Frederick William Sanderson - Dulwich College

Dulwich College

Sanderson's earliest ventures into educational reform began in 1885, when the Master of Dulwich College, the Reverend James Edward Cowell Welldon, invited him to come to the school and be an assistant master teaching physics. Welldon himself had been appointed some two years before, on 1883-03-12, and his appointment of Sanderson developed from the work of a special committee, including Welldon, which had met on 1884-06-11. One of the things that the committee had discussed was a perceived lack of teaching facilities at the college for practical mechanics, a subject that had been raised the year before in the February edition of the College magazine, The Alleynian. Both the Master and the Board of Governors were in favour of such expansion, and on 1885-05-01, Welldon formally invited Sanderson to take up the post of physics master, at an annual salary of GB£300. Sanderson historian Richard J. Palmer observes that it is "indicative of the importance of the post" that the only master at the college who was paid a higher salary than Sanderson's starting salary was C. Bryans, the Senior French Master.

The next year, 1886, Sanderson's program of change had begun. He established an engineering side to the curriculum, that included physics, mathematics, workshop practice, and mechanical drawing. This reform and reorganization was particularly notable for its practical, hands-on approach: boys didn't use models or drawings, but rather worked with and experimented upon actual working engines, dynamos, and other machines. The engineering laboratory had a working steam engine, for example.