Mary Warnock, Baroness Warnock

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The Right Honourable

The Baroness Warnock

CH DBE FBA FMedSci
Born
Helen Mary Wilson

(1924-04-14) 14 April 1924 (age 94)
Winchester, Hampshire, England
Alma materSt Swithun's School, Winchester
Prior's Field School
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford
Known forPhilosopher of morality, education and mind, and writer on existentialism
Board member ofActive Training and Education Trust
Spouse(s)
Geoffrey Warnock
(m. 1949; died 1995)
Children5
RelativesDuncan Wilson (brother)

Helen Mary Warnock, Baroness Warnock, CH, DBE, FBA, FMedSci (née Wilson; born 14 April 1924) is an English philosopher of morality, education and mind, and writer on existentialism. From 1984 to 1991, she was Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge.

Early life[edit]

Warnock was born Helen Mary Wilson on 13 April 1924 in Winchester, England, and was the youngest of seven children. Her mother Ethel was the daughter of the successful banker and financier Felix Schuster.[1] Her father Archie Wilson, a Scotsman, was a housemaster and taught German at Winchester College. He caught diphtheria in 1923 and consequently died of heart failure.

Warnock was brought up by her mother and a nanny. She never knew her eldest brother, Malcolm (1907–1969), who had autism and was cared for in a nursing home, spending his last days in a Dorset hospital. Her brother Sandy died when very young. Her other brother, Duncan, was a British diplomat who became Ambassador to the Soviet Union before taking up an appointment as master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.[2]

When Warnock was seven months old the family moved to Kelso House, a three-floor Victorian house, now the music centre at Peter Symonds College. She and her sister Stefana were cared for primarily by the family nanny. Warnock was educated as a boarder at St Swithun's School, Winchester, followed by Prior's Field School in the town of Guildford in Surrey.[1][2]

Warnock has said that when she was a child she was embarrassed by her mother, who looked different to most people, often by wearing long flowing dark red clothes and walking with turned out feet. However, when Warnock was about 15 years old, she began to admire her mother's eccentricity and independent thinking.[2]

Career[edit]

Philosophy[edit]

Warnock studied at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and was made an honorary fellow in 1984. From 1949–66, she was a fellow and tutor in philosophy at St Hugh's College, Oxford.

She was Talbot Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall (1972–76). From 1976–84, she was a senior research fellow at St Hugh's College, and was made an honorary fellow of the college in 1985. She then became mistress of Girton College, Cambridge (1984–91).[3] Warnock delivered the Gifford Lectures, entitled "Imagination and Understanding," at the University of Glasgow in 1992. In 2000, she was a visiting professor of rhetoric at Gresham College, London.[citation needed]

Warnock has written extensively on ethics, existentialism and philosophy of mind.[4]

Education[edit]

In the early 1960s, whilst still teaching at St Hugh's College, Warnock took a seat on the Oxfordshire Local Education Authority. From 1966 to 1972, she was Headmistress at the Oxford High School for Girls.[1] She is a patron of The Iris Project, a charity which promotes the teaching of classics.[5]

Broadcasting[edit]

Warnock was a member of the Independent Broadcasting Authority from 1972–83. In 1980, she was considered for the post of Director General of the BBC.[1][6]

Public policy[edit]

Because of her background as an educationalist, Warnock was appointed in 1974 to chair a UK inquiry on special education. Her report, published in 1978, brought radical change in the field, by placing emphasis on the teaching of learning-disabled children in mainstream schools and introducing a system of "statementing" children in order for them to gain entitlement to special educational support. Warnock has since expressed dissatisfaction with the system she helped to create, calling it "appalling" because of the expense of its administration and its tendency to deny support to mildly disadvantaged children. She has recommended the establishment of a new inquiry.[1][7]

From 1979–84, she sat on a Royal Commission on environmental pollution.[6] From 1982–84, she chaired the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology. Her report on this occasion gave rise to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, which governs human fertility treatment and experimentation using human embryos.

Its effect has been to require licensing for procedures such as in vitro fertilisation and to ban research using human embryos more than 14 days old. According to Dame Susan Leather, a former chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, "perhaps the greatest achievement of the Warnock committee is that it managed to get an ethical consensus that people understood as well as shared".[1]

From 1984 to 1989, Warnock chaired a Home Office Committee on animal experimentation and since 1998 she has been a member of the Government advisory panel on spoliation.[6]

In 2008, Warnock, a committed advocate of euthanasia, caused controversy with an opinion that people with dementia should be allowed to elect to die if they felt they were "a burden to their family or the state".[8][9]

Aged 90, Lady Warnock took part enthusiastically in a review of her public life as documented by BBC Sound Archives (12 July 2014).[10]

Charity[edit]

Warnock is President of Listening Books, a charity providing audiobooks for anyone who struggles to read due to an illness, disability, learning difficulty or mental health issue.[11] She is also President of the Governing Council of The Active Training and Education Trust a.k.a. ATE Superweeks, which is a not-for-profit educational trust and charity.[citation needed]

