acres, of which nearly one half was formerly a great
part of the year under water. De la Prynne has left us a picturesque
description of a day's hunting on these levels when Henry, Prince of
Wales, visited Yorkshire in i6og. He was entertained at Streetthorpe,
on the side of the chase towards Doncaster, the residence of Sir
Robert Swift. " After one day spent in a plain stag hunt, the Chief
Regarder of Thorne and — Partington, Esq., having promised to let
the Prince see such sport as he never saw in his life, the Prince and
his retinue went with them ; and being come to Tordworth, where
Mr. Partington lived, they all embarked themselves in almost one
hundred boats, that were provided there ready, and having frighted
some five hundred deer out of the woods, grounds, and closes
adjoining (which had been driven there in the night before), they all,
as they were commonly wont, took to the water, and this little royal
navy pursuing them, they soon drove them into that lower part of
the levels called Thorne Meer, and there being up to their very necks
in water, their horned heads raised seemed to represent a little
wood, and here being encompassed about with the little fleet, some
ventured amongst them, and feeling such and such that were
fattest, they either immediately cut their throats and threw them
into the boats, or else, tying a strong rope to their heads, drew them
to land, and killed them. Having thus taken several, they returned in
triumph with their booty to land, and the Prince that day dined with
— Partington, Esq., and was very merry and well pleased with his
day's work." In those days stood "... open wide the baron s hall To
vassal, tenant, serf, and all ; Power laid his rod of rule aside, x\nd
Ceremony doffed his pride. The heir, with roses in his shoes, That
night might village partner choose ; The lord, underogating, share
The vulgar game of ' post and pair.' " Scott. Haw^king would also
appear to have been a sport of great distinction with our ancestors,
and hawks and hounds were frequently bequeathed by will. Probably
in this way the Penistone hounds were passed down, and wills,
along with court rolls and old leases be the documentary evidence
referred to as showing the early existence of the pack. Whether the
Penistone hounds were first kept by Royal command to prevent the
ravages of wild animals, or by one of the feudal lords, for the
purpose of the chase, will, it is presumed, never be known.
Penistone would then be situate in the midst of that primeval forest,
moorland, and waste which once covered the greater part of the
northern counties, and of which Wharncliffe, in the great valley of
the Don, is the largest remains ing portion. There can be no doubt
that in the early days of the pack they would hunt all the beasts of
the chase above mentioned, as well as wolves, as
 358 HISTORY OF PENISTONE, we read in Hunter that the
woods in this district were then tenanted by wild animals, some of
which are now unknown to us. The wild cat is spoken of as a
formidable animal in the traditions of these regions. The wolf found
recesses in these woods, even to a late period. Wolf-pits between
Dodworth and Silkstone are mentioned in a charter of the reign of
Henry I. The wolf-pit near Slade-Hooton appears in a charter about
a century later. And in the reign of Edward I. we hnd Wolf-pit Cliff
near Aughton, and the " luporem fovea," not a proper name, at
WoUey. These must have been all places where there were pit-falls
for taking so dangerous and destructive an animal. Wooldale
(Holmlirth), which in the Doomsday Survey is called " Vluedal," is
also stated to be a corruption of Wolfdale. There is also a hill near
Kwden called Wolf's Hill. As a matter of historical curiosity, and as
giving some idea from which can be gathered the state of the
country about that time, is subjoined the population of the principal
towns in England in the year 1377, when an enumeration was taken
on account of a poll tax : — London, 35,000 ; York, 11,000; Bristol,
9,000; Plymouth, 7,000; Coventry, 7,000; Norwich, 6,000; Lincoln,
5,000 ; Sarum-W^iltshire, 5,000 ; Gloucester, Leicester, Shrewsbury,
each somewhat more than 3,000; Lynn, 5,000; Colchester, -^1,500;
Canterbuiy, 4,000 ; Beverley, 4,000 ; Newcastle-on- Tyne, 4,000 ;
Oxford, 4,500 ; BurySuffolk, 3,500. In that remote age the total
population of England was 2,300,000, but the proportion of town
population was far smaller than at present, since the number of
towns containing above 3,000 inhabitants was only 18. It is matter
of history likewise, that the brown bear was plentiful here in the time
of the Romans, and was conveyed in considerable numbers to Rome
to make sport in the arena. In Wales they were common beasts of
the chase, and in the history of the Gordons it is stated that one of
that clan, so late as io57> was directed by his sovereign to carry
three bears' heads on his banner as a reward for his valour in killing
a fierce bear in Scotland. In the Penitential of Archbishop Egbert,
said to have been compiled about A.D. 750, bears are mentioned as
inhabiting the English forests, and the city of Norwich is said to have
been required to furnish a bear annually to Edward the Confessor,
together with six dogs, no doubt for baiting him. The arms of
Bosville, of Gunthwaite, are argent live fusils in fess gules, in chief
three bears' heads sable. The arms of Wilson, of Broomhead, sable a
wolf rampant in chief three etoils or crest, on a wreath a demi-wolf
rampant. Can these arms have been granted in consideration of any
deeds done by the original grantees in destroying the above
mentioned animals? Mr. Whitaker, when speaking of armorial
bearings, remarks that the savages of America do at this day what
the roving savages of Rome and those of the North did formerly.
