Summerhill

The Founder's Background

Childhood was not an easy experience for Neill. Because he was timid and clumsy, he was often bullied by his peers. Neill attended the school where his father was headmaster. His father was profoundly disappointed in young Neill's academic performance because the Scottish and English school system, at the time, was based on the payments by results principle. Children in Scottish schools were also disciplined by means of the tawse, a leather strap. Neill recalls that his father was the hardest on him and often strapped him more severely for noise or mischief.

Neill experienced difficulty in finding direction and choosing a profession. In 1908, at the age of 25, he eventually passed the entrance exams and attended Edinburgh University in pursuit of a Master of Arts degree. His one-year appointment as editor of the Student magazine confirmed his desire to become a journalist, a career he followed briefly. When war was declared in 1914, Neill was disqualified from joining the army because of a leg injury and consequently returned home to Kingsmuir, where he secured a job as headmaster of Gretna Public School.

It is there that Neill, in an attempt to discover his philosophy of education, recorded his thoughts on education in the official logbook of the school. These recordings led him to abandon the tawse, and he began to formulate his radical ideas on freedom for children. Neill believed that the role of the teachers should be restricted to that of enablers, or guides whom pupils would consult when necessary; teachers were expected to learn with their pupils.

At a self-government meeting at Little Common Wealth, a home for delinquent boys and girls, Neill met Homer Lane, the man in charge of the community. Lane's lectures initiated and reaffirmed Neill's notion that a new approach for working with children was required and presented him with a practical model for this new approach. Lane strongly argued for teachers to step down from the positions of authority, for children to be allowed the freedom to resolve their own problems while schools encourage and support them, and for the reawakening of the play instinct in children. Neill regarded Lane as a genius and the one person who profoundly influenced his work.

A New School

In 1921, Neill cofounded and cogoverned The International School in Dresden, an experimental school, under the pedagogical guidance of the German Ministry of Education. In 1924, when he moved to England, his pupils followed him. Neill rented a house on a hill in Lyme Regis, Dorset, and founded the radical progressive coeducational Summerhill School, which had only five students. When the lease expired after three years, he had twenty-seven students and needed a larger place. Neill bought a house in the small town of Leiston, Suffolk, outside of London, but retained the name Summerhill even though the house was situated on a flat strip of land.

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