John C. Corlette

John C. Corlette was born John Hubert Christian Corlette on 21 June 1911,[1] and died 9 December 1977. He was the son of Hubert C Corlette (an Australian architect) & his wife Florence Gwynedd Davies-Berrington.

Corlette was an English architect who, in 1949, founded the private English-style boarding school Aiglon College in Switzerland. The school is registered as a not-for-profit charitable institution, with an international student intake. Corlette was a former pupil ("Stoic") of Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, and a former teacher at Gordonstoun, a private school in Scotland – he included some of the latter school's educational ideas in the formation of Aiglon.

Corlette's death in 1977 came after an extended illness.

Early years

Corlette was the son of an architect.[2]

As a teenager, he attended Stowe School, in Buckinghamshire, England. Because of ill health (he had contracted pneumonia five times), he was advised to find a healthier environment, and it was recommended that he attend a school in Switzerland where the high altitude and drier air might assist his recovery – the same reasons that Switzerland was at that time renowned for its sanatoriums for people recovering from pulmonary infections and diseases. This is how he came to go to school in Chesières.

University Life and his First Decade of Employment

Corlette originally studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Exeter College, Oxford, being admitted in 1930. However, his studies were interrupted due to illness and he returned after an absence of many years spent practising as an architect, to obtain a degree in history at the age of 32.[3] After graduation he taught in at least three schools including Chaning-Pearce's school The College at South Leigh and Gordonstoun which he left after a difference of opinion with founder Kurt Hahn.

The Start of Aiglon

In 1949 Corlette opened his school in Chesières, the same village where he had gone to school as a teenager.

Like his mentor Kurt Hahn, John Corlette wrote no books to guide future generations in the creation of a curriculum. His speeches, like those of Kurt Hahn's, contain phrases that can guide the reader away from a focus on curriculum and textbooks and toward the use of philosophy and environment to improve the behaviour of "the whole man.”

The following extracts from a speech given by Corlette at Aiglon's end-of-term ceremony in July 1973 help illustrate his vision for the school. At the time of delivering this address, the school had expanded to nearly 300 students and had introduced co-education. However, the precepts that guided the early years of the school were still present 25 years after its foundation in 1949.[4]

Links to Round Square

The beginnings of Round Square: http://www.roundsquare.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25&Itemid=58

Corlette met and became friends with Dr. Kurt Hahn of the Round Square organisation. Dr. Hahn maintained that it was crucial for students to prepare for life by having them confront it, to develop courage, generosity, imagination, principle and resolution. He felt that this would result in young people becoming better equipped, developing the skills and abilities to become the leaders and guardians of the future.[5]

Aiglon College became a member school of the Round Square association in 19xx, and followed these same precepts, giving the school an additional respect and regard in the educational community.

The Round Square web site notes that, "Unlike all the other twentieth century educational innovators, Hahn wrote no books. His testimony and legacy rest in his schools and other programmes he initiated." Like Kurt Hahn, John Corlette left behind a school that he had started.[6]

A tribute to Corlette: "John Corlette of Aiglon...was our most powerful personality and he was the only one to own his own school. He was urging expansion and development long before I felt we were ready for it. He insisted that there must be an association journal but it was not until 1982 that the enthusiasm and driving energy of Margaret Sittler got “Echo” going. John was an original and this showed itself in his creation Aiglon and its most characteristic custom: the morning Meditation. He collected art and had a weakness for Jaguars (petrol driven). He was a master of publicity and used this much to the benefit of his school. During the first American conference at Athenian in 1972, Aiglon gave a reception in San Francisco and a very fine film of the school was shown with a commentary by the best of the BBC announcers. It began with the camera swinging through the arc of mountains between Aiguille Verte and the Dent du Midi. Then it swept down into the Rhone valley and one saw the distant road zigzagging up towards Villars. A small object driving up the road grew into a familiar streamline shape and the voice of the BBC chimed in: “John Corlette had a dream”. There was a chortle of joy from the assembled Heads, which John took in good part."

The above is an extract from The Muscles of Friendship – a valedictory speech by Jocelin Winthrop Young, Founding Director of Round Square, on the occasion of his retirement, October 1992 (made at Bishop's College School, Lennoxville, Quebec, Canada).

References

  1. Per notes from a conversation with Joyce Lowe, 18 April 2009.
  2. Per notes from a conversation with Christopher Reynolds, 25 March 2009.
  3. Teddy Senn,Aiglon 50 plus (1949–1999),2005(Unpublished history of Aiglon)
  4. Ref.: http://www.JohnCorlette.com, – “Writings”
  5. Source: Round Square Web site http://www.roundsquare.org
  6. Source: http://www.roundsquare.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25&Itemid=58
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