Product Description

A guide to experimental education, originally published in 1960 and expanded for the 1990s, features a discussion on how American education lags behind the rest of the world and what people can do to change that.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32028 in Books
• Published on: 1998-12-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 269 pages

Customer Reviews

Summerhill: A visionary approach whose time has come.
I first read Summerhill in 1968 as a Psychology major. Over the years since, I researched everything that had been written by A.S. Neill or about his school. After doing a research paper on his book, "Summerhill: For and Against", I decided that I would not only raise my children based on his approach to child-rearing, but that I would also start a residential 'Free School' based on his philosophy.

Now a child-care consultant, I remain convinced, after all these years, that the veracity of Neill's approach toward child-rearing and Education remain unquestioned under the closest of scrutiny and the test of time.

The basic tenets are simple....provide children with an environment offering the optimal opportunities for healthy growth and development and the children will grow into loving, altruistic adults with a coinciding optimal opportunity to find happiness in life.

As far as I'm concerned, I've proven A.S. Neill's theories through my own children, who are now in their mid and late twenties. Rather than go on about their personal attributes, I'll just say they would both testify that they're very glad A.S. Neill ever came along.

Neill's "Summerhill" was way ahead of its time even today.
"Summerhill" is a fantastic book built upon the philosophy that there is no such thing as a bad boy or girl, only a good kid thats been repressed by well meaning adults. Its not practical in todays schooling environment but this only says something about society in general. My only critisism would be that Neill's "Summerhill" promotes freedom and freedom is of little value in a society that asks everybody to conform without question to desk jobs, big car and house, 9 to 5, two kids and dog called Rover etc. But more importantly "Summerhill" is a book about kids and how beautifully honest and open they can be when they have nothing to fear.

A classic- but far from the truth
When I first read A. S. Neill's Summerhill, I was moved by what I saw as a brilliant and innovative solution to the problems of public school as I saw it. The intervening years, some research and a few degrees in psychology showed me something entirely different.

Neill's Summerhill was not exactly what he portrayed it to be; some students flourished there, and many did not. The same sort of petty schoolyard bullying and favoritism that occurs in any school went on at Summerhill. Neill was very much a typical utopian socialist who, like many before him, started with a theory and refused to let experience shape it.

Summerhill was the right environment for some of Neill's students, but it was by no means the right environment for all of them. While some flourished there, many spent years without obtaining any education whatsoever. The overall philosophy of a child-centered education is a good one, but letting the child decided what and when to learn is not a good preperation for the adult world, where we can't all be petulant children all the time.

So read Summerhill as a philosophy of how to love your child, or what a caring family could be like, or even as a utopian fantasy. There's much good in it. But don't take Neill's claims at face value.