summerhill and asneill 5-24b

8/12/2019 Summerhill and Asneill 5-24b

1/19

Summerhill SchoolA 5 Neil1

A S NeWsbmk, S~mWhiill ,irstappearedin 1962.The ollowing reproducesin full Chapter of the paperback edition of the book which appeared in1968 Neill s style of writin or example, his use of he for ll pupils hasnot been changed Ed.

me dea of Summerhillm s s a story of a modem school Sunornethill

SumnrerhiU was founded in the year 1921.The school S situated withinthe town of Leiston,inSuffolk,and bout onehundred miles fromLondon.

Just aword aboutSummerhillpupils. Somechildrencome o Summerhillat the age of five years, and others as late as fifteen. The children generallyremain at the schosI until they are sixteenyearsold. We generallyhave abouttwenty-five and twenty girls.The childrenare divided into three age p u p : The youngest range fromfive to we n , the Intermediates som eight to ten, and t he oldestfrom elevento fifteen.

Generally we have a fairly large sprinkling of children from foreigncountries At the present time (1968) we have two S c a n h v i a n s and forty-fourAmericans.

The children are housed by age groups wlth a housemother for eachgroup The intermediates sleep in a stone building the seniors sleep in huts-Onlyone or two older pupils have rooms for themselves.Theboys live two orthree or four to a room nd so do the girls. The pupils do not have to standroom inspection and no one picks up after them. They are left free. No onetells them what to wear: they puton any kind of mstplme they want to at anytime.

ewspapers t a COdS you please School and imply that it is a gath-rlng of wild prlmltlves who know no law and have no manners.It seems necessary, therefore, for me to write the story of Summerhill shonestly as I can. That I writewith a bias is natural; yet I sh ll try to show thedmerits of Summerhill as well as its merib. Its merits wlll be the merits ofhealthy, free children whose Uves are unspolld by fear and hate.


2/19

SUMMERHILLAND A 5 NElLLObviously, a school that makes active children sit at desks studying

mostly useless subjects is a bad school. It Is a g schml only for those whobelieve in such a school, for those uncreative citizens who want docile, un-creative children who will fit into a civilization whose standard of success ismoney.

Summerhill began as an experimental school It is no longer such; it isnow a demonstration schml, for it demonstrates that freedom works.

When my first wife and I began the school, we had one main idea: tom ke th school it th child instead of making the child fit the school.

I had taught in ordinary schools for many years. I knew the other waywell. I knew t was all wrong. It w s wrong because i t was b sed on an adultconception of what a child should be and of how a child should learn. Theother w y dated from the days when psychology was still an unknownscience.

Well, we set out to make a school in which we should allow childrenfreedom to be themselves. In order to do this we had to renounce aIl discipline, all direction, all suggestion, all moral training, all religious instruc-tion. We have been called brave but i t did not require courage. AH it requiredw swhat we had a completebelief in the child as a good, not an evil being.For over fortyyears this belief in the goodnessof the chid has neverwavered;it rather has become a fin l faith.My view is that a child is innately wise and realistic. If left to himselfwithout adult suggestion of ny kind, he will developas far as he is capable ofdeveloping. Logically Summerhill is a place in which people who have theinnate ability and wish to be scholarswill be scholars; while those who areonly fit to sweep the streetswill sweep the streets. But we havenot produced astreet cleaner so far. Nor do I write this snobbishly, for I would rather see aschool produce a happy street cleaner than a neurotic scholar.

What is Summerhill like? Well, for one thing lessons are optional.Children can go to them or stay away from them for years if they want to.There is a timetable -but only for the teachers.

The children have classes usually according to their age, but sometimesaccordingto their interests.We h ve no new methods of teaching, because wedo not consider that teaching in itself matters very much. Whether a schoolhas or has not a special method for teaching long division is of no sig-nfficance, for long division is of no importance except to those who want toleam it. And the child who wants to learn long division will leam it no matterhow t is taught.

Children who come to Summerhill as kindergarteners attend lessonsfrom the beginning of their stay; but pupils from other schoolsv w that theywin never attend ny beastly lessons again at ny time. They play and cycleand get In people s way, but they fight shy of lessons. his som tim s goes onfor months. The recovery time Is proportionate to the hatred their last school


3/19

SUMMERHILL AND A S. NEILgave them. Our record case was a girl from a convent. She loafed for threeyears. The average period of recovery from lessons awnion is three months.

Strangers to t is idea of freedom will be wondering what sort of mad-house it is where childrenplay all day If they want to. Many an adult says, If Ihad been sent to a school like that, I d never have done a thing. O t h e r s say,Such children wi l l feel themselves heavily handicapped when they have tocompete against children who have been made to learn.

I think of Jack who left us at the age of seventeen to go into an en-gineeringfactory One day, the managing director sent for him.

