| Code | BPS/GB/62 |
| Thumbnail | 
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| Name | Valentine; Charles Wilfred (1879-1964); Professor |
| Title | Professor |
| Forenames | Charles Wilfred |
| Surname | Valentine |
| Dates | 1879-1964 |
| Other Names | C. W. Valentine |
| Gender | Male |
| Nationality | British |
| DatesAndPlaces | Born Runcorn, Cheshire 16 August 1879 Died Wythall, Worcestershire 26 May 1964
Runcorn 18?
Nottingham 18?
Preston 18?
Aberystwyth
Cambridge 190?-1909
Wurzburg /1908
St Andrews 1909-1914
Belfast 1914-1919
Birmingham 1919-1946
Worcestershire 19?- 1964 |
| Address | Birmingham |
| Relationships | Valentine was one of the eight children of Henry Valentine (b 1841), a Wesleyan Methodist minister and his wife, Sophia Woodcock (nd).
Married (Margaret) Ethel Rothwell Jackson (1887- 1956) daughter of Arthur Jackson (nd) retired mechanical engineer, they had 3 sons and 1 daughter. |
| Activity | Valentine attended Nottingham high school and then Preston grammar school, leaving at seventeen to teach in a small boarding school. After seven years of teaching at various secondary schools, interspersed with largely self-financed degree studies, Valentine's university education was extensive.
He obtained a BA from London University (taken externally at University College, Aberystwyth, where he was an exhibitioner), an MA from Cambridge gained with a double first in philosophy and psychology in 1909 (as a foundation scholar in moral sciences at Downing College), and a DPhil from St Andrews in 1913.
He also spent part of 1908 as a student at the Wurzburg laboratory of Oswald Kulpe (1862-1915) where he met a fellow student and future life-long friend Cyril Burt (1883-1971).
On returning from Germany, Valentine obtained his first academic post at twenty-nine and spent the next five years until 1914 as lecturer in psychology to St Andrews provincial committee, working also as assistant in education at the University of St Andrews for four of them.
After a further five years as professor of education at Queen's University, Belfast, he became Professor of Education at the University of Birmingham in 1919, a post he held until his retirement in 1946.
Over this long period at Birmingham his research into such topics as child development, transfer of training, imagery, mental testing, home and classroom discipline, the reliability of examinations, and the place of Latin in the curriculum gave rise to more than 50 papers and sixteen books.
Like Sully (1842-1923) before him he made his systematic observation of his own children's development the basis of one of his major works: The Psychology of Early Childhood (1942). Valentine's earliest and last publication was on what he termed his "hobby" "An Introduction to the Experimental Psychology of Beauty" (1913) and "The Experimental Psychology of Beauty" (1962).
An interest in aspects of Freudian thinking, in particular in the psychology of dreams and the light that they cast on the unconscious, occupied him for many years.
He also embraced the problems of military education in the Second World War, even to the extent of enduring the rigours of army basic training though nearing retirement age.
Among Valentine's other major contributions to British academic life was his role as founder and editor for nearly ten years of "The Forum of Education" , and then of its successor, the "British Journal of Educational Psychology", which he edited and managed for a further unprecedented 25 years from its creation in 1931.
During his tenure the "Journal" was committed to championing the contribution that a distinctively British psychology had made to education.
He was also associated with various societies that supported psychology; he was President of Section J (psychology) of the British Association of Science in 1930 and President of the British Psychological Society for 1947-1948.
Earlier he had served on local bodies viz. chairman of the Birmingham higher education subcommittee from 1919 to 1925.
Sources: A.D.Lovie and P.Lovie (1879-1964), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004[accessed 11 Jan 2005: <available at>http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/63841.
Compiled by Mike Maskill, BPS Archivist for the History of Psychology Centre. |
| OtherInfo | In Birmingham, Valentine's considerable talents as teacher, writer and researcher flourished as he established what was in effect the first major centre for educational psychology in the UK. |
| PublishedWorks | Selected Bibliography:
Psychology and its Bearing on Education, Methuen (1950)
Intelligence Tests for Children, Methuen (1948)
The Difficult Child and the Problems of Discipline, Methuen (1940)
The Psychology of Early Childhood, Methuen (1942)
An Introduction to the Experimental Psychology of Beauty, London TC & EC Jack (1913)
The Experimental Psychology of Beauty, Methuen (1962)
Dreams and the Unconscious, London (1921)
The New Psychology of the Unconscious, London (1928) (revised)
Principles of Army Instruction (1942), Aldershot, Gale & Polden Ltd (1942)
The Human Factor in the Army, Aldershot, Gale & Polden Ltd (1943)
List of publications by C.W.Valentine, L.B.Birch, British Journal of Educational Psychology, 26 (1956), 3-7 |
| Source | Sources: A.D.Lovie and P.Lovie (1879-1964), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004[accessed 11 Jan 2005: <available at>http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/63841 |
| Conventions | International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families - ISAAR(CPF) - Ottawa 1996 ISBN ISBN 0-9696035-3-3
National Council on Archives, Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997 |