The influence of the educationalist
A. S. Neill has been considerable. At the beginning of the
twenty-first century there were schools around the world which had
been founded because of Neill's inspiration or which had borrowed
or adopted many of his ideas for their philosophy. David Gribble's
recent study Real Education discovered democratic schools
offering varieties of freedom in countries ranging from Japan to
Ecuador and from New Zealand to India, and these were found in a
number of different settings intended for children of all ages and
from many backgrounds. Adaptations of Neill's philosophy were
present in many of them. Prior to this, Neill's ideas had also
found some partial acceptance in the state schools of his native
Britain and his philosophy was already being taught in teacher
training colleges and universities there at the time of his death
in 1973. The writer's own first encounter with the ideas of A. S.
Neill and of his radically free school Summerhill, was in the
mid-1970s as a student at what was then Northampton College of
Education.
However, Ray Hemmings in his 1972
book Fifty Years of Freedom, was already finding at this
early stage that many of Neill's ideas had been misunderstood or
were being diluted in the process of their adoption by other
schools. Despite the award of three honorary degrees by British
universities and Neill's emergence as an educational celebrity the
most important tenets of his philosophy were often not taken very
seriously or were overlooked especially in the state sector - in
favour of the view of Neill as an eccentric who had some good
ideas but was just a little bit mad. Hemmings discovered that
although Neill had had some influence on state schools,
particularly in such matters as the development of friendlier
relations between teachers and pupils, other things advocated by
him such as sexual freedom or the right to stay away from lessons
forever if you wanted to, were much more frightening for the
mainstream education system. The establishment of some school
councils was also a pale shadow of the full self-government
envisioned by Neill. Most schools were still run by adults, and
children were merely allowed a modicum of democracy or freedom by
the more benevolent ones. This has continued to be the case in the
state system. It seems there is always a danger that we defuse the
threat of radicals such as Neill by paying lip service to their
importance and by embracing some of their less 'dangerous' ideas
while ignoring their more fundamental or important messages. In
this way the philosophies of Neill and other radicals can be
absorbed into the mainstream while nothing really changes.
Hemmings' study is valuable even
now as a comparatively rare and sympathetic attempt to get to
grips with wbat Neill was really saying and it also illuminates
the problems of gaining general acceptance for such unusual ideas.
He accurately pinpoints what the school Summerhill is all about by
referring to it in one chapter heading as 'The Bare Minimum of a
School'. For this is what Summerhill was and still is, and Neill
often pointed out that he saw it more as a big family than a
school. Croall's later biography of Neill also follows the
difficulties which Neill faced in his lifetime, while Matthew
Appleton's book A Free Range Childhood takes the story of
Summerhill well past Neill's time and almost up to the present to
show a picture of a remarkably thriving and successful school but
one still largely ignored by the mainstream world. It is
significant that two of the rare books which best explain
sympathetically and with understanding the real nature of life at
Summerhill should be by Hemmings and Appleton who had both
experienced life as members of the staff at Summerhill.
A typical problem has also been
that Neill has often been seen as an educator of 'problem
children' and his methods only deemed appropriate for them. Some
children have always refused to accept the lives forced upon them
in schools in which they have no say and where they have to attend
lessons that are compulsory. Only when violence or truancy is the
result have governments and educational 'experts' been quick to
support alternative and free methods such as those advocated by
Neill. But this is seen as a temporary measure with the ultimate
goal being a return of the individual child to the orthodox
system. Neill has shown that most of what children do in schools
is in fact a complete waste of time and that there are much better
things that they could be engaged in: exploring their own
interests, acquiring new skills, making friends, chatting,
playing, thinking or daydreaming. This is all dangerous stuff and
cannot be taken seriously by the majority of people as it doesn't
sound like anything they've heard of before which might be called
education.
While Hemmings was writing his book
back in the early 1970s, Neill's philosophy as embodied in his
work at Summerhill, had already come under attack from the British
government as a series of inspections found things not to their
liking. This was an uncanny forerunner of the later troubles to
befall the school after Neill's death when in the 1990s it
suffered what amounted to harrassment from a series of
unsympathetic and completely inappropriate inspections from Ofsted
(Office for Standards in Education), only managing to free itself
after an expensive court case which effectively found in favour of
the school.