You are the lad from Summerhill, he said. I m curious to know howsuch an education appears to you now hat you aremixingwith ladsfrom heold schools. Suppose you had to choose again would you go to Eton orSummerhW

Oh, Summetbill of course, replied Jack.But what does it offer that the other schools don t offer?Jack scratched is head. I dunno, he said slowly; I th ink I t givesyou a

feeling of complete self-confidence.Yes, said the manager dryly, I noticed it when you came into the room.Lord, laughed Jack, I m rry i I gave you that Impression.I liked it, said the director. Most men when I call them into the office

fidget about and look uncomfortable. You came in as my equal. By the way,what department did you say you would like to transfer to?This story shows that learning in itself is not as important as personality

and character. Jack failed in his university ex ms because he hated booklearning. But his lack of knowledge about Lamb s Essays or the French lan-guage did not handicap him in life. He s now a successful engineer.All the same, there is a lot of le rning in Summerhill. Perhaps a group ofour twelve-year-oldscould not compete with a c lass of equal age in hand-

writing or spelling or fractions.But in an examination ~equiring riginality,our lot would beat the others hollow.We haw no class examinations in the school, but sometimes I set anex m for fun.The following questions appeared In one such paper:

Where are the following: Madrid Thursday Island, yesterday, love,democracy, hate, my pocket screwdriver alas, there was no helpfulanswer o that one).Give meanings for the following: (the number showshow many areexpected for each) Hand (3) only two got the third right hestandard of measure for a horse.Brass (4) metal, cheek, top armyofficers, department of an orchestra. Translate Hamlet s To-be-or-not-to-be speech into Summerhillese.


4/19

SUMMERHILL SCHOOL A 5 NEILThese questions are obviously not intended to be serious, and the chil-dren enjoy them thoroughly. Newcomers, on the whole, do not rlse to the

rnSwering standard of pupils who have become acclimatized to the school.~,,t that they have less brain power; but rather because they have become soaccustomed towork in a serious groove that any fight touch puzzles them.his is the play side of our teaching. In all classes much work is done. Iffor some reason, a teacher cannot take his class on the appointed day there isusuaUymuch disappointment for the pupils.David aged nine had to be isolated for whooping cough He cried bit-terly 111 miss Roger s lesson in geography, he protested. David had been inthe school practically from birth, and he had definite and final ideas aboutthe necessity of having his lessons giv n to him. David is now a professor ofmathematics at London University.A few years ago someoneat a General SchoolMeeting (atwhich aU schoolrules are voted by the entire school, each pupil and each staff member havingone vote proposed that a certain culprit should be punished by being ban-ished from lessons for a week. The other children protested on the groundthat the punishment was tm severe.My staff and I have a hearty hatred of all examinations To us, the uni-versity exams are anathema. But we cannot refuse to teach children the re-quired subjects.Obviously s long as the examsare In existence, they are ourmaster. Hence, the Summerhill staff is always qualified to teach to the setstandard.

Not that many child~enant to take these exams; only those going to theuniversity do so. And such children do not seem to find It especially hard totackle these exams. They generally begin to work for them seriously at the ageof fourteen and they do the work In about threeyears. Of course they don talways pass at the hst try The more important fact is that they try again.

Summerhill is possibly the happiest school in the world. We have notmants and seldom a case of homesickness. We very rarely have fightsquarrels, of course but seldom have I seen a stand-up fight like the ones weused to have as boys. I seldom hear a child cry because children when freehave much less hate to express than children who are downtrodden. Hatebreeds hate, and love breeds love. Lovemeans approvingof children,and thatis essential in any school. You can t be on the side of children if you punishthem and storm at them ummerhill is a school in which the childknowsthat he s approved of.

Mind you we are not above and beyond human foibles. I spent weekspotatoes one spring, and when I found eight plants pulled up inmadeabig fuss Yet therewas a e r ence between my fuss and that ofm;@ dUulm. My fuss was about potatoes, but th fuss an authoritarianhawmadewouldhavedragged n the questionofmorality right and

I dld not s y that Itwasm n g o steal my spuds; did not make It a


5/19

mattaofmanderll-Imarkitrrnwtd - m p r@and they should haw been left alone. 1hap 1 h t k istlndlmclear.

Let me put it another way To the children, 1 am no authority to befeared. I am their equal, and the row I kick up about my spuds h;ts no morem c a n c e to them than the row a boy may kick up about Ms pun turedbicycle tyre. t is quite safe to haw a row with a child when you are equals.

Now some will say: That s all bunk. There can t be equality. Neill is theboss;he is bigger and wiser. That is indeed true. I am the boss, and if thehouse caught fire the children would run to me. They know that I am biggerand more knowledgeable, but that does not matter when I meet them ontheir own ground, the potato patch, so to speak.

When Billy aged five, told me to get out of his birthday party kcause Ihadn t been invited, I went at oncewithout hesitation ust as Billy gets outof my room when I don t want his company. It Is not easy to describe t brelationship between teacher and child, but every visitor to Summerhlllknowswhat I mean when I say that the relationship is ideal. One sees it in theattitude to the staff in general. Kleln, the chemistry man s Allan. Othermembers of the staff are known as Harry, and Ulla, and Daphne. I am Neill,and the cook Is Esther.