These took for their distinctive mark the eagle, the bear, the dog,
and the stork. Even in our own country, says he, we find armorial
bearings in use among us before the conquest. To look back into
Saxon times, we find that in Athelstan's reign wolves abounded in
Yorkshire, that a retreat was built at Flixton near Hunmanby in that
county, " to defend passengers from the wolves that they should not
be devoured by them." A certain locality in that vicinity is still
distinguished by the name of " Wolf land," and such ravages did
these animals make during winter, particularly in January when the
cold was severest, that the Saxons distinguished that month by the
name of the " woU month." They were, as appears by Hollingshed,
very noxious to the flocks in Scotland in 1577, nor were they entirely
extirpated till about 1680, when the last wolf in that country
 PENISTONE HARRIERS. 359 fell by the hand of the famous
Sir Ewen Cameron, and singular to say, the skin of this venerable
quadruped may yet be in existence. In a catalogue of Mr. Donovan's
sale of the London Museum in April, 1818, there occurs the following
item: *' Lot 832, Wolf, a noble animal in a large glass case. The last
wolf killed in Scotland by Sir E. Cameron." It would be interesting to
know what became of this lot. One account says it has been a
received opinion that the other parts of these kingdoms were in
early times delivered from the pest by the care of King Edgar. In
England he attempted to effect it by commuting the punishments of
certain crimes into the acceptance of a certain number of wolves'
tongues from each criminal ; and in Wales by converting the tax of
gold and silver into an annual tax of three hundred wolves' heads.
But notwithstanding these endeavours and the assertion of some
authors, his scheme proved abortive. We find that some centuries
after the reign of that Saxon monarch these animals had increased
to such a degree as to become again the object of royal attention ;
accordingly, Edward I. issued his royal mandate to Peter Corbett to
superintend and assist in the destruction of them in the several
counties of Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, Salop, and Stafford ;
and in the adjacent county of Derby certain persons at Wormhill held
their lands by the duty of hunting and taking the wolves that
infested the country, whence they were styled wolf-hunt. Ireland
was infested by wolves for many centuries after their extermination
in England. We have accounts of some being found there as late as
the year 1 7 10, the last presentment for killing of wolves being
made in the county of Cork about that time. Fynes Morrison, in his
Itinerary, mentions the depredations committed on cattle in Ireland
by the wolves. In the winter nights they sometimes entered the
villages and the suburbs of the cities. This continued until the
beginning of the eighteenth century. It is said that the last wolf seen
in Ulster was shot by Arthur Upton, of Aughnabreack, on the Wolf
hill, near Belfast, and the last of these animals seen in Ireland was
killed in 17 10, in Kerry, on the Crony river, near Glenarm. Mr.
Topham, in his notes to Somerville's Chase, says that, so far as
respects England, it was in the wolds of Yorkshire where a price was
last set upon a wolf's head. Referring to their destruction in
Scotland, we read that " on the south side of Beann Nevis, a large
pine forest, which extended from the western braes of Lochbar to
the black water and the mosses of Ranach, was burned to expel the
wolves, also that in the neighbourhood of Loch Sloi a tract of woods
nearly twenty miles in extent was consumed for the same purpose."
