David Sutcliffe is a modern languages graduate of the University of Cambridge.  Following a year in France, he spent four years teaching and house-mastering at Salem in southern Germany and a year at Gordonstoun School before being invited by Desmond Hoare to join the founding staff of Atlantic College.  There he held the posts of housemaster, chief coach of the beach rescue and inshore lifeboat services (in 1976 he took part in the Observer single-handed transatlantic race), director of studies and deputy headmaster, before being appointed to the headmastership in 1969.

In September 1982 he became founding headmaster of the United World College of the Adriatic at Trieste, being succeeded as headmaster at Atlantic College by Andrew C. Stuart.

The family of the late Dr Kurt Hahn has invited David Sutcliffe to write the biography of this most important figure in the history of the United World Colleges movement.

When did you first meet Kurt Hahn?   

I first met Hahn in the autumn of 1956 in Salem, the school he founded in 1920.   Strangely, my first ever meeting with him took place in a darkened room because I was suffering from the effects of over-exposure to the sun and was feeling very sick (the only time in my life I have ever suffered from the sun) – strangely because Hahn suffered throughout his life from the sun stroke he had experienced as a young man and was confined thereafter to rooms which were dark and cool.  He was famous for the large hats and tropical helmets he wore when he went outside, and he generated a great deal of perplexed comment on the tent-like structure he wore over his head when, for example, he was traveling by plane or by car on bright sunny days.  I saw a good deal of him in the years 1956-61, precisely the time when he was launching the concept of the Atlantic College, and did a brief spell as his secretary in the summer of 1960 in London.

Was his idea of the UWC’s already developed by that time?  

As is well known, Hahn drew the inspiration for the Atlantic College from the lecture visit he made to the NATO Defence College in Paris in the mid-1950’s.   He was impressed by the way in which senior military officers, many of whom had been at war with one another not long before, were now intensely engaged in a common cause.  The Atlantic College was also an adaptation and development of the work he had been doing towards European integration and understanding in Gordonstoun in Scotland, and which he had had to abandon when he left Gordonstoun in 1953 as a consequence of ill health.  From 1956 onwards there was little or no change in the original concept.  Nonetheless it is clear to me that the Atlantic College could not have survived, let alone prospered, without the imprint of the very strong personality and ideas of the founder headmaster, Desmond Hoare, who had many disagreements with Hahn, starting with the siting of the College in South Wales rather than in Scotland.  Other disagreements concerned the social-disciplinary frame work which Hoare adopted, in considerable contrast with the principles of Hahnian education.

Tell us briefly about your experience as the Headmaster at Atlantic College.

I have told the story in some detail in a chapter in a 1980’s book on St. Donat’s castle which has now been added to the UWC web site.  The three principal features were the implementation of coeducation (a few girls having been introduced shortly before I took over the Headship), the introduction in 1971 of the as yet untried and unproven International Baccalaureate, and surviving the impact of 1968, whose arrival at the college was delayed by a few years but powerful nonetheless.  “Survival” is the appropriate word, and we had much to learn from the way in which Pearson College set about its own social-disciplinary framework from 1974 onwards.

Upon your arrival as the founding headmaster at Adriatic College, how difficult was it to maintain the level of financial support received?  

It was less a matter of maintaining the level than of creating it.  The really critical decision was taken at a meeting of the Italian National Committee in February 1981 when it was boldly agreed that the entire student body should be limited to scholarship winners, with no private entry at all.  At a much later stage (1998), and generating some controversy with certain national committees, the compromise of accepting parental contributions was also eliminated.  It is however worth knowing that in no year from the very start did parental contributions amount to more than 2% of the college budget and usually less.  The history of the college is inseparable from the quite extraordinary role played by Corrado Belci as the President - it was he who secured all the public recognition and the public funding, unequalled in any other country hosting a United World College.  The pivotal role of the Region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia and especially the leadership provided in the founding period by the President Comelli and his colleagues the Assessori Coloni and Barnaba, was also absolutely fundamental.  There were of course many others in Trieste, Rome and elsewhere, whose support was inspirational. 

