Activation not Inspiration I’ve seen waves of inspiration, waves of media attention ( especially in the early 70’s), waves of joyful, inexperienced educational pilgrims come and inevitably leave during my 47 years in Democratic Free School education. And, yes it is true Democratic Free Schools are mildly more plentiful now: a light dusting twinkling…
Big Little or In Between Here There and Everywhere We’ve been talking about democracy and scale … size of the school and the building and the finances and the student population and the number of staff and so on. Can a democratic free school environment work regardless of scale; how does scale change delivery? Are…
Leonard’s bittersweet experience of child romance. How he learnt to hate the system.
What is depressing about the habitat is the regimentation and the lack of choice. This is why children can be happier in a less expensive environment so long as they are not being deprived of all freedom.
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…
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…