A curious notice of the existence of wolves and foxes in Scotland is
afforded in Bellenden's translation of Boetius — " The wolHis are
right noisome to tame bestial in all parts of Scotland except one part
thereof, named Glenmorris, in which the tame bestial gets little
damage of wild bestial, especially of tods (foxes), for each house
nurses a young tod certain days, and mengis (mixes) the flesh
thereof after it be clean with such meat as they give to their fowls or
other small beasts, and so many as eat of this meat are preserved
two months after from any damage of tods, for tods will eat no flesh
that gusts of their own kind." Another account says a great part of
the Northern district, which was then less peopled than the rest of
England, was tenanted by numerous herds of deer, among which it
has been conjectured that the moose existed, together with the
wolf, the wild boar, and the wild bull. Some descendants of the latter
are still preserved in their wild state at Chillingham Castle and a few
other ancient
 HISTORY OF PENISTONE. mansions in tlic north ; they are
invariably of a cream colour, their muzzle and tips of the horns black,
and the whole inside of the ear, with a portion of the upper part, of
a pale red, but it is somewhat singular that those at Gisburne Park,
Yorkshire, are hornless. They are noticed by Leland, in the reign of
Henry Vlll., and even so late as that of Queen Elizabeth swine ran
wild over the Fells of Lancashire and Cumberland and in the Weald
of Kent. In further support of the statement that the race of w^olvcs
was not destroyed in England in the reign of Edgar is the fact that
their existence in that of Stephen has been proved by the discovery
of the record of a grant by Conan, Duke of Britany, to the monks of
the Abbey of Fors, in Wensley Dale, "of pasturage and grass in the
adjoining forest," but forbidding them to use any mastiffs to drive
away the wolves. The precise period the w^ild boar became extinct
in our island cannot be determined. It is evident, however, that as
the population increased, and the vast woods, which spread over
many parts of the country, were cut down and the land cleared, that
the range of the boar would become more and more limited, and its
numbers decreased, till at length its extirpation would be complete.
Banished, however, as the wild boar is from among our native
Mammalia, " its name is immortalised," as Mr. l^ell observes, " by
having given origin to the appellation of many places in different
parts of the country, and by its introduction into the armorial
bearings of many distinguished families of every division of the
kingdom." Our forefathers in the middle ages deemed the wild boar
one of the noble " beasts of venery," and kept a powerful breed of
hounds for the chase ; the weajDons used by the hunters were
spears and a sort of short sw^ord, or couteau de chasse. The spears
were used when the boar was brought to bay, and the attack gave
abundant opportunities to the hunters of showing their skill and
courage. The loud blast of the horn mingled with the shouts of men,
and the baying of the hounds proclaimed the vigorous home thrust
that struck the savage lifeless to the ground. When roused by the
hunter and his dogs, the old boar retreats sullenly and slowly,
gnashing his teeth, foaming with anger, and often stopping to
receive his pursuers, on whom he rushes with sudden impetuosity,
striking with his tusks, goring dogs and men, and scattering terror
around. When the boar turns upon a pack, the foremost dogs are
sure to suffer, and several will fall by as many strokes. An instance is
on record in which a boar turned suddenly upon a pack of 50 dogs
which pursued him, and instantly despatched six or seven of them,
wounding all the rest with the exception of ten. Is it not almost
surprising, a writer says, considering the passion for the chase,
which seems to be part and parcel of our English temperament, that
this animal is not re-established in some of its old haunts, the parks
and forests of nobility. The last wild boar in England is now generally
admitted — and among others by Mr, Harting in his Extinct British
Animals — to have been killed at Over-Staveley, in Westmoreland, by
one of the Gilpins, of Kentmere Hall, then Lord of the Manor. A
picture of the exploit is to be seen in the magnificent room over the
vaulted hall, built by the Gilpins, at Scaleby Castle, near Carlisle. In
the Wilson MSS. is the following record of a tradition " Yt two armys
met at Broomhead Moor, one from ye South, the other from ye
North ; one of ye Generals had his fortune told by a Soothsayer yt
he slid never be conquered " till he met with a white boar, who
thought that was next to an impossibility, and looked on it that he
shd not be slain in battle. It happened contrary to his expectation yt
ye genl who came agt him had ye efhgie of a white boar in
 PENISTONE HARRIERS. his Standard, and a battle being
fought he was buid undr ye large heap of stones on Broomhead
Moor near ye Barr Dike called the Apron full of Stones." Watson, the
historian, of Halifax, gives a fuller though evidently only conjectural
account. As regards York, one of the traditions is that it was founded
by the Britons, who gave it the name of Caer-Epoc or the city of wild
boars. As conhrmation of this it is added that the Forest of Galtres
(Gautes wild boars) came up very nearly to the city gates. On
Christmas Day, a cold baron of beef, woodcock pie, and a boar's
head, always hlled the late Queen's sideboard. The boars, by the
way, it is said, did not come from Germany as is usually supposed,
for Her Majesty had a preserve of wild boars at Windsctr which was
established by George IV. who stocked it with creatures from the
Royal Forests near Hanover. In 1901 the King presented some wild
boars from the herd in Windsor Park to Mr. Assheton Smith, of
Bangor, North Wales. The custom, we ^ire informed, observed at
Queen's College, Oxford, of having on Christmas- Day, at the hrst
course at dinner a fair and large "boar's head, served upon a silver
platter, with minstralsye," was in commemoration of an act of valour
performed by a student of the college who, while walking in the
neighbouring forest of Shotover, and reading Aristotle, was suddenly
attacked by a wild boar. The furious beast came open-mouthed upon
the youth, who, however, very courageously, and with a happy
presence of mind, is said to have " rammed in the volume," and
cried grcecum est, fairly choking the savage with the sage. Mr.
