A.S.

Neill Research Paper 1

A.S. Neill Research Paper

Aaron L Lloyd

ECE 111B

Mrs. Williams

Baker College: Allen Park Campus

A.S. Neill Research Paper 2

A.S. Neill Research Paper

Alexander Sutherland Neill was born on October 17th, 1883 in Forfar, Scotland Neill was

raised in Scotland by his parents George and Mary Neill. ​He was their fourth son, one of the

eight that survived of thirteen. He raised in an austere, Calvinist house with values of fear, guilt,

and adult and divine authority, which he later repudiated ​(Bailey, R. (2013)). The death of A.S.

Neill on 23 September 1973 went almost unrecorded in the newspapers, yet it marked the end of

the saga of Summerhill, his little school in Suffolk, England, and set the seal on the disregard or

even rejection of a man who had come to symbolize a decade of nonconformist fervour

(Saffange, J. F. (1994)).

It seems like Neill did not feel the love from his large family that he needed, with a

distant mother and a father who had little esteem for him. Neill had spent most of his life in the

classroom: as pupil, as pupil-teacher with his father, as teacher and then as headmaster

(Saffange, J. F. (1994)). Working as a pupil teacher in his father's school, Neill's experiences as a

young educator were colored by traditional educational expectations: strict discipline,

teacher-centered learning practices, and excessive control (A. S. Neill (1883–1973) - Early Life

and Career, Significance to Education - School, Summerhill, Dominie, and Children -

StateUniversity.com). These feelings in his childhood help to create the personality that went

against the grain, he seemed to like to be the one that always stood out. As he grew up he learned

to greatly dislike any values and all religious teaching, he only came to value a child’s

intelligence and spirit of decision. Just because he was against all religious teaching didn’t mean

he wasn’t religious, he just felt that the evangelist twisted the original message for their benefit.

‘I am a very religious person; what man brought up in Calvinist Scotland could fail to be?’ Neill
A.S. Neill Research Paper 3

was often to say. In fact his upbringing instilled in him an exceptionally strong Christian

sensitivity (Saffange, J. F. (1994)).

Outside of his family and teachers he was strongly influenced by more contemporary

figures such as Freud in relations to the importance of avoiding sexual repression and guilt.

Wilhelm Reich in relation to sexual freedom and the importance of self-regulation. Homer Lane

in relation to self government and his idea of rewarding instead of punishing the child for

antisocial behavior. Neil knew both Reich and Lane well and devotes a chapter to them and their

influence on him in his autobiography ‘​Neill, Neill Orange Peel!’​ (Palmer, J., Cooper, D. E., &

Bresler, L. (2001)). For example when he was discovered in the 1960s, Neill was very soon

classed as a disciple of Reich (Saffange, J. F. (1994)). While ​Richard Bailey placed Neill

alongside William Godwin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, and Robert Owenin in Thomas

Sowell's "unconstrained vision" tradition, where human potential is naturally unlimited and

human development is dependent on environment and not incentives (​Bailey, R. (2013)) and

Denis Lawton likened Neill's ideas to Rousseauan "negative education", where children discover

for themselves instead of receiving instruction (Lawton, D. (1977)). ​Dissatisfied with traditional

schooling–with its lack of freedom, democracy, and self-determination–Neill began searching for

a place to establish his own school and to experiment with his developing ideas (A. S. Neill

(1883–1973) - Early Life and Career, Significance to Education - School, Summerhill, Dominie,

and Children - StateUniversity.com).

When Neill was 25 he enrolled in Edinburgh University first with a major in agriculture, but

shortly changed his major to English. He earned his master degree in 1912 and worked for a

short stint out of college as a journalist. By the start of World War One he became a headmaster
A.S. Neill Research Paper 4

in a co-educational school in Scotland. In 1915, while working as headmaster, or dominie, at a

small school in Scotland he wrote the first book in his Dominie series, A Dominie's Log. This

five-book series, which also included A Dominie Dismissed(1917), A Dominie in Doubt (1921),

A Dominie Abroad (1923), and A Dominie's Five (1924) represented Neill's informal diary

interspersed with stories and observations of people, places, and adventures. Most importantly,

Neill used the series to explore his thoughts concerning freedom and children - chronicling

dramatic transformation in his own ideology from his early teaching experiences (Guthrie, J. W.

(2003)). It is not generally known that in 1920 he ran the review New Era with the theosophist

Beatrice Ensor, thus becoming a close observer of a wide variety of experiments and

achievements and promoting the spread of new ideas, not hesitating to act as an ardent and more

than partial propagandist (Saffange, J. F. (1994)). 1921 Neill became involved as co-director of

the Dalcroze School in Hellerau, a suburb of Dresden, Germany. By 1923 Neill had returned to

England, to the town of Lyme Regis in the south, to a house called Summerhill. There, he

re-established his experimental school and enrolled a variety of so-called problem children in

Summerhill (Guthrie, J. W. (2003)).