In Summerhill,everyone has equal rights. No one is allowed to walk onmy grand piano, and I am not allowed to bormw a boy s cycle without hisperrnlssion. At a General School Meeting, the vote of a child of six counts foras much as my vote does

But, says the knowing one, in practlce of course the voi es of thegrownups count. Doesn t the child of six wait to see how you vote before heraises his hand? I wish he sometimeswould, for too many of my proposals arebeaten. Free children are not easily influenced; the absence of fear accountsfor this phenomenon. Indeed the absence of fear is the hes t thing that canhappen o a child.

Our children do not fear our staff. One of the school rules is that after teno clock at night there shall be quietness on the upper corridor. One night,about eleven, a pillow fight was going on, and I left my desk, where I waswritlng to protest against the row. As I got upstairs, there was a scurryingoffeet and the corridor was empty and quiet. Suddenly I heard a disappointedvoice say, Humph, it s only Neill, and the fun began again at once. When Iexplained that was trying to write a b o k downstairs, they showed concernand at once agreed to chuck the noise. Their scurrying came from the sus-pidon that their bedtime officer (one of their own age) was on their track.

I emphasfie the importance of this absence of fear of adults. A child ofnine will come and tell me he has broken a windowwlth a ball. e ells me,because he isn t afraid of arousingwrath or moral indignation. He may have


6/19

ply fm b t he I t have to fearkin 1 or beingP dTherew s a tlme someyears backwhen the SchoolGovernment resigned,and no onewould stand for e l d o n . I seized the oppo-ty of putting up aneIn the absence of government I herewith declaremyself Dictator.Neilll Soon there were mutterlngs. In the afternoon Vivlen, aged six,came to me and said, Neill, I ve broken a window n the gym.I waved hlm away. Don t bother me with little things like that, I said,and he went.

A little later he came back and said he had broken two windows. By thisdme I was curious, and asked him what the great idea was.

I don t like dictators, he said, and I don t likegoingwithout my grub. (Idiscovered later that the opposition to dictatorship had tried to take itself outon the cooktwho promptly shut up the kitchen and went home.)Well, I asked, what are you going to do about it?Break more windows, he said doggedly.Carry on, said, and he carried on.

When he returned, he announced that he had broken seventeen windows. But mind, he said earnestly, I m going to pay for them.How?

Out of my pocket money.How long will it take me?I did a rapid calculation. About ten years, I said.He looked lum for a minute; then I saw his face light up.Gee, he cried, I don t have to pay for them at all.But what about the private property rule? I asked. The windows re my

prlvate property.I know that but there isn t any private property rule now. There isn t anygovernment, and the government makes he rules.

It may havebeen my expression that made him add, But all the same 111pay for them.But he didn t have to pay for them. Lecturing in London shortly after-

ward, I told the story; and at the end of my talk, a young man came up andh nded me a pound note to pay for the young devil s windows. Two yearslater, Vivien was still telling people of his windows and of the man who paidfor them. He must have been a terrible fool, because he never even saw me.

Children make contact with strangersmore easilywhen fear is unknownto them. English reserve is, at bottom, really fear; and that is why the mostreserved are those who have the most wealth. The fact that Summerhillchildren are so exceptionally friendly to visitors and strangers is a source ofPdde to me and my staff.We must confess, however, that many of o w visitors are people of in-terest to the children. The klnd of visitor most unwelcome to them is thekacher, especially the earnest teacher, who wants to see their drawing and


7/19

12 SUMMERHILLAND A 5 NEIL1writtenwork.The most welcome visitor is the one who has good tales to tellof adventure and travel or k s t of all, of aviation. A boxer or a good tennisplayer is surrounded at once,but visitors who spout theory re left severelyalone.The most frequent remark that vtsitors make is that they cannot tell whois staff and who s pupil. It is true: the feeling of unity is that strong whenchildren are pproved of. There is no deference to a teacher as a teacher. Staffnd pupils have the same food and have to obey the same community laws.The children would resent any special privileges given to the staff.

When I used to give the staff a talk on psychology everyweek there was amuttering that it wasn t fair. I changed the plan and made the talks open toeveryone over twelve. Every Tuesday night, my room is filled with eageryoungsters who not only listen but give their opinions freely. Among thesubjects the children have asked me to talk about have been these: The In-feriority Complex, The Psychology of Stealing,The Psychology of the Gang-ster, The Psychology of Humour, Why Did Man Become a Moralist?,Masturbation, Crowd Psychology. t is obvious that such children will go outinto life with a broad clear knowledge of themselves and others.

The most frequent question asked by Summerhill visitors is, Won t thechild turn round and blame the school for not making him learn arithmeticor music? The answer is that young Freddy Beethoven and young TommyEinstein will refuse to be kept away from their respective spheres

The function of the child is to live his own life not the life that hisanxious parents think he should live, nor a life according to the purpose ofthe educator who thinks he knows what is best. All this interference andguidance on the part of adults only produces a generation of robots.You cannot make children learn music or anything else without to somedegreeconverting them into will-less adults. You fashion them into acceptersof the st tus qu a good thing for a society that needs obedient sitters atdreary desks, standers in shops, mechanical catchers of the 8:3 suburbantrain a society, In short, that s carriedon the shabby shouldersof the scaredlittle man he scared-todeathconformist.

look at SummerhillLet me describe a typical day in Summerhill. Breakfast is from 8 to 9. Thestaff and pupils carry their breakfast from the kitchen across to the dlning-room. Beds are supposed to be made by 930, hen lessons begin.