Ritson, in his observations on Warton's History of English Poetry,
gives the following from a MS. : — " Ancient boar's head ca rol, In
die natuitat, Nowell, nowell, nowell, nowell, Tydyng' gode y thyngke
to telle. The borys hede that \vc bryng here Retokenetli a p'nce with
owte pere, Ys born this day to bye v' dere. Nowell, &c. A bore )'s a
souerayn beste. And acceptab(l)e in eu'y feste, So mote thys lorde
be to moste and leste. Nowell, &c. This bory's hcdc wc bryng with
song, In worchyp of liym that thus sprang Of a virgine to redresse all
wrong. Nowell, &c." Though a similar remark has been made with
respect to wild boars, referring to our wild cattle, wdiich are now
confined to a few herds in different parts of the country, and the
most notable of which is the one at Chillingham Park, how is it that
some of the great forest owners of Scotland, in which these animals
were once indigenous, or other parts of the kingdom do not keep
them ? If they obtained bulls from one herd and cows from others,
not only would a cross be obtained, but a breed of animals
preserved an ornament in any nobleman's demesne. Might they not
likewise be worth sending to, and thrive in some of, our colonies, as
also the American bison, which is fast being threatened with
extermination ? The late Lord Shaftesbury, of a visit to Lord and
Lady Tankerville at Chillingham Castle, in September, 1839, says in
reference to the wild cattle :
 362 HISTORY OF PENISTONE. " Had already seen them
through a telescope lying in a mass on the hill side ; beautiful and
interesting creatures. I have no doubt that they are the pure
descendants of the aborignal cattle of the island driven by degrees,
like the ancient Britons by their invaders, to the remote and wild
fastnesses of Northumberland. . . . We came upon them in full view;
they rose immediately and retreated in order, the bulls closing the
rear. The sight was worth a journey of two hundred miles ; theie is
nothing like it in England — nothing even in Europe." There are also
small herds at Chartley Castle and Cadzow Park. Were the ancestors
of the Chillingham wild cattle the "mony wilde nowt " which Boethius
declared frequented Scotland in his time ? In Cadzow Park, says
William Beattie, M.D., in his Scotland Illustrated, is preserved " a
herd of the ancient breed of Scotch bisons — white as the oxen of
Clitumnus, and retaining in spite of the corrupting effects of
luxurious pasture traces of their original herceness and love of
freedom." " In this wood of Caledon " says Beliinden in his
translation of Boece " wes sum tym quhit bulls, with crisp and
curland maine, like feirs bonis," &c. Lord Ossulston, the son of Earl
Tankerville, the owner of Chillingham, when out on a sporting
expedition with some of his friends, was once assailed by one of
these animals with such furious rage that, though well mounted, he
would probably — but for his own presence of mind and the
assistance rendered by a gentleman of his party and the attendants
— have fallen a victim to its fury. In reference to the Chartley
(Staffordshire) herd of wild cattle, I read their food consists of the
veiy coarsest grasses, and that some years ago a portion of the park
was drained so as to produce a better herbage, but it was soon
found that the richer food did not suit the cattle so well, and the
land was allowed to revert to its marshy nature. According to the
Gentleman s Magazine, Ireland formerly possessed a remarkable
breed of wild cattle. These were all white except their ears, which
were of reddish brown. In 1203 we find the wife of William de
Braosa sending from there to an English Queen a present of some of
these cows and one bull. Hence it is likely from this herd descended
the stock of wild cattle still seen or recently existing in several
noblemen's parks in England. With reference to wolves in this
kingdom, we cannot omit naming the following affecting incident,
which, tradition says, gave Beddgelert, in North Wales, its name : —
Llewellyn the Great, with his family, had a residence here during the
hunting season. One day, whilst engaged in the chase, the Prince
was surprised by the absence of his favourite hound Gelert, which
he had received as a present from his father-in-law. King John, in
the year 1205. On returning, he was met by his dog, hastening to
him with more than ordinary manifestations of pleasure. Observing,
however, that the animal's jaws were besmeared with blood, he
became alarmed and, rushing to the house, he then found his
infant's cradle overturned, and the ground about it bloody. Rashly
concluding that the hound had killed his child, he drew his sword
and slew the poor animal while in the act of caressing his master.
