Geoff is an authoritarian. He believes there are bad people in the world and the police are there to protect us from them. He believes the royal family is an essential bulwark of authority and stability in the world. He believes nationalism is an atavistic tribal urge that will never be replaced by internationalism.
Anarchy Rules… um… OK? Democratic schools flirt with anarchism. Anywhere you have a small democratic community that turns its face away from Socialist central planning on the one side and Capitalist manipulation of the market on the other, anarchy is bound to be mentioned. Anarchists look at Summerhill in confusion. “Why didn’t Neill come right out…
Giving Choices: the Invisible Teacher It doesn’t matter how nice you are, how exciting you are, or how well-meaning you are, if your basic instinct is to reduce choices you shouldn’t be working in a democratic school. This is a tricky issue. You might be a real believer, for example, convinced that you have the…
Touch is problematic in most schools. Summerhill is different. Sometimes it seems like a troop of monkeys, but there are safeguards to ensure that touch does not become something it shouldn’t. In this post I ask if something can be learnt from the way things are done at Summerhill.
Do you know what is good for children? You are wrong! I have heard people say things like, “children love structure” or “routine is good for children” or, on the other side, “children need to be left alone” and “freedom is the best tonic for children.” I don’t believe any of this because I don’t…
Zoë Readhead, the principal of Summerhill School, loves horses. In this post I talk about how her love of horses has had a beneficial effect on the school.
Examinations are the triumph of small minds over vitality. Summerhill School has always offered examinations but tries to limit their stultifying effect. In this post I shall describe how examinations work at Summerhill and suggest how this could be a model for other schools in their attempts to promote freedom. Many readers of this blog…
Getting older is not the same as gaining maturity: we have all known teachers who are less mature than their students, for example. Age divisions in schools are an attempt to impose a system on a natural process. In schools with year groups this system is a mechanical one, as though the children were machine…
Creativity is a buzz word in education these days. Just plug the word into Google and see what comes up. You might have to scroll down past Sir Ken Robinson, but you will find that there is great interest in stimulating creativity in children. It is not just education. There are experts in creative business,…
Summerhill School is a family business. This is not the way one normally thinks about schools, but Summerhill is far from being a normal school. In this post I want to talk about the family and explain why, in its own unusual way, it works for Summerhill to be in the family. The current Principal…