At the beginning of each term, a timetable is posted. Thus, Derek in thelaboratorymay have Class I on Monday,Class 11on Tuesday, and soon. I havea similar thetable for English and mathematics; Maurice for geography andhistory. The younger cMdren aged seven to nine usually stay with their


8/19

SUMMERHILL SCHOOL A. 5 NEIL1 3own teacher most of the morning but they also go to Science or the ArtRoom

N O pupil iscompelled to attend lessons. But if Jimmy comes to English onMonday and does not make an appearance again until Friday of the followingweek the others quite rightly object that he is holding back the work, andthey may throw him out for impding progress.

Lessons go on until one, but the kindergarteners and juniors lunch at12:30.The school has to be fed in two relays. The staff and seniors sit down tolunch at 1:30.Afternoons are completely free for everyone. What they all do in theafternoon I do not know. garden and seldom see youngsters about. I see thefuniorsplaying gangsters Some of the seniors busy themselves with motorsandradios and drawing and painting. In good weather, seniors play games.Some tinker about in the workshop, mending their bicycles or making boatsor revolvers.

Tea is served a t four. At five, various activities begin. The juniors llke to beread to. The middle group likes work in the rt Room painting, linoleumcuts leather work, basket making. There Is usually a busy group in the pot-tery; in fact, the pottery seems to be a favourite haunt morning and evening.The oldest group works from five onward. The wood and metal workshop isfull every night.On Monday nights, the pupils go to the local cinema at their parentsexpense. When the programme changes on Thursday, those who have themoney go again.

On Tuesday night, the staff and seniors hear my talk on psychology. Atthe same time the juniors have various reading groups. Wednesday night isdance night. ance records are sekcted from a great pile The children are allgood dancers and some visitors say that they feel inferior dancing with them.On Thursday night, there s nothing special on. The seniors go to the cinemasin Leiston or Aldeburgh.Friday is left for any special event, such as rehearsingfor a play.

Saturday night is our most important one, for it is General Schooleetingnight. Dancing usually follows. During the winter months, Sunday istheatre evening.There is no timetable for handiwork. There are no set lessons in wood-working Chfldren make what they want to. And what they want to make isnearly always a toy revolver or gun or boat or kite. They are not much In-terested n elaborate joints of the dovetail variety; even the older boys do notor dif8aalt carpentry. Not many of them take an interest in my ownhd y hammeredbrasswork because you can t attach much of a fantasy toa brass bowl

Ona goo day youmay not see the boy gangsters of Summerhill They


9/19

are In farcornen intent on heirdeedsof derrhg40. Butpou w ll see the girls.They are in or near the house, and never far away from the grownups.You will often find the rt Room ull of girls painting and making bright

thingswith fabrics.In the main, however, I think that the smallboys aremorecreative at least I nwer hear a boy say he is bored because he doesn t knowwhat to do, whereas I sometimes hear girls say that.

Possibly I find the boys more creative than the girlsbecause the schoolmay be better equipped forboys than forgirls Girlsoften and over have littleuse for a workshop with iron and wood. They have no desire to tinker withengines, nor are they attracted by electricity or radio They have thelr artwork which includes pottery, cutting linoleum blocks and painting andsewing work but for some that Is not enough. Boys are just as keen oncooking as girls are The girls and boyswrite and produce their own plays,make their own costumes and scenery.Generally, the acting talent of thepupils is of a high standard because the acting is slncere and not showsffish.

The girls seem to frequent the chemical lab just as often as the boys do.Theworkshop is about the only place that does not attract girls from nine up.

The girls take a less active part in SchoolMeetings han theboys do, and Ihave no ready expl n tion for this fact.Up to a few years ago, girls were apt to come late to Summerhill; we hadlots of failures from conventsand girls schools. I never consider su h a childatrue example of a free education. These girls who came late were usuallychildren of parentswho had no appreciationof freedom for if they had had,their girls would not haw been problems. Then when the girl was cured hereIn Summerhill of er specialfalling she was whisked off by her parents to anice school where she will be educated ; But in recent years we have kengetting girls from homes that believe in Summerhill. A h e unch they are,too, full of spirit and originality and initiative.

We haw lost girls occasionally because of financial reasons;sometimeswhen their brothers were kept on a t expensive prlvate schools. The old tra-dition of making the son he important one n the family dies hard. We havelost both girls and boys through he possessive jealousy of the parents, whofeared that the children might transfer to the school their loyalty towardhome

Summerhillhas always had a bit of a struggle to keep going. Few parentshave the patience and faith to send their children to a school in which theyoungsters can play as an alternative to learning. Parene tremble to thinkthat at twenty-one their sonmay not be capable of earning a living.