Your contribution to the UWC movement has been immense.  Apart from serving as a headmaster in both Atlantic and Adriatic colleges for several years, you have also promoted the Third Year Option and the founding of the new college in Mostar.   When did you start promoting the idea of a UWC in the Balkans? 

This began with some remarks I made in the course of the Opening Ceremony of the Academic Year 2000-2001 in Prague, when I suggested that international education continued to face many challenges and many opportunities in Central and Eastern Europe and that the Adriatic College therefore had an important future there, building on its involvement in the preceding eighteen years.  “Prague” was in October.  In November Pilvi Torsti turned up in my office in Duino and asked whether I had been serious.  It all went on from there, and I think you must give the credit above all to Pilvi.

Why Mostar as a place for the new college? 

The initial intention was Bosnia, and we very soon identified suitable but ruined buildings on the outskirts of Sarajevo.  We planned a college of 100 students who would stay for two years on the classical UWC pattern, but with only one generation in residence at a time, i.e. no first and second years.  This was partly because of the lack of space, partly to keep costs down, partly to ensure that every student felt himself or herself to be a pioneer and not subject to the precedents established by earlier generations.  It also opened up the possibility of meaningful teacher secondments for two years at a time – I have always regarded it as a great weakness that we pass so few teachers through our colleges, in contrast to the rapid turnover of students.  We discovered that this was going to be too expensive (the UWC’s are generally far too expensive for those countries and societies that are in the most urgent need of them); and that our ideas were regarded as largely irrelevant to the real needs of the country.  Mostar was a city with a bitter record of inter-ethnic ^[1] conflict in the 1990’s and also a touchstone, partly because of its famous bridge, for the success or failure of the international community in rebuilding the country.  The once famous Gymnazium of Mostar, wholly destroyed during the war, was to become a symbol of the efforts to rebuild, both concretely and psychologically.  Complex and often frustrating negotiations led eventually to the privilege of sharing in the re-creation of this once outstanding school which for months was on the road marking the front line in the battles between the Croats and the Bosniaks.

Was it difficult to obtain the necessary support, both politically and financially, to open the college in Mostar? 

It was, as already mentioned, a complex task.  The City is still divided between the Croats and the Bosniaks (the Serbs are more or less absent).  The school after re-opening was already embodying the principle of two schools under one roof, with a Croat and a Bosniak administration and the pupils attending classes in ethnic groups and separate classrooms.  Now we have three schools under one roof – Bosniak, Croat and UWC.  In the first two the classes continue to be defined by their ethnic background; in the third, students are attending mixed classes for the first time since the break-up of Yugoslavia, with the enrichment of Bosnians of all three ethnic backgrounds from all parts of Bosnian and Herzegovina, and of some 30 other students from the region of South East Europe and from other conflict or post-conflict societies such as Israel, Palestine and Iraq.  There is no doubt that those now running the college under Paul Regan have an immensely challenging task.  The first term seems to have been a huge success.

A key issue for all of us who have been part of the UWC experience is the future of the movement.     What would you see as the main challenges that the UWC movement will face in the future? 

Public image.  International leadership.  Funding.  Engagement with the long term challenges and opportunities open to international education which however requires careful analysis and consultation with others in the field.  Re-engagement with political leaders. 

Where would you like to see the movement heading?  Are there any further initiatives to open other UWC’s after the recent inauguration of the UWC in Mostar and the UWC in Costa Rica? 

I am not the right person to ask, not being up-to-date or involved in UWC affairs in any but the most casual way, but I know of plans to open colleges in Kenya and the Netherlands. 

Thinking back, would you have imagined the movement as it is today? Or would you have wished it to take another course? 

I think the key phrase was coined by Desmond Hoare in 1962: Education adapted to meet the special needs of our time.  If we can keep this in mind, we shall have a better chance of remaining up-to-date and relevant. 

 [1]   It should be noted that the widespread use of the word “ethnic” in the Bosnian and Yugoslav context is incorrect, as is the phrase “ethnic cleansing”.  The differences are not ethnic but religious.  It is becoming common and politically correct nowadays to talk of “national” groups and communities. (David B. Sutcliffe)