Soon afterwards, on removing the cradle, he found beneath it his
child, alive, unhurt, and sleeping by the side of a dead wolf. The
truth was at once apparent. During the absence of the family a wolf
had entered the house, and had been destroyed by the faithful dog
in time to prevent its doing injury to the sleeping infant. The Prince,
deeply affected by the incident, carefully buried his favourite, thus
slain by his own hand, and built a tomb over his grave. Hence the
place is still called Bedd-Gelert, or the grave of Gelert.
 PENISTONE HARRIERS. 3^3 GELERT. The spearman heard
the bugle sound, And cheerily sniil'd the morn ; And many a brach
and many a hound Attend Llewellyn's horn. And still he blew a
louder blast, And gave a louder cheer ; '■ Come, Gelert, why art
thou the last Llewellyn's horn to hear?" " Oh, where does faithful
Gelert rcjam. The flower of all his race ! So true, so bra\-e, a lamb at
home, A lion in the chase." That day Llewellyn little loved The chase
of hart or hare. And scant and small the booty prov'd, For Cielert
was not there, Unpleas'd Llewellyn homeward hied, When near the
portal seat His truant Gelert he espied Bounding his lord to greet.
But wlien he gain'd the castle door Aghast the chieftain stood ; The
hound was smear'd with gouts of gore, His lips and fangs ran blood !
Llewellyn gaz'd with wild surprise, Unus'd such looks to meet ; His
favourite check'd his joyful guise. And crouch'd and lick'd his feet.
Onward in haste Llewellyn pass'd (And on went Gelert too), And still
where'er his eyes were cast Fresh blood-gouts shock'd his view.
O'erturned his infant's bed he found, The blood-stain'd cover rent,
And all around the walls and ground With recent blood besprent. He
call'd his child — no voice replied ; He search'd — with terror wild ;
Blood ! blood ! he found on every side, But nowhere found the child.
" Monster, by thee my child's devour'd," The frantic father cried ;
And to the hilt his vengeful sword He plung'd in Gelert's side. His
suppliant, as to earth he fell, No pity could impart ; But still his
Gelert's dying yell Passed heavy o'er his heart. Aroused by Gelert's
dying yell Some slumb'rer waken'd nigh ; What words the parent's
joy can tell, To hear his infant cry ! Conceal'd beneath a mangled
heap His hurried search had miss'd, All glowing from his rosy sleep
His cherub boy he kissed.
 3^4 HISTORY OF PENISTONE. Nor scratch had he, nor
harm nor dread, But the same couch beneath Lay a great wolf all
torn and dead — Tremendous still in death. Ah ! what was then
Llewellyn's pain, For now the truth ^\as clear ; The gallant hound
the wolf had slain To sa\e Llewellyn's heir. ^'ain, vain, \\ as all
Llewellyn's woe — " Best of thy kind, adieu ! The frantic deed which
laid thee low This heart shall ever rue." And now a gallant tomb they
raise. With costly sculpture deck'd. And marbles, storied with his
praibe, Poor Gelert's bones protect. Or forester, unmov'd ; Here oft
the tear-besprinkled grass Here never could the spearman pass,
Llewellyn's sorrow prov'd. And here he hung his horn and spear.