Today, Summerhill pupils are mostly children whose parents want thembrought up without restrictive discipline. This Is a most happy circumstance,for in the old days I would have the son of a die-hard who sent his lad to mein desperation. Such parents had no interest at all in freedom fo~hildren


10/19

and seretly they must have considered us a aowd of lunatlc cranks. It wasvery cult to e x p m things to those die-hards.I recall the military gentleman who thought of enrolling his nine-year-

old son as a pupilTheplace seems all right, he said, but I have one fear. My boy may learnto masturbate here.

I asked him why he feared this.It will do him s much ham, he said.It didn t do you or me much harm, did It? I said pleasantly. He went off

rather hurriedly ~ t his son.Then there was the dch mother who, after asMng me questions for an

hour, turned to her husband and said, I can t decide whether to send Marj-orie here or not.Don t bather, I said I have decided for you I m not taking her.I had to explain to her what I meant. You don t really believe in free-dom, said. If Marjorie came here, I should waste half my life explaining toyou what it was all about, and in the end you wouldn t be convinced Theresult would be disastrous for Marjorie for she would be perpetually facedwith the awful doubt: Which s right, home or schml?

The Ideal parents are those who come down and say Summerhill Is theplace for our kids no other school will do.When we opened the school, the difficultieswere especlalSy grave. Wecould only take children from the upper and middle classesbecausewe had tomake ends meet. We had no rich man behind us. In the early days of theschool, a benefactor, who insisted on anonymity, helped us through one ortwo bad times; and later one of the parents made generous gifts a newkitchen, a radio, a new wing on our cottage a newworkshop. He was the idealbenefactor, for he set no conditions and asked for nothing in return. Sum-merhill gave my Jimmy the education I wanted for him, he said simply, forJames Shand was a true believer in freedom for children.

But we have never been able to take the children of the very poor.That sa pity, forwe have had to confine our study to only the childrenof themiddleclass. And sometimes it is difficult to see child nature when I t is hiddenbehind too much money and expensive clothes, When a girl knows hat onher twenty-firstbirthday shewill come into a substantial amount of money tIs not easy to studychildnature in her. Luckily, however, most of the presentand past pupils of Summerhill have not been spoued by wealth; al l of themknow that they must e m living when they leave school.

In Summerhill, we have chambermaidsfrom the town who work for usall day butwho sleepat their ownhomes.They are young girlswho work hardand well. In a free atmosphere where they are not bossed, they work harderand better than maids do who are under authority. They are excellent girls inwery way. I have always felt ashamed of the fact that these girls have to work


11/19

6 SUMM RHILL ND A 5. NUU

Nelt Eha and Z d 954hard because theywereborn p r whereas 1 have had spoiled girls from well-t d o homes who had not the energy to make their own beds. But I mustconfess that I myself hated to make my bed. My lame excuse that I had smuch else to o did not impress the children. They jeered at my defence thatyou can t expect a general to pick up rubbish.I have suggested more than once that the adults in Summerhill are noparagons ofvirtue. We are human like everyone else, and our human railtiesoften come into codict with our theories. In the average home f a childbreaks a plate, fatha or mother m kes a fuss the plate becoming moreimportant than the a d . n Summerhill, if a maid or a child drops a pile ofplates, I say nothingand my wife says nothing.Accidents are accidents.But Ifa child borrows a h k nd leaves I t out In the rain my wife gets angrybecause booksmean much to her. In such a case I am personally indifkrent,for books have little value for me, On the other hand, y wife seems vaguelysurprised when I make a fuss about a ruined chisel. I value tools, but toolsmean Httle to her.In Summerhill, our life is one of givlng all the time. Visitorswear us outmore than the children do for they also want us to give. It may be moreblessed to give than to receive but it certainly is more exhausting.


12/19

. mday night General Meetings alas show the codict betweenand:adults. That is natural, for to have a community of mixed gesto w d c e all to the young children would be completely to

th st Wren. The adults make complaints if a gang of seniors keepsw ke by laughing and talking after all have gone to bed. Harry com-that he spent an hour planing a panel for the front door, went tom ,m came back to find that Billy had converted it into a shelf. I make

against the boys who borrowed my soldering outfit and didn tit. My wif makes a fussbecause three small children came after supperand d d hey were hungry and got bread and jam, and the pieces of breadwere found lying in the hallway the next morning. Peter reports sadly that agang threw his precious clay at each other in the pottery room. So it goeson

the fight between the adult point of vlew and the juvenile lack of awareness.~ u the fight never degenerates into personalities; there Is no feeling of bit-terness against the individual. his conflict keeps Summerhill very muchalive.There is always something happening, and there isn t a dull day in thewhole year.

Luckily, the staff is not too possessive, though admit it hurts me whenh ve bought a special tin of paint at three pounds a gallon and then find thata girl has taken the precious stuff to paint an old bedstead. I am possessiveabout my car and my typewriter and my workshop tools, but I have no feelingof possession about people. If you are possessive about people, you ought notto be a schoolmaster.

