Summerhill -
the idea and its
implementations
About A. S. Neill [founder of
Summerhill]
We already have talked a bit about the idea of
Summerhill. As Mr. Neill puts it, the basic idea was to make a school that
fits the child, not the other way round.
Alexander Sutherland Neill
was born in Scotland in 1883. He was the fourth of 13 children and his father
was a village school master. In this times it was common in Scotland to punish
pupils with whips. At the age of 25, he enrolled in the Edinburgh University
and got his degree in English. After that he became like his father the school
master of a small school in Gretna Green, in the South of Scotland. There
he began to form his ideas on how to educate children and after a year there
he wrote his first book: "A Dominie's Log" what means as much as "diary of
a school master".
In this book he wrote:
"I have converted a hard-working school into a playground, and I rejoice.
[...] They have done what they liked; they have sung their songs while they
were working at graphs, they have eaten their sweets while they read their
books [...]."
In 1917 Neill visited a community for teenagers
who broke the law that should help them to get integrated into society again.
It was called "Little Commonwealth" and lead by Homer Lane. Lane was a firm
believer in the innate goodness of children. At this community he saw
self-government at work. Homer Lane also introduced Neill to two elements
that were the most important for the founding of Summerhill: First, the
self-government meeting, and second, the importance of a child's emotional
well-being over academic development. That impression he got there is reflected
in his book "Summerhill" from 1964. He wrote: "I would rather see a school
produce a happy street cleaner than a neurotic scholar." That means it
is much more important to him that the child is happy than that the child
learns a lot. He also adapted the belief that a child is good. In the same
book he wrote: "All it required was what we had - a complete belief in
the child as a good, not an evil being. For almost forty years, this belief
in the goodness of the child has never wavered; it rather has become a final
faith." Besides Homer Lane, Neill also got influenced by Sigmund
Freud.
As long as Neill did live (he became 93 years old),
he lead the school, but he did not start to teach from the beginning. What
he did, was something called by him "private lections". That meant you could
go to him and ask him to talk. You could talk with him about all you wanted
to without anyone else hearing about it. Later he also taught English and
Math.
About the history of
Summerhill
Summerhill was founded in 1921 in Hellerau, a suburb
of Dresden. It was part of an International school called the Neue Schule.
However, after some month Neill began to disapprove of the way the school
was led. The people who ran the school disapproved of tobacco, fox-trot and
cinemas. Neill on the other hand wanted the children to live their own lives.
They should do what they wanted to.
Neill said: "If Mary or David wants to laze
about, lazing about is the one thing necessary for their personalities at
the moment. Every moment of a healthy child's life is a working moment. A
child has no time to sit down and laze. Lazing is abnormal, it is a recovery,
and therefore it is necessary when it exists." That means he thinks,
it is not normal when somebody is lazy and sees it as a sign that something
is wrong. Being lazy then is the children’s way of recovering from the
problem and therefore should be allowed.
So Neill decided to move to a place in Austria,
but the local people, a Catholic community, opposed the school and about
one year later he had to move to the town of Lyme Regis in the south of England,
to a house called Summerhill. The school continued there until 1927, when
it moved to the present site at Leiston in the county of Suffolk.
Neill continued to run the school until he died
in 1973. His second wife Ena helped him later. After Neill died Ena ran the
school until her retirement in 1985. After that her daughter Zoe took over.
She is still the current headteacher.
About the idea of
Summerhill
Due to the fact that we have read the work sheet
about Summerhill you will hear some things maybe twice. The aims could be
described as the following:
To allow children freedom to grow emotionally;
to give children power over their own lives;
to give children the time to develop naturally; to create a happier childhood
by removing fear and coercion [force] by adults.
I will give you some of the basic beliefs Neill
based the school on. I already said that he believed in the goodness of children.