The later inspections and
subsequent court case in 2000 were not least remarkable for the
government's stubborn refusal to try and understand anything at
all about Neill's real philosophy. This attitude seems to have
contributed largely to their defeat in the appeal made by the
school and heard at the Independent Schools Tribunal. Despite this
the HMI Report claimed that it did not pass judgment on
Summerhill's philosophy. Clearly, though, its own rigid view of
what constitutes education was greatly at odds with the reality of
Summerhill. The expert witness statement by Professor Ian Stronach
on behalf of the school which was heard at the Tribunal catalogues
an incredible ignorance on the part of the HMl inspection which
failed completely to address Summerhill's unusual aims and
methods. Stronach takes apart the Ofsted argument piece by piece
to devastating effect and shows that the inspectors were in effect
trying to judge 'tennis by the rules of basketball' or 'entering a
racoon at a dog show'. Not surprisingly, the question most
frequently asked of the Summerhill children was "How often do you
go to lessons?".
This association of education with
the academic side only, to the detriment of everything else, goes
hand in hand with the idea that education is a preparation for
some undetermined future. Therefore the present must always be
sacrificed to the contingent future. This is found almost as much
with those who purport to have some understanding of Neill's ideas
or who imagine that they are sympathetic to Summerhill. Therefore,
even parents of students at Summerhill are doubtless weary of
being asked questions concerning their children's 'learning'
progress.
Parents of Summerhillians who
understand and support the school must also be very strong and
clear in expressing their opinions to others. Misunderstandings
though seem almost inevitable given that the true nature of
Neill's ideas put into practice is still shocking in a world where
it is assumed that adults know best what is good for children.
Educationalists and university
professors, who on the surface may be sympathetic or reasonable in
their discussions of Neill, are by no means immune to this problem
either. A stumbling block here is that Neill is not quite like
other educational philosophers. He was comparatively little read
in educational theory and even less impressed by the ideas of
other educationalists, and claimed his initial inspiration to come
from psychology rather than education. Although often described as
a progressive educator he held no 'progressive' theories about
learning or the classroom and is completely different from those
such as Rudolf Steiner or Maria Montessorl with whom his writings
are frequently (and wrongly) grouped. For Neill, Steiner's
spirituality, his attempts to mould and guide children, and his
disapproval of self-government were enough to put him beyond the
pale.
Similarly, he saw Montessori as a
religious woman who placed too little importance on the child's
fantasy life and too much on learning and intellectual
development. Neill felt that Homer Lane's one book, Talks to
Parents and Teachers, was of greater value than all the work
of Pestalozzi, Rousseau, Froebel and Montessori put together,
because Lane touched on deeper things to do with child nature
rather than learning and the classroom. Moreover, Neill's own
books do not read the way that many people think a book on
educational philosophy should read. For one thing the books,
although often repeating the same ideas in different ways, are
immensely readable, enjoyable and entertaining. They are heavily
biased towards Neill's own experiences and full of anecdotal
material to support his theory and practice at Summerhill. And of
course he is irreverent and, needless to say, always on the side
of the child. (Hence titles such as That Dreadful School
and The Problem Teacher). This is a tough one for teachers
and educationalists to come to terms with as opinions like these
question the whole validity of their existence and so Neill's
ideas have a tendency, if not to be dismissed, then to be written
about with many reservations. He is often damned with faint
praise.
2. Neill: The Usual
Criticisms
Peter Hobson, an associate
professor in the School of Education Studies of an Australian
university, wrote a short chapter on Neill as a contribution to
the book Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education which claims to
look at "fifty of the most significant contributors of modern
times to the debate on education." The book is a companion to the
earlier history, Fifty Major Thinkers on Education, and was
published by Routledge in 2001. Neill rubs shoulders here
alongside names such as Heidegger and Wittgenstein, as well as
Jean Piaget, Paolo Freire, Ivan Illich and Howard Gardner. All the
essays are brief and summarize the life and works of each thinker
ending with a list of major writings and suggested further
reading. The four page essay on Neill summarizes very well his
development as an educationalist and his work at Summerhill and
gives a good deal of credit where it is due. But the final page
and a half contributes criticisms of Neill which are by now very
familiar. In an introduction of this kind the author must feel
duty bound to find something to criticize if only to show he's
done his homework and has been paying attention. Hobson's is in
some ways a useful introduction and has not been singled out here
because of any unusual animosity towards Neill. It is simply that
his reservations are such standard fare nowadays that they serve
as a good example of the kind of thing continually said about
Neill. They also deserve a response. His final section contains
three broad complaints: that Neill lacks a systematic, considered
philosophy of education; that he had a simplistic and outdated
view of moral and religious education; and that he had an
anti-intellectual bias.