The we r and tear of materialsin Summerhillh natural process. I t couldbe obviated only by the introduction of fear. The wear and tear of psychicforces cannot bviated in any way or children ask and must be given.Fifty times a day my sitting-room door opens and a child asks a question: Isthis cinema night?' Why don t I get a P.L. [PrivateLesson]? Have you seenPam? Where s Ena? It is all n a day s work,and I do not feel any strainat thetime, though we have no real private life, partly because the house is not agood one for a school not good from the adult s point of dew, for thechildren are always on top of us. But by the end of term, my wife and I arethoroughly fatigued.One noteworthy fact is that members of the st ff seldom lose theirtempers. That says as much for the children as for the staff, Really, they aredelightful children to livewith and the occasions for losing one s temper arevery few. If a child Is free to approve of himself, he will not usually be hateful.He will not see any fun n rying to make an adult lose his temper.We had one woman teacher who was oversensitive to criticism, and thegirls teased her. They could not tease any other member of the staff, becauseno other member would react. You can only tease people who h ve dignity.Do Summerhill children exhibit the usual aggression of ordinary chHdren?Well, every child has to have some aggression in order to force his w y


13/19

through life. The ex gger ted aggression we see n unfree children is anoverprotest against hate that has been shown toward them. At Summerhillwhere no child feelshe is hated by adults aggression is not sonecessary Theaggressive children we have are Invariably those whose homes give them nolow and understandingWhen was a boy at a village school bloodynoseswere at least a weeklyphenomenon. Aggressionof the hghting type s hate; and youngsters full ofhate need to fight. When children are in an atmosphere in which hate iseliminated they do not show hate.I thhk that the Freudian emphasis on aggression is due to the study ofhomes and schools as thq are You c nnot study canine psychology by ob-serving the retriever on a chain Nor can you dogmatically theorize abouthum n psychologywhenhumanity is on a very strong chain one fashionedby generations of lifehaters. I find that in the freedom of Summerhill ag-gression does not appear in anythlng like the same strength in which it a ppears fn strict schools.

At Summerhill however freedom does not mean the abrogation ofcommon sense. We take every precaution for the s fety of the pupils. hechildrenmay bathe onlywhen there s a lifesaver present for every six cwl-dren; no child under ewnmay cycle on the s t n e t alone These rules comefrom the children themselves voted in a General School Mwting.But there Is no law about climbing trees. Uimblng trees is a part of Ufe seducation; and to prohibit all dangerous undertakings would m ke a child acoward. We prohibit climbing on mfs and we prohibit air guns and otherweapons that might wound. am always anxious when a craze f o r woodenswords begins. 1 insist that the points be covered with rubber or cloth buteven then I am always glad when the m ze is over. It is not easy to draw theline between realistic carefulness and anxiety.

I have never had favourites in the school.Of course I haw always likedsome children k t te r than others but I have managed to k p from revealingit. Possibly the success of Summerhillhas been in part because the childrenfeel that they are all treated alike and treatedwIth respect. fear the existencein any schoolof a sentimental attitude toward the pupils; it is so easy to makeyour geese swans to see a Picasso in a child who can splash colour about

In most schmls where I have taught the staff room w s a little hell ofintrigue hate and jealousy. Our staff room is a happy place The spites sooften seen elsewhere are absent. Under freedom adults acquire the samehappinessand goodwill that the pupils acquire. Sometimes new member ofour staff wIl1 react to freedom very much as children react: he may go un-shaved stay abed too long of mornings even break school laws. Luckily theliving out of complexes takes a much shortertim for adults than it does forchildren.On alternate Sundaynights I tell the younger childrena story about their


14/19

t SUMMERHILL AND A 5 NElLLown advenhues. I have done it for years. I have taken them t o Darkest Africaunder the sea, and over the clouds. Some time ago I made myself die.Summerhill was taken over by a s t r i c t man calIed Muggins He made lessonscompulsory. If you even said Dash, you got caned. I pictured how they allmeekly obeyed his orders.

Those three- t o eight-year-oldsgot furious with me. We didn t. We allran away. We ldlled him with a hammer. Think we would stand a man l ithat?

In the end I found1 could satisfy them only by coming to life again andkickingMr Muggins to the front door. These were mostlysmallchildrenwhohad never known a strla school, and their reaction of fury was spontaneousand natural. A world in which the schoolmasterwas not on their sidewas anappalling one for them to think of not only because of their experience ofSummerhill but alsobecause of their experienceat home where Mummy andDaddy were also on their side.An American visitor, a professor of psychology criticized our school onthe grounds that i t is an island, that it is not fitting into a community andthat it is not part of a largerM a 1unit. My answer is this: If I were t o found aschool in a small own, attempting to make it a part of the community,whatwould happen? Out of a hundred parents, what percentage would approve offree choice In attending lessons? ow many would approve of a child s rightto masturbate? rom the word go I should have to compromisewith what Ibelieve to be truth

Summerhill is an island. It has to be an island, because its parents live intowns miles apart In countries overseas. Since it is impossible to collect allthe parents together in the town of Leiston, Suffolk Summerhill cannot be apart of Leiston s cultural and economic and soda life.