Another one is that for him the aim of education is to be a happy person,
not a smart or a hard working one. It is not enough, in his view, to develop
intellectual capacities, there is also a need for emotional growth. The education
has to fit the child, not the other way round. Forced discipline and punishment
creates fear and leads to hate. I will talk later about the point of
freedom.
I guess we all already know that going to class
is entirely voluntary. However, the teachers do have an obligating schedule
when they have class and so on. Some kids even cry when they are sick and
therefore will miss school. Sometimes Neill tells stories or fairy tales
to the students and one time he told them a story about Summerhill. He told
them that he did die and a strict man took the command of the school. This
man ordered that every one had to go to class and if somebody said a word
in class, he got punished by beatings. All children obeyed him without saying
anything. "That is not true", said the younger children angrily to Neill.
"We all ran away. Do you think we could stand a man like
this?"
All general rules and ideas can be summarised by
the saying "freedom, not license". This is the only term I will translate
into German to make it fully clear. "Freiheit, nicht Zügellosigkeit"
is the way, life goes at Summerhill. That means you are allowed to do everything
you want, as long as it does not interfere with the freedom of others. For
example you can read a book instead of going to class, but you cannot play
your drum set at 4 o’clock in the morning, for it would disturb the
people who want to sleep. A visitor describes the spirit of Summerhill this
way: "There may be bullying at Summerhill, but I have not seen it. It
may be that the older kids set themselves up as kings over their juniors,
but I do not perceive a hint of it. What I do see is children of eight jumping
unexpectedly on the back of fifteen-year-old boys, and being carried round
with perfect good humour; younger kids upset by some sudden reverse being
comforted by an arm round their shoulder from an older kid; kids sitting
in odd corners talking eagerly about the matter of the moment, with entire
disregard for whether their interlocutors [people you talk to at the moment]
are their own age, or younger or older by a year, three years, or six years
... It would be stupid to suggest that they do not all have their own special
friends, but I do not think any of them have any special
enemies."
People who believe in Summerhill think that the
advantage of giving children freedom and power over their own lives is that
they get a feeling of self-respect, responsibility to others and lets them
develop self-motivation.
At Neill´s time his view on sexuality was
totally revolutionary. He approved of one child's sexuality and thought that
living out this sexuality is a condition for a fearless growing-up. It was
okay to walk around naked for the children and the adults, especially in
hot summer days and he found masturbation just natural. However, he forbade
sexual interactions between the kids, based on the fear that people might
close down his school.
In on of his books, Neill remembered an interesting
situation. A father, working at the military, came with his nine-year-old
son to the school and said: "I like the school. I am only afraid that my
son could start to masturbate." Neill asked him why he is afraid of that.
"Because it is bad for him", the father answered. Neill replied: "Well, it
was not bad for me and neither for you, wasn't it?" The father never came
back. It is also allowed to say coarse words, but only inside the school
area, not in town, and they are allowed to smoke. Neill said that almost
all kids start to smoke when they find out that nobody cares. But they also
stop usually after some days and prefer more interesting things like sweets
or so. Alcohol is also not forbidden, but after some tastes most kids do
not drink, and the older kids rarely get drunk.
Neill remembered another situation that sums up
the life at Summerhill pretty well. I will read it like he wrote
it.
"Tom came to us when he was five years old and
when he left school with 17, he never attended any classes. A lot of his
time he spent in the workshop, where he produced all sorts of things. His
parents were really worried of his chances for the future. Tom never showed
the slightest desire of learning how to read. When he was nine, I found him
one evening reading a book about David Copperfield. ´Good evening´
I said and asked: ´Who did teach you to read?´ I taught it myself,
he replied. Some years later he came to me and asked: How do you add one
half and two fifth? I did explain it to him. Then I asked him if he wanted
to know something else. No thanks, he said." Tom later worked in a film studio
as camera man and his boss said that he was the best man he ever
had.
I said earlier that there were two important things
for the founding of Summerhill. The importance of a child's emotional well-being
over academic development and the self-government meeting. What they do to
achieve the first one is clear, I guess. If a child feels that it would rather
sit in the park than going to class, it can do so, for it makes it feeling
better.
