SOME children -- usually those who have already been emotionally damaged by compulsive schooling or by an authoritarian home life -- DO need structure, but most do not, if given a healthy situation early in life. A few of the problem kids that Neill brought into the school never got any better (i.e., they continued acting out and causing problems for others, and so were expelled) but most relaxed once they accepted that they really were in a place where their own rights were respected, and began acting in healthy fashion. (Problem children over a certain age rarely got better). It wasn't freedom that had harmed those children, it was either neglect (which looks like freedom but without loving connection to parents or other healthy adult personalities) or outright cruelty. Freedom and compassion actually healed them. As the British Government Report points out, the children of Summerhill were anything but "aimless and selfish."
Over a century of experience at Summerhill (which is a boarding school) and Sudbury Valley School (a day school run on the principles of Summerhill) shows that children given freedom and compassion are a LOT easier to live with and much happier. "Aimless and selfish" (and miserable) comes from spending years under a system of compulsion (modern schooling and, often, an overly-authoritarian home life) where the child's own interests, decisions, and rights are constantly disrespected and his or her natural curiosity and learning are thwarted in favor of a coercively-imposed, predetermined curriculum.
Children DO need to understand that the rights of others must be respected, but they actually don't need "structure" provided by adults; they need love, compassion, and of course the necessities of life. John Taylor Gatto, who resigned as a NYC teacher and then dedicated his life to exposing and preventing the damage caused by compulsive schooling, knew this well. From the link:
After three decades in the classroom, Gatto realized that the public school system was squashing individualism more than it was educating students and preparing them for the real world. To make matters worse, his later research would reveal that this dumbing down was not just by accident, but by design.
Feeling the education system was beyond repair, Gatto could no longer in good conscience be an active participant. Rather than sending his letter of resignation to his superiors in his school district, he sent a copy of “I Quit, I Think” to the Wall Street Journal, where it was published as an op-ed on July 25, 1991.
In his biting resignation, he wrote:
I’ve come slowly to understand what it is I really teach: A curriculum of confusion, class position, arbitrary justice, vulgarity, rudeness, disrespect for privacy, indifference to quality, and utter dependency. I teach how to fit into a world I don’t want to live in.
I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t train children to wait to be told what to do; I can’t train people to drop what they are doing when a bell sounds; I can’t persuade children to feel some justice in their class placement when there isn’t any, and I can’t persuade children to believe teachers have valuable secrets they can acquire by becoming our disciples. That isn’t true.
SOME children -- usually those who have already been emotionally damaged by compulsive schooling or by an authoritarian home life -- DO need structure, but most do not, if given a healthy situation early in life. A few of the problem kids that Neill brought into the school never got any better (i.e., they continued acting out and causing problems for others, and so were expelled) but most relaxed once they accepted that they really were in a place where their own rights were respected, and began acting in healthy fashion. (Problem children over a certain age rarely got better). It wasn't freedom that had harmed those children, it was either neglect (which looks like freedom but without loving connection to parents or other healthy adult personalities) or outright cruelty. Freedom and compassion actually healed them. As the British Government Report points out, the children of Summerhill were anything but "aimless and selfish."
Over a century of experience at Summerhill (which is a boarding school) and Sudbury Valley School (a day school run on the principles of Summerhill) shows that children given freedom and compassion are a LOT easier to live with and much happier. "Aimless and selfish" (and miserable) comes from spending years under a system of compulsion (modern schooling and, often, an overly-authoritarian home life) where the child's own interests, decisions, and rights are constantly disrespected and his or her natural curiosity and learning are thwarted in favor of a coercively-imposed, predetermined curriculum.
Children DO need to understand that the rights of others must be respected, but they actually don't need "structure" provided by adults; they need love, compassion, and of course the necessities of life. John Taylor Gatto, who resigned as a NYC teacher and then dedicated his life to exposing and preventing the damage caused by compulsive schooling, knew this well. From the link: