Summerhill

Summerhill, a pioneering experiment in progressive, democratic education founded in 1921 by A. S. Neill, is a coeducational boarding and day school located in Suffolk, England, directed today by Zoe Readhead, Neill's daughter. Begun as part of an international school called the Neue Schule near Dresden, Germany, the school soon moved to a castle on top of a mountain near Sonntagsberg in Austria, and in 1923 to the town of Lyme Regis in the south of England, to a house called Summerhill. In 1927, the school moved to its present site at Leiston in Suffolk, keeping the cheerful name Summerhill. During World War II, the school community evacuated to Wales for a time so that the British Army could use the site as a training facility, returning after the war to a rundown place.

Summerhill school has been running continuously since 1921, and it has consistently adhered to its essential character and philosophy, which can be succinctly stated as the belief that the school should be made to fit the child, rather than the other way around, and that the function of the child is to live his or her own lifenot the life that anxious parents think best, nor the life prescribed by authoritative and certified experts. Neill believed that play belongs to the child absolutely and that children ought to be free to play as much as they like. Creative and imaginative play is an essential and entirely natural part of childhood, he argued, and spontaneous play could only be [Page 827]undermined if adults tried to channel it toward “learning experiences.”

The philosophy and practice of Summerhill explains in part all the early relocations: affiliated educators and especially neighbors found the school radical and a bit nuts. Neill himself was a commanding figuretall, opinionated, a severe Calvinist in upbringing and bearingand he courted controversy. To underline his idea of freedom for children, he told stories, for example, of coming upon a group of boys throwing rocks at the schoolhouse windows, and rather than reprimanding or punishing, joining in the activity.

The school was depicted in the British press as the “Do-As-You-Please-School,” but over time won the respect of many well-known educators, artists, authors, and social scientists, including Bertrand Russell, Margaret Mead, and Henry Miller.

In the 1960s, Neill was approached by Harold Hart, a publisher from the United States, who wanted to publish a compilation of Neill's writings. The result was the book Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Childhood, an instant hit that became number one on the nonfiction best-selling list. It was soon published in England and many other countries becoming an international sensation and putting Neill and Summerhill on the map as leaders in alternative and progressive education.

Summerhill with its message of love and peace and freedom combined with its sharp critique of authoritarianism of any kind, hierarchy, control, sexual repression, shame, and punishment, hit the American zeitgeist like a divinely guided missile. It became a required text in the blossoming counterculture, and both inspiration and road-map to a generation of teachers and education writers. John Holt, Herb Kohl, Jonathan Kozol, Paul Goodman, Bob Davis, and George Dennison all reported important encounters with Neill's book.

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