Summerhill Take Away: Teaching at Summerhill
Teaching at Summerhill is no big secret. It should be the most natural thing in the world. But here is a list of ten ideas that can help to keep you on track as a Summerhill teacher.
The Curriculum
Broad Definitions of the Curriculum Democratic Education has a bad reputation for chucking out the whole curriculum. It is time to get over this. The option is to forever be at the mercy of charismatics leading children up the garden path. I’d like to start by proposing three principles. Let’s make a curriculum appropriate to…
Qualities of Teachers 3 – Beyond the Classroom
What should democratic schools expect from their teachers beyond the classroom. This short post considers the qualities of democratic school teachers outside the main area of their activity: teaching.
The Reduced Curriculum III: Getting it Wrong and Getting it Right
Here I talk about my own experiences as the English teacher at Summerhill School and what those experiences meant for my evolving awareness of what a reduced curriculum might be.
The Reduced Curriculum 1 The Podcast
Introduction to the reduced curriculum in Summerhill-style schools.
Right From Wrong
Do you think we should teach difference between right and wrong? I don’t. Here’s why.
Sunday Basics: Free Choice
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…
Sunday Basics: Equality
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…
Summerhill Saturday Takeaway # 6: The Right to be Bored
What do you do when the kids are bored? Do you change your tack and do something more interesting, something more relevant? Do you pep things up and make it all a bit more exciting? In this post I want to talk about the Summerhill approach to boredom, because it frequently surprises and challenges visitors:…
Thoughts: Does School Have to be So Terribly Boring?
I was talking to a retired biology professor from the United States on the Camino de Santiago. Brian grew up in New Jersey as a scavenger kid hunting muskrats on the mudflats. He’d take them across the bridge into Manhattan and sell the pelts to the Jewish furriers, making money for himself even as…