And, oft as ev'ning fell, Li fancy's piercing sounds would hear Poor
Gelert's dying yell ! Hon. ]]\ Spencer. There is a tradition^il story
that a lady of the Lucy family in an evening walk near the castle of
Egremont, Cumberland, was devoured by a wolf. A similar story is
told of the hill of Wotobank, a romantic acclivity in the Manor of
Beckermont, in this neighbourhood. The tale relates that " a lord of
Beckermont, with his lady and servants, was one time hunting the
wolf ; during the chase the lady was missing, and after a long and
painful search her body was found lying on this hill or bank, mangled
by a wolf, which was in the very act of ravenously tearing it to
pieces. The sorrow of the husband in the hrst transports of his grief
was expressed by the words ' Wo to this bank ' whence the hill
obtained the name of Wotobank." Tlie Irish elk mentioned must have
been a noble animal. Only fossil remains of it have been found, and
those most frequently in Ireland ; and, in a few mstances, in
England and the Isle of Man. Ireland was, perhaps, the last
stronghold of the species, which appear once to have thronged that
island. A few entire skeletons have been found. Of one in the
museum of the Royal Dublin Society, Mr. Hart drew up a memoir. "
This magnificent skeleton," he observes, " is perfect in every single
bone of the framework which contributes to form a part of its
general outline. The spine, the chest, the pelvis, and the extremities
are all complete in this respect ; and when surmounted by the head
and beautifully expanded antlers, which extend out to a distance of
nearly six feet on either side, forms a splendid display of the reliques
of the former grandeur of the animal kingdom, and carries back the
imagination to a period when whole herds of this noble animal
wandered at large over the face of the country." The following are a
few points of its admeasurement : — Ft. In. Length of the head ...
Breadth between the orbits ... Distance between the tops of the
horns by the skull Ditto in a straight line across Length of each horn
9259
 PENISTONE HARRIERS. 365 Ft. In. Greatest breadth of
palm ... ... ... ... 29 Circumference of the beam at the root of the
brow-antler i o| Length of the spine ... ... ... ... ... 10 10 Height to
the top of the back ... ... ... 6.6 Height to the highest point of the
top of the horn ... 10 4 Of its habits we can only form a conjecture.
The size and lateral direction of its spreading antlers must have
prevented its inhabiting the dense forest — it must have dwelt on
the heath clad hills ; there, armed with the most powerful weapons
of self-defence, it ranged secure from the assault of any single
aggressor, capable of dashing down the wolf or hyaena with a blow.
A pair of horns figured in the Illustrated London News for December
igth, 1846, are of the following measurements : — Ft. In. Distance
between the extreme tips measured from the skull 14 6 Ditto in a
straight line across ... ... ... 12 10 Length of each horn ... ... ... ... 71
The uris, which existed in the Hercynian Forest, is thus described by
Caesar : " The uri are little inferior to elephants in size, but are bulls
in their native colour and figure ; great is their strength and great
their swiftness, nor do they spare man or beast when they have
caught sight of them." Would this be the same animal that anciently
roamed in our island? There are some drawings of the auroch or
European bison in the Illustrated London News for October nth,
1845, and October 16th, 1847. The species is now limited to some of
the Lithuanian forests, where it is carefully preserved by command
of the Emperor of Russia, no specimen being allowed to be shot
without his Majesty's special permission. The finest deer in the
kingdom were until recently, when they ceased to be kept there, to
be found in Tankersley Park, not far from Penistone ; and, singular to
relate, when removed, their progeny, it is said, decreased in size,
which would make it appear that something in the soil of Tankersley
congenial to their growth was wanting in other places ; might not it
be the ironstone which is common there ? The size of the deer in
this park has been remarked before, as in Hunter we read that De
Foe, whose Tour through England was first published in 1727, says, "
That the largest red deer in Europe were in this park, and speaks
particularly of one which stood higher than his horse, which was
none of the least." That the wild cat was formerly very abundant in
Britain, and was one of the beasts of the chase, we learn from King
Richard III.'s charter to the Abbot of Peterborough, giving him
permission to hunt the hare, fox, and wild cat. The village of
Barmborough, near Doncaster, is remarkable for a tradition relative
to a singular and fatal contest between a man and a wild cat. The
inhabitants say that the fight began in an adjacent wood, and that it
was continued from thence into the porch of the church, where it
ended fatally to both the combatants, as each there expired of the
wounds received in the conflict. A rude representation in the church
commemorates the event, and, as in similar traditions, the
accidentally natural red tinge of some of the stones has been
construed into bloody stains, which all the properties of soap and
water have not been able to efface : — " And still the tesselated
floor Shews traces of the purple gore, Of both the baron and his foe
— At least tradition says 'tis so ;
 366 HISTORY OF PENISTONE. And on his marble tomb
displayed, Full length in efligy is laid ; While at his feet, as large as
life, The cat which caused the mortal strife." Hunter states the