Neill's philosophy was inextricably
linked with his work at Summerhill and so attempts to respond to
criticisms of the ideas will also inevitably address the situation
at the school in which they were put into practice. In attempting
to offer a reply to these criticisms I would like first to draw
attention to the following quotes:
You cannot have a school based on
respect for the individual if the ultimate governing system is
authoritarian. A school must be run from within because when you
go outside it you cannot see what is going on. To give people
authority over an institution is to make them believe that they
understand it. A school which allows children to find their own
values cannot avoid providing ammunition for its critics ... Only
people inside the school, seeing the many children who succeed
without any problems, seeing the children with difficulties change
and progress, can form any true picture of its merits.
-- David Gribble,
'Dartington Closes' in Lib Ed Vol.2 No.3 Leicester, 1986, p.6.
Would we expect a zookeeper to be
able to hold forth on the natural behavior of animals in the wild
without studying it first? The conclusion we might reach in the
case of a tiger, for example, is that in its natural state it
spends its day pacing listlessly up and down and is unable to fend
for itself. Expertise in one field does not justify judgment in
another. We must first gain experience of and familiarity with the
new field before we can comment with authority on its content. As
such, the world of the "free range" or selfregulated child lies
outside of the auspices of any academic institution or tradition,
be it psychological, sociological, or educational. Until such time
as these disciplines embrace this world seriously and practically
it remains the province of those who have; namely the handful of
parents, educators, physicians, and others who have had hands-on
experience, and the children themselves.
-- Matthew
Appleton, A Free Range Childhood, p.2.
What follows are Hobson's three
criticisms as quoted by me from his essay, followed by the
comments of some of those best able to respond as they are all in
some way connected with Neill, Summerhill or with what can very
loosely be called Neillian ideas. They are therefore unlikely to
have any of the common misunderstandings or misconceptions about
this kind of education and in all cases have had the benefit of
being 'insiders'.
Dr Dane Goodsman was a Summerhill
pupil, then teacher, and now Summerhill parent. She completed a
doctoral study on Summerhill and is now Education Adviser at
King's College, London. David Gribble was a teacher at Dartington
Hall School and then at Sands School which he helped to found. He
is the author of Real Education: Varieties of Freedom, a
book which investigates schools around the world where respect for
the individual child is central. Albert Lamb was a pupil at
Summerhill School, is married to an ex-Summerhillian and was a
Summerhill parent. He is the editor of the Penguin edition of
A.S.Neill's writings, The New Summerhill. Bryn Purdy was
the founder of Rowen House, a school for 'girls under stress'
which was largely inspired by Neill's example. He is also the
author of a book on A.S. Neill. All were asked to comment in any
way they liked on the criticisms and to send their replies to me
independently of each other. Their answers provide an interesting
and fitting conclusion which presents clear and informative
arguments in a much needed response to these criticisms of Neill.
Criticism 1:
"(Neill) lacks a systematic,
considered philosophy of education, especially a coherent theory
of knowledge. His ideas are based primarily on his own experiences
and observations, supplemented with some study of psychological
(especially psychoanalytic) theory. Certainly one's own
experiences are an important part of any educational theory but
they need to be supplemented by some more systematic philosophical
position such as the nature of knowledge, learning, morality,
human nature, society etc .... He also tends to oversimplify
complex philosophical issues such as the crucial distinction
between freedom and licence, where he thinks it sufficient to
merely distinguish the two conceptually and give some random
examples of acts he calls either freedom or licence."
Dane Goodsman:
Neill always claimed that
Summerhill itself was an experiment. It is my view that this
critique would itself have to address/question its own notion
'systematic'. A term that could be challenged simply by referring
it back on itself: 'because I name x and ascribe it meaning -
therefore it is'. 'Systematic' is, in itself, a particular and
value-laden term. Educational theories, especially theories of
knowledge, tend to simply stand to prove themselves e.g. IQ tests
etc. Neill could argue that by creating Summerhill as a
longitudinal, ongoing 'experiment' he could and did prove his
basic tenets relating to children's behaviour, development,
meanings and purposes.