1 hasten to add that the school is not an island to Leiston town. We havem ny contacts wlth local people, and the relationship on both sides is afriendly one. Yet, fundamentally,we are not a part of the communlty. I wouldnever thhk of asldng the editor of the local newspaper to publish successstories about my old pupils.We play games with the town children, but our educational aims are farapart Not having any religious affiliation,we have n o coanexion with re-ligious bodies in the town. If Summerhill were part of the town communitycentre, it would be obliged to give religious teaching to its pupils.

I have the distinct feeling that my American friend did not realize whathis crltidsm meant. I take It that it meant: Neil1 is only a rebel against sodety; is system can do nothlng to weld society into a harmonious unit,cannot bridge the gulf between chfld psychology and the social ignoranceofchild psychology,M e e n ife and anti-life, school and home. My answer sthat I am not an active proselytizer of society: I can only convincesodety thatIt s necessary for it to rid itself of Its hate and Its punishment and its


15/19

SUMMERHILL SCHOOL A 5 NElU 2mystldsm Although I write and say what I W k f society, if I tried to reformsociety by a d on society would lll me as a public danger.

If, for example, I tried to form a soaety in which adolescents would befree to have their ownnatural love life, I shouldbe ruined if not imprisoned asan immoral seducer of youth. Hating compromise as I do, I have to com-promise here, realizing that my primary job is not the reformation of society,but the bringing of h ppiness to some few children

Summerhlll education vs standad educationI hold that the aim of life is to find happiness, which means to find interest,Education should be a preparation for life. ur culture has not been verysuccessful. ur education, politics, and economics lead to war. urmedicineshave not done away with disease. ur religion has not abolished usury androbbery. Our boasted humanitarianism still allows public opinion to approveof the barbaric sport of hunting. The advances of the age are advances inmechanism in radio and television, in electronics, n jet planes. New worldwars threaten, for the world's social conscience is still primitive.

If we feel like questioning today, we can pose a few awkward questions.Why dms man seem to h ve many more diseases than animals have? Whydoes man hate and kill in war when animals do not? Why dms cancer in-crease?Why are there so many suicides?Somany insane sex crimes?Why thehate that is anti-Semitism?Why Negro hating and lynching?Why backbi~ngand spite? Why is sex obscene and a leering joke?Why is king a bastard as d a l disgrace? Why the continuance of religions that have long ago losttheir love and hope and charity? Why thousand whys about our vauntedstate of civilized eminence

I ask hese questions because I am by profession a teacher, one who dealswith the young. I ask these questions because those sooften askedby teachersare the unimportant ones he ones about school subjects. ask what earthlygood can come out of discussions about French or ancient history or what notwhen these subjects don't matter a jot compared to the larger question oflife s natural fulfilment of man's inner happiness.How much of our education is real doing, real self-expression?Handwork

is too often the making of a pin tray under the eye of an expert. Even theMontessori system, well-known as a system of directed play, Is an artificialway of making the child learn by doing. It has nothing creative about it.

In the home, the child is always being taught. In almost every homethere is alwaysat least oneun-grownup grownupwho ushes to showTommyhow his new engine works. There is always someone to lift the baby up on achair when baby wants to ex mine something on the wall: Every t im e weShowTommy how his engineworks we are stealingfrom hat child the joy of


16/19

life the joy of discovery the joy of we mmi ng an obstacle Worse W emake h a t child come o believe that he is inferior, and must depend on help.

Parents are slow in realizing how unimportant the learning side of schoolis. Children, like adults, learn what they want to learn. All prim-giving andmarks and exams sidetrack proper personality development. Only pedantsclaim that learning from b k s s education.

Boob are the least important apparatus in a school. All that any childneeds Is the three R s; the rest should be tools and clay and sports and theatreand paint and freedom.

Most of t he schoolwork that adolescents do is simply a waste of time, ofenergy, of patience. It robs youth of its right to play and play and play; it putsold heads on young shoulders.

When I lecture to students at teacher training colleges and universities, Iam often shocked at the un-grownupnessof these lads and lasses stuffed withuseless knowledge. They know a lot; they shine in dialectics; they can quotethe classics but in their outlook on life many of them are Infants. For theyhave been taught to know but have not been allowed to feel These studentsare friendly, pleasant, eager, but something is lacking the emotional factor,the power to subordinate thinking to feeling. I talk to these of a world theyhave missed and go on missing. Their textbooks do not deal with humancharacter, or with love, or with freedom or wlth selfdetermination. And sothe system goes on, aiming onIy at standards of book learning goes onseparating the head from the heartI t is time that we were challenging the school's notlon of work. t istakenfor granted that every child should learn mathematics, history, geography,some cience, a little art,and certainly literature. It is tlme we realized that theaverage young child b not much interested in any of these subjects.

I prove this with every new pupil. When told that the school Is free verynew pupil cries Hurrah1 You won't catch me doing dull arithmetic andthings '

I am not decrying learning. But learning should come after play. Andlearning should not be deliberately seasoned with play to make it palatable.

Learning is important but not to everyone. Nijinsky could not pass hisschool exams In St Petemburg, and he could not enter the State Balletwithoutpassing those exams. He simply could not learn school subjects his mindwas elsewhere.They faked an exam for him, giving him the answers wit thepapers so a biography says. W ha t a loss to the world if Nijinsky had hadreally to pass those exams

Creators learn what they want to learn in order to have the tools thattheir originality and genius demand. W e do not know how much creation iskilled in the classroom with its emphasis on learning.

