Summerhill School - Democratic schooling in England. Summerhill School. Summerhill School is an independent British boarding school that was founded in 1921 by Alexander Sutherland Neill with the belief that the school should be made to fit the child, rather than the other way around.
It is run as a democratic community; the running of the school is conducted in the school meetings, which anyone, staff or pupil, may attend, and at which everyone has an equal vote. These meetings serve as both a legislative and judicial body. Members of the community are free to do as they please, so long as their actions do not cause any harm to others, according to Neill's principle "Freedom, not Licence. " This extends to the freedom for pupils to choose which lessons, if any, they attend. History[edit] Summerhill School was founded in 1921 in Hellerau near Dresden, Germany by Neill as part of Neue Schule ("New School").
After Neill died in 1973 it was run by his wife, Ena, until 1985.[1] Philosophy[edit] Classes are voluntary at Summerhill. Academics[edit] Ombudsmen[edit] A. A. S. Neill. Early life and career[edit] Alexander Sutherland Neill was born in Forfar, Scotland on 17 October 1883 to George and Mary Neill.
He was their fourth son, one of the eight that survived of 13. He raised in an austere, Calvinist house with values of fear, guilt, and adult and divine authority, which he later repudiated. As a child, he was obedient, quiet, and uninterested in school. His father was the village dominie (Scottish schoolmaster) of Kingsmuir, near Forfar in eastern Scotland, and his mother had been a teacher before her marriage.
Children usually left the local school for Forfar Academy at the age of 14, and per his pedigree, Neill was especially expected to go. Neill became an assistant teacher at the Newport Public School in the wealthy Newport-on-Tay, where he learned to dance and appreciate music and theater. Summerhill (book) Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing is a book about the English boarding school Summerhill School by its headmaster A.
S. Neill, known for introducing his ideas to the American public. It was published in 1960 and later revised as Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood in 1993. In a letter to A. S. The publisher and Neill disagreed over the choice of author for the book's foreword. The book debuted in America on November 7, 1960 during the week of John Kennedy's election. It sold 24,000 copies in its first year, 100 thousand in 1968, 200 thousand in 1969, and two million total by 1970. Richard Bailey wrote that the book "marked the birth of an American cult" with Neill and Summerhill at its center as Americans began to emulate the school and form support institutions. Avrich, Paul (2005). Freedom versus license. In moral and legal philosophy, there exists a distinction between the concepts of freedom and license.
The former deals with the rights of the individual; the latter covers the expressed permission (or lack thereof) for more than one individual to engage in an activity. As a result, freedoms usually include rights which are usually recognized (often, not always, in an unconditional manner) by the government (and access to which is theoretically enforced against any and all interferences). Licenses, on the other hand, are distributed to individuals who make use of a specific item, expressing the permission to utilize the item or service under specified, conditional terms and boundaries of usage. Related topics[edit] References[edit] Neill, A.
External links[edit] Excerpt from Montague Brown, The One Minute Philosopher, on the Saint Anselm Philosophy Blog: Ideas and Opinions from the Philosophy Department at Saint Anselm College. SUMMERHILL (ep1) BFI InView. SUMMERHILL SCHOOL. Summerhill at 70 (1992) Summary Intimate and controversial Cutting Edge documentary gives an inside look at Summerhill School.
Summerhill School is an independent British boarding school that was founded in 1921 by Alexander Sutherland Neill with the belief that the school should be made to fit the child, rather than the other way around. It is still run as a democratic community; the running of the school is conducted in the school meetings, which anyone, staff or pupil, may attend, and at which everyone has an equal vote. These meetings serve as both a legislative and judicial body. Members of the community are free to do as they please, so long as their actions do not cause any harm to others, according to Neill's principle "Freedom, not Licence. " Movie Reviews Quoted from the Summehill website: 'Summerhill at Seventy' documentary film We allowed a couple of anthropologist filmmakers from the US to stay at the school with their family and make a fly-on-the-wall documentary.
Summerhill at 70. Summerhill at 70 At last!!!