page_title: Summerhill (book)
section_title: Summary
hierarchical_section_title: Summerhill (book) / Summary
caption_attribution_description: English: Mainbuilding of the Summerhill School in Leiston, Suffolk (1993) Deutsch: Hauptgebäude der von A. S. Neill begründeten Internatsschule Summerhill im englischen Leiston; 1993 Español: Escuela de Summerhill, 1993
context_page_description: Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing is a book about the English boarding school Summerhill School by its headmaster A. S. Neill. It is known for introducing his ideas to the American public. It was published in America on November 7, 1960, by the Hart Publishing Company and later revised as Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood in 1993. Its contents are a repackaged collection from four of Neill's previous works. The foreword was written by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, who distinguished between authoritarian coercion and Summerhill.
  The seven chapters of the book cover the origins and implementation of the school, and other topics in childrearing. Summerhill, founded in the 1920s, is run as a children's democracy under Neill's educational philosophy of self-regulation, where kids choose whether to go to lessons and how they want to live freely without imposing on others. The school makes its rules at a weekly schoolwide meeting where students and teachers each have one vote alike. Neill discarded other pedagogies for one of the innate goodness of the child.
context_section_description: Summerhill is A. S. Neill's "aphoristic and anecdotal" account of his "famous" "early progressive school experiment in England" founded in the 1920s, Summerhill School. The book's intent is to demonstrate the origins and effects of unhappiness, and then show how to raise children to avoid this unhappiness. It is an "affirmation of the goodness of the child". Summerhill is the story of Summerhill School's origins, its programs and pupils, how they live and are affected by the program, and Neill's own educational philosophy. It is split into seven chapters that introduce the school and discuss parenting, sex, morality and religion, "children's problems", "parents' problems", and "questions and answers".
  The school is run as a democracy, with students deciding affairs that range from the curriculum to the behavior code. Lessons are non-compulsory. Neill emphasizes "self-regulation", personal responsibility, freedom from fear, "freedom in sex play", and loving understanding over moral instruction or force. In his philosophy, all attempts to mold children are coercive in nature and therefore harmful. Caretakers are advised to "trust" in the natural process and let children self-regulate such that they live by their own rules and consequently treat with the highest respect the rights of others to live by their own rules. Neill's "self-regulation" constitutes a child's right to "live freely, without outside authority in things psychic and somatic"—that children eat and come of age when they wants, are never hit, and are "always loved and protected". Children can do as they please until their actions affect others. In an example, a student can skip French class to play music, but cannot disruptively play music during the French class. Against the popular image of "go as you please schools", Summerhill has many rules. However, they are decided at a schoolwide meeting where students and teachers each have one vote apiece. This does not necessarily mean total cessation to the children, as Neill thought adults were right to bemoan child destruction of property. He considered this tension between adult and child living styles to be natural. Neill felt that most schoolwork and books kept children from their right to play, and that learning should only follow play and not be mixed "to make [work] palatable". Neill found that those students interested in college would complete the prerequisites in two years and of their own volition.
  The 45-person coeducational school with pupils aged five to fifteen  is presented as successful and having reformed "problem children" into "successful human beings". Some became professionals and academics. In Summerhill, Neill blames many of society's problems on the "miseducation in conventional schools". He felt that society's institutions prevented "real freedom in individuals". Thus, Summerhill was created as a place for children to be free to be themselves. Neill discarded many kinds of dogma ("discipline, ... direction, ... suggestion, ... moral training, .. religious instruction") and put sole faith in the belief of the innate goodness of children.
caption: Summerhill School, 1993
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