Now I want to explain the second basis, the
self-government meeting.
The self-governing
All people at Summerhill are equal and their is
no hierarchy whatsoever. That means all kids, the small and the bigger ones
and all staff members have the same rights and duties. No teacher or staff
member can punish a student in a way that the students could not apply to
the teachers or staff members also. That means if a student can get a punishment
for, lets say, throwing trash in the park, the teacher can get a punishment
too, if he does the same.
Once a week there is held a so called General meeting.
Every student, teacher and staff member takes part in it. They discuss every
item or proposal brought in by a person, no matter if it is a student or
a teacher. Also changes of the school rules or school laws are brought to
a vote there. Everybody gets one vote. They also decide for example whether
the last day of school should be on a Friday or already a Thursday. The chair
man of such a meeting is usually one of the older kids and it is a rather
hard job to do, because you have to make sure that about 70 children of different
ages sit still and listen for about an hour. The chair man can fine somebody
for making noise, can place people elsewhere or throw them out
altogether.
There are still some issues that are not covered
by this general meeting. Accusations that people have broken the school rules
for example are dealt with in another meeting, the Tribunal which is held
weekly too.
For example if someone rode your bike without your
permission or stole something, you can bring him up to the Tribunal. There
it will be decided whether the accusations are true and if so, what the fine
might be. They can also decide, that, if for example your lunch box got stolen,
that the community buys you a new one. The teachers can also be brought up
to the Tribunal if they broke the school rules. Neill wrote about another
punishment that shows how the children look at the way of teaching. One time
a student was found guilty of something and the punishment was supposed to
not allow him to go to class for a week. Most students thought that this
was definitely to hard.
Some laws are for example that you must be 12 years
old or older to get a knife. You must have a working front and back brake
on your bike. You are not allowed to watch TV during lessons or meal times.
No graffiti is allowed, except on a special wall where graffiti is allowed.
The penalty for this is example a £1.00 fine.
A typical is case of the general meeting might
look as followed. The older kids in the school wanted to have no bedtimes
and proposed that they could stay up as late as they liked provided that
they respected the silence hour, which was then 10.30pm. There was a long
discussion about it as many people had things to say on the subject. Some
were worried about the possible noise; others about lack of sleep. After
a while they voted on it and it was agreed to try the new scheme for one
week to see if it would work. A week later there was a special meeting because
one of the staff members had been woken up several times with noise in the
night. The community decided that the older kids had had their chance, and
should get their bedtimes back again. It might be interesting that the kids
highly outnumber the adults at the meetings, but the majority still voted
for the old bedtimes.
There are some things, however, that are not covered
at the general meeting. It does not rule on the hiring and firing of staff,
teachers' pay, building work, and so on. The principle is that the children
should have power over what is important in their everyday lives, and they
do not consider that important to their everyday lives. Well, some might
argue about that and a similar school in England covers these points at their
general meeting too. It has been reported that they do not have problems
with that.
Facts about Summerhill
Summerhill runs now for seventy-five years and
has usually about 65 students between the ages 5-16 years. About 1980 they
had only 45 students, while in 1995 they had 68 and in 1998 they had 61 students.
18 were English, 14 German, 2 French, 3 American, 1 Korean, 9 Taiwanese,
and 13 of Japanese nationality. There are three full-time so-called
"Houseparents". One is for the ages 6-10 (also called San), one for the ages
10-12 (called House) and one for the ages 12-14 (called Shack). There are
8 full-time teachers for math, Science, English, Languages, Humanities, Woodwork
and Art. They also have part-time teachers for Japanese, English as foreign
language, Music (drums, cello, piano, guitar). All teachers have at least
university qualifications. They live either among the students in a building
or in caravans. All staff members are paid the same wage and there is no
hierarchy. Then there is a team of "day" staff members that do not live at
Summerhill, including some teachers, cleaning staff, cooks, and so
on.
