In the 1960s, British educator Alexander Sutherland Neill wrote a book ‘Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing’ in which he depicted one of the most significant educational-pedagogue experiments of modern times. He founded a school named Summerhill in 1921, which operated on completely new and different principles than traditional European schools.
He wrote the book in 1960, on his experience, school and children educated in it, which has been a significant read not only for educators but also ‘a book for every house’. Parents in our country also read ‘Summerhill’ searching for answers on issues of proper child-rearing and education.
While Neill was heralded as a man who adapted school to a child’s true nature, not the other way around, many criticized him, primarily for the poor quality of lectures and classes held in Summerhill, and then for students’ ‘absence of responsibility’ and their overly anarchist ideas.
And what was Summerhill like in Neill’s times? The school was first founded in Dresden, but it was quickly relocated to the Leiston village area in East Suffolk, approximately 150 km from London. ‘Summerhill began as an experimental school. It is no longer such. It is now a demonstration school since it demonstrates that freedom works’, wrote Neill in the book ‘Summerhill’. At the time of book writing, the school hosted around 45 students aged five to sixteen, some of them foreigners – five from Scandinavia, one from the Netherlands, one from Germany and one from America. Many of them were labelled problematic children in previous schools or by their parents, while some came because their parents believed that Neill’s concept of education was more fitting than the conventional one.
The children in Summerhill were truly free in the sense they could do absolutely everything that came to their mind, unless it affected other residents of Summerhill, students, teachers and other school staff. They did not have to attend classes. They did not have to have hobbies or do whatever was offered to them – for example, to work in workshops, make art pieces, sew, read etc. If they wanted, they could lie around all day which some of them did after arriving in Summerhill. They needed several weeks to several months to get interested in school events, and adjust to the regular procedures of this democratic community. All decisions in school were made at the community meetings. They were attended by everyone, including the school headmaster and a five-year-old, with everybody having equal rights. It happened often, remembered Neill, that the adults got voted over and not-praise-worthy decisions were made, such as the times when smoking was allowed to students since it was not fair that adults were allowed to smoke and children were not. Were they not all equal?
‘I think that a child is innately wise and realistic. If they are allowed to be independent, if left to themselves without an adult suggestion of any kind, they will develop as far as they are capable of developing. Logically, Summerhill is a place where people who have an innate ability and wish to become scholars will become scholars, while those who are only fit to sweep the streets will sweep the streets. However, we have not produced a street cleaner so far, nor do I talk snobbishly, for I would rather see a school produce a happy street cleaner than a neurotic scholar’ Neill explained.
He mentioned examples of former students’ fates, some of which became renowned physicians and professors, and some joyful handymen who loved their job more than anything. There is a list of important people who attended this school on Wikipedia’s page on Summerhill School. They are probably unknown in our country, one is a lecturer at the University of Brighton, another is a musical producer, the third designs rock album covers, the fourth is a children’s author, the fifth is a professor of architecture, and there is a woman who is an actress. There are no Nobel Prize Laureates or eminent scientists definitely, but that is not the goal of Summerhill.
Neill died in 1973, with his wife taking over the management of the school. Nowadays, the school is run by Neill’s daughter Zoë, according to similar principles. On the website of the school, there is a motto ‘Founded in 1921, and still ahead of its time’.
M.Đ.
Photo: Summerhill/Philipp Klaus