Do you think young people should be involved in cooking and cleaning? Do you think they should be included in all of the activities in a household or a school? Is Summerhill different from other schools just because it is a democratic school and does that imply that children should be more involved with the day-to-day maintenance of the place? How do you prepare young people for adulthood?
There are some perfumed journalists who like to have us shudder with horror that the dirty underclass might swarm out of their council estates and dismantle the achievements of culture. These people look at the dirty faces of Summerhill children as a sign that it does not work.
Ombudsman or Prefect. “An ombudsman? So that’s a bit like a prefect then, isn’t it?” says John who has been to a posh public school. “Sure, they are elected at Summerhill but it’s basically the same idea. You take the older and more responsible kids and give them some authority so that they can do…
This is the same post that Dani Rius wrote for us last week in Catalan. He offers us his vision of Summerhill School, from the initial charm and delight, through a difficult period of adaptation to a settled consideration of what it might mean for children and adults. The learning we read about here takes…
John Tree Risk is an acceptable part of children’s lives at Summerhill School. You cannot give children freedom without risk, and there is nothing quite like the issue of risk to divide opinion about what is best for children. There is a strong, intuitive desire in parents to protect their children, to minimise the risks…
The school I can see from the window of Carmen’s apartment in Avilés has no trees. There used to be a row of them around the playground but they were taken down. If you look at the image you can see where they were: that concrete strip in the front. I can’t think why they…
Dani was a houseparent in the Cottage at Summerhill School for a year. He now works in a school near where he lives in St Pol, just a little to the north of Barcelona and keeps in contact with many Summerhill kids. The experience of working at the school was important for him in defining…
At the Krishnamurti school they eat good vegetarian food. There is plenty of it and the parents are all satisfied. I have spent long periods of my life as a vegetarian, have two daughters who have been vegetarians and have a lot of sympathy with the ecological and health merits of vegetarianism but Krishnamurti rubs…
What a little money can do… We set up Summerhill Democratics to help schools that want to follow the model of democratic education embodied in A.S. Neill’s Summerhill School. Our work consists in helping schools give children real freedoms, stepping back as teachers and adults and allowing children to grow into adulthood without being measured,…
Catalunya is the home of radical thinking. Walking around St Pol and talking education this past week has led me to think about the influence of the past on the present, the differences between the worlds we face and the worlds of Neill and Francisco Ferrer and what the challenges are for the future.