The lessons take 40 minutes. Subjects offered at
the moment are:
Science (Biology, Physics, Chemistry, and Astronomy), Maths, English, French,
German, Japanese, Woodwork, Art, Pottery, Drama, History, Geography, Computing,
Music (by arrangement) and various sports (by arrangement). Religion is not
offered at Summerhill for Neill totally disapproved of it. But if a child
is religious when it comes to Summerhill, it can practise the religion like
it used to. Most of the kids, though, stop going to church or so, because
they find it boring.
There is an outdoor swimming pool, a computer study
room, games field, dark room, pet area, skateboard ramp, tennis court, theatre,
music room and more.
The school offers all standard English school exams
to students who want to take them, but they do not have to take them. Usually
everybody takes some before they leave school.
Summerhill is a boarding school, that means you stay there during the entire
school year which is divided into three terms. They also do take "day" students.
The kids sleep in rooms of three or four people, boys and girls divided.
The rooms never get checked and they never have to clean them up. The financial
basis comes from the school fees of the parents that are not considered very
low.
Problems at Summerhill
To this point all sounded a bit rosy and to give
you a balanced picture , I just want to mention some of the disadvantages
or not so glorious points of Summerhill.
The government and the Office for Standards in
Education (a state controlled organisation to evaluate the work of schools;
OFSTED) complain that children come later than usual to literacy, that means
they learn to read and to write later than other. Summerhill says however
that it does not mean that they are worse in reading and writing when they
leave the school.
Another thing is that some kids deliberately try
to be disruptive and destructive as possible. These are usually people that
are new at Summerhill and came from a more conventional school. The older
these kids are and the longer they have spent time in a conventional education,
the longer it takes until they settle down. For that reason Summerhill has
adapted a policy that they take only students under 11 years, except in special
circumstances. In the average it takes about three month for new students
to go the first time to a class.
Another point I have found is a film called "Summerhill
at 70", originally broadcasted on Channel 4 in the USA. It is not really
a problem, but shows a conflict that still exists. It shows Summerhill as
a place full of hate and violence. The staff at Summerhill says that it draws
a wrong picture of Summerhill, because in these two weeks, the film makers
stayed there, they got a new staff member with his family that was considered
a "family from hell" and a Japanese boy who lived at Summerhill for over
6 years died suddenly of an asthma attack. That events lead to an unusual
atmosphere, they said.
The high price might not be considered as a problem,
but I still want to mention it as being a disadvantage. Some people argue
that Summerhill is a school for a privileged minority, because in 1972 the
school fee for students older than 12 years was about £800 (about 3500
DM). That would have the consequence that the children life and learn with
the knowledge that they still can get an high school diploma after Summerhill
if they really wanted to. But Neill on the other hand realised that problem
and supposed several times that the students should put all their allowance
together. He thought it was unjust that one student has twice as much money
to spend than another. But on a general meeting where he supposed it, a student
got up and noted that Neill can afford a car, but some of his teachers cannot.
Neill said he felt like a liar.
That leads to another disadvantage. The school
is a paradise with a lot of freedom that does not fit into the outside world.
Combined with the fact that Summerhill is a boarding school the children
grow up in a total different way than the world is going at the moment. The
Berlin author Lutz van Dick complained in 1979: "School should not make
you so satisfied that you can bear the hard adult life easier, but should
make you so strong that you are able to face your conflicts and to make you
wish to do it better."
I already talked about Neill´s view on sexuality,
but I left something out. Nowadays some of his views are very old-fashioned
or even considered sexist. For example did he show in his children books
he wrote the typical role models of girls cooking in the kitchen and boys
always playing war. He also thought that homosexuality was kind of an illness
and therefore he was proud that Summerhill did not produced one homosexual
so far. He said: "The reason for that is that freedom produces healthy
children." Also he added that he would never hire a homosexual or lesbian
teacher. That adds to the disadvantage that Summerhill is like an unrealistic
island or paradise where everything is like it is supposed to
be.