Appointments and honours[edit]

In the 1984 New Year Honours she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE).[12]

Warnock was created a life peer on 6 February 1985, taking the title Baroness Warnock, of Weeke, in the City of Winchester. She sat in the House of Lords as a crossbencher until her retirement from the House on 1 June 2015.[13]

In 1987, Warnock was awarded an honorary D.Litt. degree by the University of Bath.[14]

Warnock was elected an honorary Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 2000[15] and a Honorary Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 2011.[16]

Warnock was appointed a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to charity and to children with special education needs.[17]

In 2018, she was named as one of the TES ten most influential people in education, in recognition of her work on special educational needs. [18]

Personal life[edit]

Warnock married Geoffrey Warnock, later vice-chancellor of Oxford University, in 1949. They had two sons and three daughters.[19][20]

Works[edit]

As chairwoman of committees of inquiry:

As author:

  • Ethics since 1900 (Oxford University Press, 1960); ISBN 0-9753662-2-X
  • The Philosophy of Sartre (Hutchinson University Press, 1965)
  • Existentialist ethics, London, New York 1967
  • Existentialism (Oxford Paperbacks, 1970); ISBN 0-19-888052-9
  • Imagination (1976)
  • Schools of Thought (Faber and Faber, 1977); ISBN 0-571-11161-0
  • Memory (1987)
  • Imagination and Time (Blackwell Publishers, 1994); ISBN 0-631-19019-8
  • Women Philosophers, London, J. M. Dent 1996
  • Mary Warnock: A Memoir – People and Places (Duckworth, 2001); ISBN 0-7156-2955-7, ISBN 0-7156-3141-1
  • Making Babies: Is There a Right To Have Children? (2001)
  • The Intelligent Person's Guide to Ethics (1998)
  • Nature and Mortality: Recollections of a Philosopher in Public Life (2004); ISBN 0-8264-7323-7
  • An Intelligent Person's Guide to Ethics (Duckworth, 2004); ISBN 0-7156-3320-1
  • Easeful Death, with Elisabeth MacDonald (OUP, 2008)
  • Dishonest to God: On Keeping Religion Out of Politics (Continuum, 2010); ISBN 978-1-4411-2712-9
  • Critical Reflections on Ownership (Edward Elgar, 2015); ISBN 978-1-78195-547-5

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f Brown, Andrew (19 July 2003). "The practical philosopher". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 October 2011.
  2. ^ a b c "The House I Grew up In featuring Mary Warnock". The House I Grew Up In. 2008-09-17. BBC. BBC Radio 4.
  3. ^ "Girton College, Past Mistresses". Girton College, Cambridge. Retrieved 5 July 2015.
  4. ^ Honderich, Ted (1995). The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (1. publ. ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 907. ISBN 0-19-866132-0.
  5. ^ "Patrons". Iris website. Archived from the original on 4 October 2011. Retrieved 11 October 2011.
  6. ^ a b c "Baroness Warnock". UK Parliament website. Archived from the original on 12 October 2011. Retrieved 13 October 2011.
  7. ^ Warnock, Mary (17 September 2010). "The cynical betrayal of my special needs children". The Telegraph. Retrieved 13 October 2011.
  8. ^ Beckford, Martin (19 September 2008). "Baroness Warnock: Dementia sufferers may have a 'duty to die'". Telegraph. Retrieved 3 February 2009.
  9. ^ "Dementia patients' 'right-to-die'". BBC News. Retrieved 3 September 2009.
  10. ^ "BBC Radio 4 – Meeting Myself Coming Back, Series 6, Mary Warnock". Bbc.co.uk. 2014-07-12. Retrieved 2017-01-02.
  11. ^ "Listening Books – UK audiobook charity | Our people". www.listening-books.org.uk. Retrieved 2017-08-21.
  12. ^ "No. 49583". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 1983. p. 8.
  13. ^ "Retired members of the House of Lords – UK Parliament". Parliament.uk. Retrieved 2017-01-02.
  14. ^ "Honorary Graduates 1989 to present". bath.ac.uk. University of Bath. Retrieved 18 February 2012.
  15. ^ Honorary Fellows Archived 29 June 2015 at the Wayback Machine – website of the British Academy
  16. ^ Fellow Baroness Mary Warnock FMedSci – website of the Academy of Medical Sciences
  17. ^ "No. 61803". The London Gazette (1st supplement). 31 December 2016. p. N27.
  18. ^ "Tes people of the year 2018: Baroness Mary Warnock". TES. Times Educational Supplement.
  19. ^ "Belief transcript: Mary Warnock interview". Wayback Machine. Archived from the original on 6 February 2007.
  20. ^ "House of Lords". TheyWorkForYou. 25 July 2013. Retrieved 3 August 2013.
  21. ^ "Digitisation activities". Bopcris.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 29 September 2007. Retrieved 12 August 2011.

External links[edit]

Academic offices
Preceded by
Brenda Ryman 		Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge
1986–1989 		Succeeded by
Juliet J. D'Auvergne Campbell

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