{"id":609,"date":"2021-05-06T14:03:07","date_gmt":"2021-05-06T13:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/?p=609"},"modified":"2021-05-06T14:03:57","modified_gmt":"2021-05-06T13:03:57","slug":"asa-briggs-helping-people-to-become-producers-of-knowledge-and-consumers-of-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/?p=609","title":{"rendered":"Asa Briggs: helping people to become producers of knowledge and consumers of education"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Guest takeover with\u00a0Dr Dan\u00a0Weinbren<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Friday\u00a07 May marks the centenary of Asa Briggs\u2019 birth.\u00a0Prolific historian and active in numerous historical societies, many may be wondering\u00a0who he was, what legacy he left behind, and the impact he made during his time as Chancellor of the OU between 1978\u20131994.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The\u00a0OU\u00a0honoured\u00a0Briggs\u00a0with a Fellowship in 1999 and\u00a0his name was\u00a0subsequently\u00a0given to\u00a0both a building on the Walton Hall campus and a Chair in History.\u00a0Much of his focus was on the Victorian period but he also wrote a five-volume history of UK broadcasting, which covers the relationship between the BBC and the OU.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While a Cambridge undergraduate, he also attended the LSE, which was evacuated there and was awarded two degrees in 1941. Wartime Bletchley Park codebreaking was followed by academic appointments in Oxford and Leeds and a Chair at the University of Sussex.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In 1964,\u00a0Labour government Minister Jennie Lee established and chaired an Advisory Committee <\/span>\u00a0which developed an idea of the PM\u2019s and produced a 1966 White Paper for a new\u00a0\u2018University of the Air\u2019. Briggs sat on the Planning Committee\u00a0during\u00a01967\u201369 for what was to become\u00a0The\u00a0Open University\u00a0and\u00a0chaired its working group on students and the curriculum.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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To develop the accessible, interdisciplinary curriculum that he desired,\u00a0Briggs drew on a sophisticated historical understanding of the OU\u2019s role. He\u00a0also\u00a0built on his work on the University Grants Committee and his years as a contributor to the BBC\u2019s liberal education series.\u00a0After the Planning Committee was wound up Briggs continued to contribute to the OU. For the Arts Foundation Course, he presented a television\u00a0programme, \u2018Leeds: A Study in Civic Pride\u2019. Those new to studying and with only one opportunity to watch the\u00a0programme\u00a0(this was before access to video playback machines was commonplace) could see an expert use film and music to place everyday lives within broader regional, national and international perspectives.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As an academic,\u00a0Briggs provided a sense of why history is important, relevant and\u00a0can be created by ordinary learners everywhere.\u00a0As OU Chancellor, he\u00a0made support for learning central and provided learners with opportunities to construct their own understandings,\u00a0and to be producers of knowledge as well as consumers of education.<\/span>
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Briggs employed his historical and pedagogic understandings and experiences and his heterogeneous networks to help shape and bolster teaching and support learners at the Open University.\u00a0 I am confident Briggs\u2019\u00a0important legacy within the OU still lives on\u00a0in the way we continue to champion the importance of cross-generational\u00a0knowledge, and\u00a0make our course materials as accessible as possible.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Written by\u00a0<\/span>Dr Dan Weinbren<\/span><\/a>, Associate Lecturer and author of The Open University. A history<\/a><\/i>. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest takeover with\u00a0Dr Dan\u00a0Weinbren Friday\u00a07 May marks the centenary of Asa Briggs\u2019 birth.\u00a0Prolific historian and active in numerous historical societies, many may be wondering\u00a0who he was, what legacy he left behind, and the impact he made during his time as Chancellor of the OU between 1978\u20131994. The\u00a0OU\u00a0honoured\u00a0Briggs\u00a0with a Fellowship in 1999 and\u00a0his name was\u00a0subsequently\u00a0given to\u00a0both … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Asa Briggs: helping people to become producers of knowledge and consumers of education”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,33,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-curriculum","category-teaching","category-tv-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=609"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":611,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions\/611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/history\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}