Alexander Sutherland Neill flouted educational convention with utopian faith in

individuals' ability to direct their own learning. His romantic Progressive beliefs concerning

students' rights and freedoms, his refusal to conform to popular moral and intellectual standards,

and his emphasis on social and character development led him to found his own school,

Summerhill, in 1921 (A. S. Neill (1883–1973) - Early Life and Career, Significance to Education

- School, Summerhill, Dominie, and Children - StateUniversity.com). The school sits in the

village of Leiston in Suffolk, England. The school is only about a hundred miles from London.
A.S. Neill Research Paper 5

He created a community in which children could be free from adult authority. The school and his

ideas became world-famous through Neill's writings and lectures, his books are still read

worldwide (​A.S Neill - A.S Neill's Summerhill School)​.

Was ridiculed as the “Do-as-you-please-school” as lessons were optional, as the children

had the power to decide what was best for them to do with their time. Fridays were essentially

fun night where they danced, watched theatre, and any other form of entertainment, as the only

other event that happened every Friday was general assembly. Everyone would gather to listen to

the children explain the current problems. They would discuss them openly, the discussion

would be chaired by an elected student, then they would hold a vote. In this voting process

Neill’s vote counted just the same as any student. His child centered theory focused on the

emotional well being of the child. All person’s were equal on the Summerhill grounds. Fear was

removed from the atmosphere and that allowed the child’s self confidence and self worth soar.

The students were allowed to pursue what made them happy, rather than what parents, authority

figures, or social standards deemed important. While society would frown on a student feeling

successful being a truck driver or some other job deemed low end, if the student is happy with

that profession then it doesn’t matter what others think, he is successful.

Richard Bailey wrote that Summerhill received most of its public attention during the

20s/30s and 60s/70s milieux of social change (progressivism and the counterculture,

respectively). Following Neill's retirement it continued to be run by Neill's daughter, Zoe

Readhead. The main goals of Summerhill are: to allow children freedom to grow emotionally,

give children power over their own lives, give children the time to develop naturally, and create a

happier childhood by removing fear and coercion by adults (​A. S. Neill - New World
A.S. Neill Research Paper 6

Encyclopedia​.). As Neill states in his book ​Summerhill,​ To sum up, my contention is that unfree

education results in life that cannot be lived fully. Such an education almost entirely ignores the

emotions of life; and because these emotions are dynamic, their lack of opportunity for

expression must and does result in cheapness and ugliness and hatefulness. Only the head is

educated. If the emotions are permitted to be really free, the intellect will look after itself (Neill,

A. S. (1960)).

Neill was neither a scientist nor a researcher, perhaps a philosopher, but above all a

dreamer and idealist. He did not belong to one specific educational or psychological school of

thought and he

never developed a methodical, well-thought-out approach. His whole work was merely an

extension of his own personality (Saffange, J. F. (1994)). When Neill wrote ​The Problem Child

his ideology, a child-centered theory of education, was stated very clearly. Due to his book

selling so good, it made Neill into one of the leading figures in the renewed interest in education.

When it came to school he felt no teacher has the right to cure a child of making noises on a

drum. The only curing that should be practiced is the curing of unhappiness (Neill, A. S. (1960)).

In the same regards even though the child is free to do as they see fit, ​He felt it unnecessary to

fulfill all of childhood's requests and had great disdain for spoiled children ​(Bailey, R. (2013)).

The main reason that he felt that the children shouldn’t be forced to learn the way adults

currently had created was that he​ felt that children met their own limits naturally​ (Bailey, R.

(2013)).

With the success of his book ​Summerhill​ and the longevity of his school, it’s a fact that

he has influenced the world of education and child raising. His impact was either for or against,
A.S. Neill Research Paper 7

either way it strengthened that sides views and helped to eliminated the middle ground. With all

the press and millions of books sold, he impacted parents around the world. He impacted

families that re-evaluated how they raised their children, schools on how strict they were with

students and how to give them more of a voice. The success of this school and Neill's writings

about his experiences at Summerhill profoundly influenced and motivated the ​Free school

movement of the 1960s and 1970s (A. S. Neill - New World Encyclopedia). Neill's notions

of freedom in ​education​, considered controversial in their time, influenced many of the

progressive educators​ that came after him, notably John Holt, who spearheaded the

"unschooling" movement popular among ​homeschoolers​ (A. S. Neill - New World

Encyclopedia). In 1993 and 1994, PROSPECTS, UNESCO's journal of comparative education,

published a series of profiles of 100 famous educators (including philosophers, statesmen,

politicians, journalists, psychologists, poets, men of religion) from around of the world who have

left their mark on educational thought and they listed Neill within the list (Morsy, Z., & Unesco.

(1997)).
A.S. Neill Research Paper 8

References

A. S. Neill (1883–1973) - Early Life and Career, Significance to Education - School,

Summerhill, Dominie, and Children - StateUniversity.com​. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2292/Neill-S-1883-1973.html

A.S Neill - A.S Neill's Summerhill School.​ (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/asneill.php

Bailey, R. (2013). ​A.S. Neill.​ London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Neill, A. S. (1960). ​Summerhill: A radical approach to child rearing​. New York: Hart Pub. Co.