David Gribble:
Only a professor in an education
department could complain that Neill lacks a systematic,
considered philosophy of education. He embodies such a philosophy.
What he did not do is express this philosophy in the sort of
abstract terms that professors of education, alone in the world,
seem to savour. If Neill had written about the nature of
knowledge, learning, morality, human nature and society in an
abstract and academic way then no one would have listened to him.
He threw light on such ideas by his interactions with the world
which he described wittily and provocatively. It is up to those of
his readers who wish to know the abstract theories behind his work
to deduce them for themselves.
Albert Lamb:
Neill never claimed to have a
systematic, considered philosophy of education. He would probably
have questioned whether such a thing were possible or of any
value. Educational theory, as applied to young people, always
presupposes some form of compulsion, some way in which Adults Know
Best and should continue to have the right to impose their program
on children. It was enough for Neill that his Summerhill children,
when not under compulsion, were sometimes able to perform little
miracles of high-speed educational attainment.
Neill wrote as a gadfly and his
first intention was to drop a bomb into the accepted patterns of
educational thought and get people to look at children and
schooling in new ways. A lot of his stories were like Jesus'
pavables - intended to work as puzzles that would help people
along to their own direct understanding of the truth that was
already before them. Part of his sense of life and education
included an acceptance of paradox. If you don't force kids to
learn, they will want to learn. If you don't teach morality but
simply put kids in a situation where morality will be required,
they will explore the subject themselves.
Neill definitely simplified
philosophical issues but I think he was pretty good on the
distinction between freedom and licence. If his readers didn't get
it that could be because it is hard for people to see the
distinction when they are only used to a top-down social order.
Your modern paternalistic, or materialistic, family tends to spoil
their children in the little things while being extremely pushy
about whatever they perceive to be the big things.
To see the difference between
freedom and licence clearly you first have to embrace your own
freedom and grant it to those around you.
Bryn Purdy:
I read the title, which included
the word 'thinkers', and the Neill that I knew, albeit too
briefly, would have harrumphed his protest at being included in
their company. Neill was, I submit, not so much a 'thinker' as a
'practitioner', a 'doer'. He was, to me at least, a shining
example of sane priorities set in a world of crass 'academicism'.
I submit that the author is among those "highly educated men" whom
Pestalozzi argued did not "confine themselves ... to the simple
starting-point" to which both he and Neill aspired.
Would not the criticisms be best
answered by quotation from my book, that the author purports to
have read, having included it in his bibliography? My quotation,
happily Neill's own, on page 22 and at the foot of my page 71
answers, if not wholly rebuts, the author's criticism above: "You
won't want to visit the classrooms if you are interested in
education".
So I would replace the author's
criticism that "Neill lacks a systematic, considered philosophy of
education" with: "Neill possesses a boundless, faith in the
child".
Criticism 2:
"Similarly it could be argued that
Neill had a rather simplistic and outdated view of moral and
religious education as necessarily authoritarian and didactic.
Modern educational notions of moral and religious autonomy in
which children are introduced to such areas through open-ended
discussion seem not to have been part of his
understanding."
Dane Goodsman:
What Neill may have thought
personally about moral and religious education does not have much
bearing on his views on who should have the right to choose for
others (in this instance children) what their beliefs should be.
His views on the right of the individual to choose, given the
context of their lives within the community, are viewed by some as
an indication that Summerhill was/is a truly spiritually
fulfilling experience.
David Gribble:
I can't believe there are any
conventional schools where religious and moral ideas are
introduced exclusively through open-ended discussion. Before the
discussion starts respect must be demanded and discipline imposed.
Moral and religious education are indeed not necessarily
authoritarian and didactic, but Neill's assumption that in most
schools that is precisely what they are is just as true today as
it was fifty years ago.
Albert Lamb:
Neill's moral education, built into
the fabric of Summerhill life, was light years ahead of what is
done in other schools. He looked at conventional morality as
mostly cant. On the other hand he was prejudiced, for some good
personal reasons, against religious education and he never
considered ways in which it could be taught effectively at his
school. In his writing he told a stretcher and said that no
Summerhillian ever became religious when he knew that it was not
true. I have a Talking Meeting for teenagers at a local Quaker
Meeting and the kids love it. They talk freely about a topic of
their choice and then have to agree on a joint statement that goes
no further than any individual in the room.