I have seen a girl weep nightly overhergeometry Her mother wanted herto go to the university, but the girl's whole soul was artistic. I was delighted


17/19

when 1heard that she had failed her college entrance exams for the seventhm e Possibly, the mother would now allow her to go on t he stage as shelonged to do

some time ago, met a girl of fourteen in Copenhagen who had spentthreeyears in Summerhilland had spokenperfectEnglishhere. I supposeyouare at the top of your class in English, saidShegrimacedruefulfy No,I m at the bottom of my class,because I don tknow English grammar she said. I think that disclosure is about the bestcommentary on what adults consider education

Indifferent scholars who, under discipline, scrape through college oruniversity and become unimaginative teachers, mediocre dmors, and in-competent lawyers would possibly be g mechanics or excellent bricklayersr first-rate policemen.

We h ve found that the boy who cannot or w i l l not learn to read until heis, say, fifteen is always a boy with a mechanical bent who ater on becomes agood engineer or electrician. I should not dare dogmatize about girls whonever go to lessons,especially to mathematics and physics Often such girlsspend much time with needlework, and some, later on In life, take updressmaking and designing. I t is an absurd curriculum that makes a pro-spective dressmaker study quadratic equations or Boyle s Law.

Caldwell COOk wrote a book called he Play Way in which he told howhe taught English by means of play. It was a fascinating book, ull of goodthings, yet I think itwasonly a new way of bolstering the theory that learningis of the utmost importance. Cook held that learningwas so important thatthe pill should be sugared with play. This notion that unless a child islearning something the child is wasting his time is nothing less than a cursea curse that blinds thousands of teachers and ost school inspectors, Fiftyyears ago the watchword was Learn through doing. Today the watchword isLearn through playing. Play is thus used only as a means to an end; but towhat good end I do not really know.

If a teacher sees children playing with mud, and he thereupon impmvesthe shining moment by holding forth about river-bank erosion, what end hashe in view? What child cares about river erosion? Many so-called educatorsbelieve that it does not matter what a child learns as long as he is t ughtsomething. And, of course, with schools as they are just mass productionfactories what can a teacher do but teach something and come o believethat teaching, in itself, matters most of all?

When I lecture to a group of teachers, I commence by saying that I amnot going to speak about school subjects ox discipline or classes For an hourmY audience listens in rapt silence; and after the sincere applause, thechairman announces that I arn ready to answer questions. At least three-quarters of the questions deal wlth subjects and teaching.

1 do not tell is In any superior way. I tell it sadly to show how the


18/19


19/19

SUMMERHILL SCHOOL A. 5 NElLL 5Later on, he got work in a film studio as a camera boy. When he waslearning his job, happened to meet his boss at a dinner party, and I asked

how Tom was doing.The best boy we ever had, the employer said. He never walks he runs.And at week-ends,he is a damned nuisance, for on Saturdays and Sundays he

won t stay away from the studio.There was Jack, a boy who could not learn to read. N o one could teach

Jack Even when he asked for a reading lesson, here was some hidden ob-struction that kept him from distinguishing between b and p, 1and k. He leftschool at seventeen without the ability to read.

Today,Jack is an expert toolmaker. He loves to talk about metalwork. Hecan read now; but so far as I know,he mainly reads articles about mechanicalthings -and sometimes he reads works on psychology. I do not think he hasever read a novel; yet he speaksperfectly grammaticalEnglish,and his generalknowledge is remarkable. An merican visitor, knowing nothing of his story,said to me, What a clever lad Jack islDiane was a pleasant girlwhowent to lessons without much Interest. Hermind was not academic. For a long time, I wondered what she would do.When she left at sixteen, any inspector of schools would have pronouncedher a poorly educated girl, Today, Diane is demonstrating a new kind ofcookery in London. She is highly skilled at her work; and more important, sheis happy in it.

ne firm demanded that Its employees should have at least passed thestandard college entrance exams. I wrote to the head of the firm concerningRokrt T h i s lad did not pass any exams for he hasn t got an academic head.But he has got guts. Robert got the job.Winifred, aged thirteen, a new pupil, told me that she hated all subjects,and shoutedwith joy when I told her she was free to do exactly as she liked.You don t even have to come to schml f you don t want to, I said.She set herself to have a good time, and she had one for a few weeks.Then I noticed that she was bored.

Teach me something, she sald to me one day; I m bored stiff.Rightol I said cheerfully, what do you want to learn?I don? know, he said.And I don t either, said I, and I left her.onths passed. Then she came to me again. I am going to pass the

college entrance exams, she said, and I want lessonsfrom you.Every morning she worked with me and other teachers, and she workedWell She confided that the subjectsdidnot interest her much, but the aim didInterest her. Winifred found herself by being allowed to be herself.

I t is interesting to know that free children take to mathematics.They indjoy in geography and nhistory. Free children cull from the offered subjectsonly those which interest them. Free children spend most time at other

summerhill and asneill 5-24b

Documents