My personal belief is that these schools are very close to optimal environments for human beings to grow up in. Freedom and compassion early in life are key elements in creating mature and healthy adults, as is the insistence that children respect others, just as THEY wish to be respected themselves.
Neill pointed out in his writings that very young children have almost no awareness of or concern for protection of property -- such as furniture, lamps, knick-knacks, or anything else. This is how human children are MADE and it's a stage parents and others must learn to live with, in part by keeping valuable and breakable items out of the areas where children spend time. Kids grow out of this stage naturally; trying to punish them out of this stage only harms them and harms the relationship between the children and the adults.
Likewise, chores and other coerced or manipulated behavior is harmful; children (like the young of other animals) are designed to play, which is how they learn about the world, about themselves, and develop their minds and bodies. Children are naturally curious (unless this is crushed out of them with coercive schooling) and begin feeling the need to learn adult knowledge and skills at their own pace. These schools have shown (for a century now, in the case of Summerhill) that this is our true nature, not just theory.
Two observations:
First, it's amazing to me that these schools are still allowed to exist. The British government actually TRIED to shut down or neuter Summerhill several years back, but enough of an outcry was raised that they backed down.
Second: The character of such places can change as the founders and early staff retire -- just as happened in America as the decades wore on. I don't have any reason to believe things have gone downhill at either Summerhill or Sudbury, but it's a potential dynamic worth keeping in mind.
https://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/
and for Sudbury, https://sudburyvalley.org/
My personal belief is that these schools are very close to optimal environments for human beings to grow up in. Freedom and compassion early in life are key elements in creating mature and healthy adults, as is the insistence that children respect others, just as THEY wish to be respected themselves.
Neill pointed out in his writings that very young children have almost no awareness of or concern for protection of property -- such as furniture, lamps, knick-knacks, or anything else. This is how human children are MADE and it's a stage parents and others must learn to live with, in part by keeping valuable and breakable items out of the areas where children spend time. Kids grow out of this stage naturally; trying to punish them out of this stage only harms them and harms the relationship between the children and the adults.
Likewise, chores and other coerced or manipulated behavior is harmful; children (like the young of other animals) are designed to play, which is how they learn about the world, about themselves, and develop their minds and bodies. Children are naturally curious (unless this is crushed out of them with coercive schooling) and begin feeling the need to learn adult knowledge and skills at their own pace. These schools have shown (for a century now, in the case of Summerhill) that this is our true nature, not just theory.
Two observations:
First, it's amazing to me that these schools are still allowed to exist. The British government actually TRIED to shut down or neuter Summerhill several years back, but enough of an outcry was raised that they backed down.
Second: The character of such places can change as the founders and early staff retire -- just as happened in America as the decades wore on. I don't have any reason to believe things have gone downhill at either Summerhill or Sudbury, but it's a potential dynamic worth keeping in mind.