person referred to in this tradition was Percival Cresacre, who was
living as late as 1455, when he was feoffee of his daughter Isabel
Langton for the foundation of the Bosville chantry in the church of
Cawthorne. That some such incident did occur in the family of
Cresacre is rendered in some degree probable by the adoption by
them of the cat-a-mountain for their crest, which may be seen over
their arms in the tower of the church. Several other instances are
also recorded of savage attacks made by these animals. One within
comparatively recent times that recals itself to our mind was made
upon a man in the grounds of Keildar Castle, one of the seats of the
Duke of Northumberland ; indeed, wild cats would appear to have
been antagonists almost as much to be dreaded as wolves. They are
still to be met with jn some parts of the kingdom. Though the days
when — " Well can the green-garb'd ranger tell How, when, and
where the monster fell ; What dogs before his death he tore, And all
the baiting of the boar," And when " Mightiest of all the beasts of
chase That roam in woody Caledon, Crashing the forest in his race,
The mountain bull comes thundering on," Are long since past in this
country, there " Still lingers in our northern clime Some remnants of
the good old time." And notwithstanding " The venerable lore of
olden times, Black letter tomes and ancient chronicles " Give us little
information as to those who hunted the Penistone hounds, and
followed them in the chase in their earlier days. We may, however,
safely assume that members of the great families of the district then
would ; and amongst the number we may name the Barnbys,
Bosvilles, Burdets, Cudworths, Cutlers, Dronsfields, De Midhopes, De
Oxsprings, De Penistons, Eyres, Micklethwaites, Rockleys, Saviles,
Wentworths, Wilsons, Wordsworths and Wortleys. Then it was the
custom for the gentry to meet, not in taverns, but in the fields or
forests, with hawks and hounds, and their bugle horns in silken
bawderies. Then also "... roused from sweet slumbers the ladye high
born Her palfrey would mount at the sound of the horn Who
champing, uptossed his rich trappings in air. And neighed with
delight such a burden to bear." Warburton. " In this our spacious
loving isle, I think there is not one, But he of Robin Hood hath heard
and Little John ; And to the end of time, the tales shall ne'er be
done. Of Scatlock, George A' Green, and Much the Miller's son ; Of
Tuck, the merry friar, which many a sermon made In praise of Robin
Hood, his outlaws and their trade." Drayton.
 PENISTONE HARRIERS. 367 Tradition likewise fixes "
Loxley," a district until comparatively recent times wholly unenclosed
and uncultivated, called Loxley Chace, on the borders of Wharncliffe,
as the birth-place of Robin Hood, and it may therefore be reasonably
inferred that he and his " merrie men " joined the Penistone hounds
in many a gallant run. The remains of a house in which it was
pretended he was born were formerly pointed out in a small wood in
Loxley, called Bar Wood, and a well of fine clear water rising near
the bed of the river has been called from time immemorial Robin
Hood's Well. Numerous places on the adjoining Derbyshire moors
likewise bear his name. At the Abbey of Kirklees, near Huddersfield,
from which a most extensive view of what once formed a portion of
the Forest of Sherwood, is presented, the renowned freebooter was
a frequent visitor, and there, as stated in the old ballad, when
overtaken by sickness, seeking the aid of a leech in the abbey ; and
there, resigning himself to the hands of the faithless friend — his
blood ebbing away untended and unchecked — detecting too late
the perfidy, he strives to wake the echoes as he had been wont to
do when his bugle summoned his " merrie men all." Little John
catches the faltering tone, suspects at once the sad truth, hies away
to the abbey, m.akes forcible entry to the small apartment from
whence the sound had come, and there — sad sight to forester —
lies Robin Hood, bloodless, faint, and dying before an open
casement, from which he seeks once more to gaze upon the oaks he
loved. Let the ballad tell the rest. " Give me my bent bow in my
hand, And an arrow I'll let free ; And where that arrow is taken up
There let my grave digged be." And for this to mark his grave did
Robin Hood speed his last shaft. His mortal remains rest under an
ancient cross, and on a tombstone was the following inscription : —
" Hear undernead dis latil stean Laiz Robert Earl of huntingtan. Neer
archer ver as hi sa gud. An pipl kaueld im Robin heud. Sic utlaus as
hi an iz men ^"il Inglande niver si agen. — Obiit, 24, Kalend,
Decembris, 1247." A statue of this renowned freebooter, large as life,
leaning on his unbent bow, with a quiver of arrows and a sword by
his side, stood at the entrance of Kirklees old hall. The above give
undoubted evidence that he would be well acquainted with
Penistone and the surrounding district. It may be likewise interesting
to know that at Cannon Hall, the seat of Sir W. T. Spencer Stanhope,
K.C.B., is a large bow, brought from Hathersage, and said to have
belonged to Little John, who was buried in the churchyard of the
latter place. It is of yew, and, though the two ends where the horns
were affixed are broken, it still measures six feet. As late as the
reign of Henry the Eighth, Sherwood Forest contained no less than
95,000 acres. The Stewards Cup for Goodwood Races, 1865,
displays a very spirited and lifelike figure of Robin Hood standing
upon the body of a deer he had killed, and winding the "morte." Two
hounds standing by might be taken for Penistone hounds.
