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School Breaking All the Rules
It has been called the school where almost anything goes. Summerhill - where, famously, pupils are not obliged to go to lessons if they don't feel like it - has been characterised as everything from a version of Lord of the Flies to a 21st-century answer to Lindsay Anderson's If Critics perceive it as some hopelessly misguided, impossibly idealistic, hippyish experiment doomed to failure. So why does this small school with a mere 78 pupils and 17 staff provoke so much hostility?
One reason might be that Summerhill stands unchallenged as the most progressive school in Britain. Situated in the quaint village of Leiston, near the Suffolk coast, this co-educational boarding school was founded in 1921 by A S Neill, a Scottish educational philosopher who believed in empowering children (see panel, right). It is run as a self-governing democracy, where the pupils police themselves.
The entire community holds a meeting every day at which everyone from the youngest pupil to the principal has an equal vote. These meetings set all the regulations and carry out all the discipline. For example, pupils have voted in a rule that bullies be sent to the back of queues and banned from social events.
Despite the fact Summerhill achieves exam results above the national average, its liberal regime is anathema to many. In 1999, the schools inspectorate Ofsted issued it with a notice of complaint, demanding that it abandon many of the freedoms it offered its pupils or face closure. The school - now run by Neill's daughter, a feisty woman called Zoe Readhead - refused to comply. It raised
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Posted in: News on February 3, 2008 @ 12:00 AM
Tags: School
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"A lot of kids nowadays are bombarded with constant activity, whether it's the PlayStation or endless after-school clubs. The dominant culture implies that we're at fault if we're not constantly filling up our children's lives."
too true
wow... what i would do to get there....