However, says Appleton, in a perfect example of the workings of self-governance, the children eventually came to recognize that the new way of life was making no one happy and eagerly voted to reinstate mandatory bedtimes. Maintaining international appeal British youngsters have always made up about one-third of the school's student body, but other nationalities have ebbed and flowed with the times. Once popular with Americans, today the school sees few applicants from the US, perhaps in line with increased concerns about test scores and an inclination toward a more traditional form of education. The school's popularity in Japan has soared, however, and the school's administration has had to set a limit on the number of Japanese it will accept to prevent Summerhill from being dominated by a single culture. Appleton believes the school's appeal to Japanese parents is in reaction to the very rigid scholastic system in that country.
Japanese parents see their children really miserable.
In response, Appleton points to the Albany Free School in New York, which applies the Summerhill philosophy as a day school, and Rising Hill, a 1,000-student school in a tough London neighborhood which in the 1960s achieved markedly improved student behavior by experimenting with Neill's ideas. Some today call Neill the grandfather of the charter-school movement, insisting that the free schools inspired by Summerhill in their turn caused educators to search out means of founding smaller, more innovative, and less regulated institutions. For Appleton, the charter-school movement is just one more proof of the enduring nature of Neill's theories. But Summerhill is still here.