 368 HISTORY OF PEKllSTONE. " De Midhopp, of Langsett,
as chroniclers sing, Was lord wlion our Edward the First rul'd as king
; Broad lands on each side of this well- watered vale Had swell'd his
rich rent-rolls from heirship and sale. In ^^■oodland and pasture he
summered his flocks, And chased the wild deer o'er the heatli-skirted
rocks ; While to Kirkstead he paid tythe of all he possessed He
bravely and freely rejoiced in the rest," Sir Ellas de Midhope, referred
to in the old song, of which the above is part, and which is still sung
at the meets of the Penistone hunt, was, no doubt, one of the
earliest masters of the hunt. He was a great man in the district in
those days. We read in " Hunter " that he was lord of a great extent
of country, a fertile valle}', watered by the Little Don, with high
moorlands about it, through the whole of which in 1 8 Edward I.,
1290, he had a charter of free warren. The places named in the
charter are Penisale, Midhope, Langside, Ewden,
Horderon,Waldershelf, Mitcheldene, and Barnside, in which no one
was to chase or take anything that belonged to warren without the
permission of him and his heirs on pain of forfeiting £10, a large
sum in those days. Being such a lover of the chase, and having such
an extent of country to hunt over, is it not likely that his time may be
reckoned among the palmy days of the pack ; at all events, the
Midhope Stoners, as they are called, have always been amongst its
staunchest supporters, and with pride still love to recount what the
old lord, the " De Midhope " above-mentioned, did in olden times for
their district Tradition asserts that some centuries ago the hounds
were kept at Broomhead, and we have no reason to doubt but that
such was the case, and we confidently hazard the opinion that this
would be after the death of Sir hTias de Midhope, and that he gave
or bequeathed the hounds to his daughter Judith, who had married
Adam Wilson, Esq., then owner of Broomhead. This Adam would
probably be likewise a great follower of the sports of the field, and,
therefore, the one of his kindred the old lord would think most likely
to keep up the reputation of the hounds. May he not also have been
the first of the Wilsons to whom the armorial bearings before
mentioned were originally granted, or taken ; and if so, and it was in
consideration of deeds of valour performed by him in the chase they
were granted or taken, it would, no doubt, make the old lord still
more anxious that the hounds should fall into his hands. Broomhead
Hall is well and solidly built of the grey stone of the country. Parts of
it are very old ; the oldest stone in the house with a date on it is
marked 131 1, and Wilsons have lived in this house without a break
since those days. It is very comfortable and stands well, looking
down the valley towards Wharncliffe Chase. Some of the rooms have
splendid oak beams to support the ceilings, and a fine oak staircase
leads up to the first floor. It is handed down that all the district
between Broomhead Hall and Midhope was forest when the Wilsons
first became masters of Penistone harriers. " To Derbyshire now, ye
true sportsmen repair, To view the fine moorlands and taste the pure
air ; For here now Diana presides in full court, And presents to your
wishes the charms of good sport. Need I hint of the hounds of old
Wortley so fam'd, Than which never better, I'm sure, can be nam'd ;
While his Worship's good humour and smiles add a charm. Which all
the dull frowns of the cynic disarm.
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