John Anderson Hartley

Who was John Anderson Hartley?

John Anderson Hartley was an Australian educator.

Hartley was the son of the Rev. John Hartley, governor of the Wesleyan College, Handsworth, Birmingham, and was born in Yorkshire, England. He was educated at the Woodhouse Grove School, near Bradford, and University College, London, where he graduated B.A. in 1868 and B.Sc. in 1870. He taught for a time at his old school Woodhouse Grove, and at the Methodist College Belfast where he was second master.

In 1871 Hartley became head master of Prince Alfred College, Adelaide, South Australia, then a comparatively new school with about 100 pupils. In three years the number was raised to 150 and Hartley was getting on so well with the staff and the boys that it appeared as though the college had found its ideal principal. However, in 1875 Hartley resigned to become president of the newly appointed council of education. Some four years later the council was abolished, and Hartley was appointed inspector-general of schools and permanent head of the South Australian Education Department.

Hartley immediately began remodelling the whole system. He met with opposition from a section of the press and from teachers who objected to his methods, and Hartley was more pleased than otherwise when in August 1881 a select committee was appointed to go into the questions at issue. In November of that year the inquiry was taken over by a Royal Commission. Much evidence was taken and the whole question of primary education was exhaustively examined. The report of the commission completely exonerated Hartley and spoke in the highest terms of his methods. Henceforth he was completely trusted by successive ministers, the public, and his teaching staff. It was said of him in later years that his few opponents were people who had never met him and had little real knowledge of his methods. His first problem had been to build up a sound system of primary education, but as the years went by his efforts were given to relating this in the best possible way to secondary education and the university.