That is all I want to tell you about Summerhill
for now.
At the end I want to read an interview (November
1998) with a girl who has been at Summerhill for eight years.
Susan, a sixteen year old
girl (UK)
1) How old were you when you
left Summerhill? Sixteen.
2) What age did you come to
Summerhill? Eight.
3) Did you take exams at
Summerhill? If so, what were they? Yes, Drama, Rural Science, CDT, English
CORE, English extended, combined science double award, biology.
4) What are you planning to
do next? Drama at College in London.
5) Do you have a long-term
direction you see your life going in, e.g. becoming a Vet, acrobat, fashion
show hostess etc., or is it undecided? A famous actress.
6) Has going to Summerhill
helped you to get interviews, jobs, positions on courses, and if so, how?
No.
7) What effect do you think
non-compulsory lessons had on you? All the kids who have come out of
state schools on my course can't read, I am one of the only fluent readers
among them.
8) Do you think that
non-compulsory lessons were an advantage or a disadvantage? If we had
compulsory lessons I would never have discovered that I want to be an actress,
because I could choose to go to Drama. Going to lessons you enjoy really
trains your brain to actually think for yourself and figure things out and
have common sense. I don't feel at all disadvantaged, in fact I feel advantaged
because I know how to think for myself and work things out for myself.
9) What do you think Summerhill
has contributed to who you are now? Summerhill allowed me to be myself
and approved of it rather than objecting.
10) What was the most valuable
thing for you about going to Summerhill, and how do you think it is going
to affect you? There are lots things such as patience with other people,
sorting things out for myself, finding things to do for myself, responsibility
to myself and others.
11) Is there any way that
Summerhill and the community of Summerhill has let you down? Not really,
it is cold in the winter in my room.
12) What have been other people's
reaction to you going to Summerhill? "Are you allowed to smoke? Are you
allowed to drink? Are you allowed to have sex all the time?" and things like
that.
13) What will you miss about
Summerhill? Everything, the back door, being fined every morning (for
getting up late), just everything.
14) How have you changed since
coming to Summerhill? I think if I had stayed at a normal school I would
have ended up really hating adults. Already as it is I have a bit of a problem
with adults sometimes - I think it would have been worse.
15) Are you looking forward
to your future? Yes, immensely!
16) Do you feel in control
of your life? Yes.
17) In your new environment
there may be rules that you may not like, how will you deal with that?
I think I'll just grin and bear it. If they are completely ludicrously unfair
then I may have a word with someone about it.
18) If you had your time at
Summerhill again, would you do anything differently? I would have brought
Jane up the minute she started bullying me instead of when she left.
Yeah, that's all. Are there any
questions?
sources:
- Neill, A.S.: Summerhill, London 1964
- Neill, A.S.: Summerhill, A radical approach to child rearing, Hart Publishing
Co., New York 1960 (read in the German edition: Erziehung in Summerhill,
das revolutionäre Beispiel einer freien Schule, Szczesny Verlag,
München 1965)
- Neill, A.S.: That dreadful school, 1936 (read in the German edition:
Selbstverwaltung in der Schule, Pan-Verlag, Zürich 1950)
- Van Dick, Lutz: Alternativschulen, Informationen, Probleme, Erfahrungen,
Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg 1982
- Internet self-projection of Summerhill under:
http://www.s-hill.demon.co.uk/index.htm, accessed 11/30/1998
The picture shows A. Neill attending a General
meeting /taken from one of his books).
© 1999 robert kneschke
This is a speech about a school called Summerhill
in England. I am very interested in different kinds of educational systems,
so I did choose this topic for a speech. I put it on the Lanowa website to
show that there are other ways to educate children. I do not know it it would
work with the kids from camp, but it is just something I want people to think
about.