Now that I think of it, Summerhill
kids did have similar discussions, led by Neill.
Bryn Purdy:
May I quote a clergyman who visited
Summerhill?
"It's a wonderfully happy bunch of
children you have here, Mr Neill... What a pity they're pagan".
Yes, Neill's view about moral and
religious education probably was "outdated": it could be argued,
however, that it was 'timeless'.
Criticism 3:
"Another significant problem with
Summerhill is the anti-intellectual bias that Neill brought to it.
Is learning as unimportant as he maintains? Are books really 'the
least important apparatus in a school'? Do children always know
what is in their best educational interest? Can one fully utilize
one's freedom without a solid core of knowledge and understanding
on the basis of which to make meaningful choices? Why does
educational relevance have to be always of an immediate and
practical nature?"
Dane Goodsman:
Here is an interesting quote from
an ex-Summerhillian who at the time was a Professor of Maths at a
university in London: 'I learnt to do my thinking at Summerhill.'
It is my view that the author of the critique has a mixed-up
understanding of the notion 'self-direction'. Summerhill would
take the view that the individual is worthwhile per se and not
simply as a result of their academic endeavours or achievements.
Therefore academic activity is granted back to the individual to
make their personal choice - and not seen as a purpose for adults
to have over children - thus academic endeavour is fully supported
by teachers but remains the responsibility of the individual
child.
David Gribble:
My interpretation of Neill's
allegedly anti-intellectual bias is that it was not a dislike of
learning - he tells of ex-Summerhillians who have gone on to be
university lecturers and doctors and so on - but a dislike for
rote learning at the expense of personal development. To take the
points one at a time:
Learning without understanding is
not just unimportant, it is harmful, and puts many people off
learning altogether.
No, books are not the least
important apparatus in the school, but nor are they the most
important. Neill was exaggerating to emphasise this point.
Does anyone actually understand the
term "best educational interest"? Children may not always know
what is in their "best educational interest", but do adults always
know what is in a given child's "best educational interest"? Isn't
the attitude behind this whole question rather authoritarian and
didactic? I'd back the child who made a choice between a range of
possibilities against an adult who required everybody to do the
same thing.
That's what the adults are for -but
they are not around to impose choice, but to illuminate them.
When children's interests are
immediate and practical, then their learning will be immediate and
practical. There is no point in teaching children to parrot
abstractions when they are not ready for them.
Albert Lamb:
I'd have to agree that Summerhill
has had an anti-intellectual bias that Neill built into it. I
suppose he was afraid that once the teachers got in the saddle his
school would turn into another kind of beast, a tamed one, so he
kept them somewhat neutered - with a few exceptions.
Neill never said, to my knowledge,
that educational relevance always has to be of an immediate and
practical nature. That is more like the ideas of John Dewey and
the Progressives.
This anti-intellectual bias is a
real criticism and means, to my mind, that Neill's school never
tested out how valuable an education, in the sense that people
conventionally think of one, it could offer to its kids. So many
things at Summerhill worked through the culture but there was
never an effort, as there often is in intelligent families, to
create a culture where learning is prized. I can see why Neill
feared the academics holding sway but Summerhill in his time,
certainly in my time there, could have offered a richer and more
questing intellectual experience. Other aspects of the culture
were carefully looked after but that one was rather neglected.
When I was at Summerhill there was
a tradition of kids learning to play the piano by copying boogie
woogie figures played by the older kids and ex-pupils. The kids
gave you praise for your efforts and the school's administration
kept a couple of pianos going in different parts of the school. I
went away for twenty years and when I came back there were no
pianos in the school and the tradition had died. The adults had
only a small part to play in that particular tradition but if they
didn't attend to it the tradition couldn't continue. I don't think
the staff saw it as their role to monitor issues to do with the
ongoing culture and traditions of the school. Many of these things
don't apply to the school in its current incarnation.
But I don't want to give too much
weight to this side of things. Teacher types always think it is so
important - but it isn't that important. 1 do believe that if it
is really valuable to get a conventional education, people will
find a way. My son Roland, who has had only one year of schooling
- not counting his five years at Summerhill - in the last 13 has
just been accepted into Harvard University to study philosophy,
and on what passes today for a full scholarship.