Saffange, J. F. (1994). ALEXANDER SUTHERLAND NEILL. ​Prospects:the quarterly review

of comparative education (Paris, UNESCO: International Bureau of Education)​, ​24​(1/2),

217-229. Retrieved from ​http://www.ibe.unesco.org/publications/ThinkersPdf/neille.PDF

Lawton, D. (1977). ​Education and social justice​. London: Sage Publications.

Berk, L. E. (2013). ​Child development​ (9th ed.). Boston: Pearson.

A. S. Neill - New World Encyclopedia.​ (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/A._S._Neill

Palmer, J., Cooper, D. E., & Bresler, L. (2001). ​Fifty modern thinkers on education: From

Piaget to the present day​. London: Routledge.

Morsy, Z., & Unesco. (1997). ​Thinkers on education.​ Paris: UNESCO.

Guthrie, J. W. (2003). ​Encyclopedia of education.​ New York: Macmillan Reference USA.

A.S. Neill Research Paper 9

Alexander Sutherland Neill was born on October 17th, 1883 in Forfar, Scotland Neill

Raised in Scotland by his parents George and Mary Neill.

He was their fourth son, one of the eight that survived of thirteen.

He raised in an austere, Calvinist house with values of fear, guilt, and adult and divine authority,

which

he later repudiated

The death of A.S. Neill on 23 September 1973 went almost unrecorded in the newspapers, yet it

marked the end of the saga of Summerhill, his little school in Suffolk, England,

I felt distant mother and a father, as if they had little esteem for me.

I spent most of his life in the classroom: as pupil, as pupil-teacher with his father, as teacher and

then as headmaster

My experiences as a young educator were colored by traditional educational expectations: strict

discipline, teacher-centered learning practices, and excessive control

I only came to value a child’s intelligence and spirit of decision

Outside of my family and teachers I was strongly influenced by Freud in relations to the

importance of

avoiding sexual repression and guilt.

Wilhelm Reich in relation to sexual freedom and the importance of self-regulation.

A.S. Neill Research Paper 10

Homer Lane in relation to self government and his idea of rewarding instead of punishing the

child for anti-social behavior.

I knew both Reich and Lane well and devotes a chapter to them and their influence on him in

his autobiography ‘​Neill, Neill Orange Peel!’​ “I believe you can still purchase”

When I was 25 I enrolled in Edinburgh University first with a major in agriculture

But shortly changed his major to English.

I earned his master degree in 1912 and worked for a short stint out of college as a journalist.

By the start of World War One I became a headmaster in a co-educational school in Scotland.

In 1915, while working as headmaster, or dominie, at a small school in Scotland I wrote my first

book in his Dominie series, A Dominie's Log. This five-book series, which also included A

Dominie Dismissed(1917), A Dominie in Doubt (1921), A Dominie Abroad (1923), and A

Dominie's Five (1924) represented my informal diary interspersed with stories and observations

of people, places, and adventures.

I kinda used the series to explore my thoughts concerning freedom and children - chronicling

dramatic transformation in his own ideology from his early teaching experiences

My ​faith in individuals' ability to direct their own learning and beliefs concerning students'

rights and freedoms, my refusal to conform to popular moral and intellectual standards, and my

emphasis on social and character development led him to found his own school, Summerhill, in

1921
A.S. Neill Research Paper 11

My school sits in the village of Leiston in Suffolk, England and is only about a hundred miles

from London. ​I created a community in which children could be free from adult authority.

I was ridiculed as the “Do-as-you-please-school” as lessons were optional, as the children had

the power to decide what was best for them to do with their time.

All person’s were equal on the Summerhill grounds.

Fear was removed from the atmosphere and that allowed the child’s self confidence and self

worth soar.

The students were allowed to pursue what made them happy, rather than what parents, authority

figures, or social standards deemed important.

While society would frown on a student feeling successful being a truck driver or some other

job deemed low end, if the student is happy with that profession then it doesn’t matter what

others think, he is successful.

The main goals of Summerhill are: to allow children freedom to grow emotionally, give

children power over their own lives, give children the time to develop naturally, and create a

happier childhood by removing fear and coercion by adults

To sum up, my contention is that unfree education results in life that cannot be lived fully. Such

an education almost entirely ignores the emotions of life; and because these emotions are

dynamic, their lack of opportunity for expression must and does result in cheapness and
A.S. Neill Research Paper 12

ugliness and hatefulness. Only the head is educated. If the emotions are permitted to be really

free, the intellect will look after itself

When I wrote and published ​Problem Child​ it sold so good, it made me into one of the leading

figures in the renewed interest in education.

When it came to school I fell no teacher has the right to cure a child of making noises on a

drum. The only curing that should be practiced is the curing of unhappiness

My ​ideas of freedom in ​education​, considered controversial in their time, influenced many of

the ​progressive educators​ that came after me, notably John Holt, who spearheaded the

"unschooling" movement popular among ​homeschoolers