Bryn Purdy:
This is the area in which I
permitted myself to come into most overt conflict with Neill's
thinking when I came to write my book for the Educational Heretics
Press. My opinion is so equally passionate for the two apparently
antithetical points of view that it must seem schizophrenic. On
the one hand, I am passionate for my own study and on my pupils'
behalf over the years. On the other, it was deeply repugnant to me
to 'encourage' the pupils to attend class. Indeed, it didn't last
more than a few weeks before we decided to close the school.
What I think is important about my
experience is that I introduced Summerhillism or at least
'Summerhillery' into the State system for a period of seven years
(which must be regarded as 'successful', according to the
statistics provided). It may be added at this point that Rowen
House had its first two university graduates in 2002, one with a
First in Mathematics.
As a devout bibliophile myself, I
dissent from Neill's quoted opinion that "books are the least
important apparatus in school", but I know what he means. But when
he asserts 'Hearts, not Heads' in school, then I must fall silent.
Children have as equal a right to learn intellectually as
emotionally. In an ideal world, I affirm the equal importance of
Hearts and Heads in school.
Robert Owen said on entering what
he judged a too zealous classroom in New Lanark: "Don't annoy the
children with books". I conjecture that Owen emphasised the word
'annoy'; he does not say, 'Do not enthuse children with books'. So
I declare myself in favour of 'the book', but, at a higher level
still, I can see that the human race might have been better
without 'learning'.
The trajectory of the author's
criticisms of Neill are below the water-line of Neill's
aspirations. One does not expect the Captain on the Bridge to
attend to the menu in the messroom, or shovel coal in the engine
room. You might as well tax Socrates for not having left us with a
canon of principles of sartorial elegance, as Neill for not
setting out the principles of running a 'good school'.
May I re-cast the author's third
criticism: Another significant boon of Summerhill for the child is
the anti-intellectual bias with which Neill has endowed it. The
following story was not included in the book published by
Educational Heretics Press. Neill is a silent witness to an
uncongenial on-ship conversation about criminality. Bored, he gets
up to leave. One lady asks him, "What do you think we ought to do
with the criminal, Mr Neill? " Over his shoulder, Neill replies,
"Reward him". "And, as I left the company, they laughed at my
little joke".
What did Matthew Arnold say about
Shakespeare, which encapsulates what I think of Neill the
educator, and also addresses the issue of 'knowledge'?
Others abide our question.
Thou art free.
We ask and ask:
Thou smilest and art
still,
Out-topping knowledge.
Or, if one's interests are
cricketing rather than literary, one might quote from another book
published in Australia last year, on the cricketer Don Bradman:
"The argument will go on as to
whether Nicklaus was better than Woods, Pele better than Maradona,
or Ali than Louis, but, if cricket is still around in 10,000,
no-one will be claiming that anyone was better than Bradman".
Let us not stretch ourselves so
far. May we not claim, however, that A.S Neill was the Greatest,
if not the most complete, Educator of the Twentieth Century?
Note:
Many thanks to the above
contributors. Thanks also to Professor Ian Stronach of the
Institute of Education, Manchester Metropolitan University for his
help.
This article is dedicated to
another great educator, my friend Ozaki Mugen (1942-2002) of
Kansai University.
Books referred to:
Appleton, Matthew. A Free Range
Childhood: Self Regulation at Summerhill School. Vermont:
Foundation for Educational Renewal, 200 0.
Croall, Jonathan. Neill of
Summerhill: The Permanent Rebel. London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1983.
Gribble, David. Real Education:
Varieties of Freedom. Bristol: Libertarian Education, 1998.
Hemmings, Ray. Fifty Years of
Freedom: A Study of the Development of the Ideas of A. S.
Neill. London: Unwin Education Books, 1972.
Hobson, Peter. 'A. S. Neill' in
Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education: From Piaget to the
Present. (Editor: Joy A. Palmer). London: Routledge, 2001.
Lane, Homer. Talks to Parents
and Teachers. London: Allen and Unwin, 1928.
Neill, A. S. That Dreadful
School. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1937.
Neill, A. S. The Problem Teacher.
London: Herbert Jenkins, 1939.
Neill, A. S. The New
Summerhill. (Editor: Albert Lamb). Penguin, 1992,
Purdy, Bryn. A. S. Neill: "Bringing
happiness to some few children". Nottingham: Educational Heretics
Press, 1997.