Concept
A. S. Neill
Overview
Alexander Sutherland Neill (17 October 1883 – 23 September 1973) was a Scottish educator and author known for his school, Summerhill, and its philosophy of freedom from adult coercion and community self-governance. Raised in Scotland, Neill taught at several schools before attending the University of Edinburgh in 1908–1912. He took two jobs in journalism before World War I, and taught at Gretna Green Village School in the second year of the war, writing his first book, A Dominie's Log (1915), as a diary of his life there as head teacher. He joined a Dresden school in 1921 and founded Summerhill on returning to England in 1924. Summerhill gained renown in the 1930s and then in the 1960s–1970s, due to progressive and counter-culture interest. Neill wrote 20 books. His top seller was the 1960 Summerhill, read widely in the free school movement from the 1960s.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Division into groups is made where it is found that the children naturally divide themselves. These groups are called “Life Classes” instead of grades. The first life class ends between the eighth and ninth years; the second between the eleventh and twelfth, and since an even more marked change of interests and tastes occurs at the period of adolescence, there are distinct high-school classes. The work within the…
John Dewey, Schools of to-morrow
States what A. S. Neill is.
Hence the first law of every society is some conventional equality either in men or things. Conventional equality between men, a very different thing from natural equality, leads to the necessity for positive law, i.e., government and kings. A child's political knowledge should be clear and restricted; he should know nothing of government in general, beyond what concerns the rights of property, of which he has…
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile
The author is tied to A. S. Neill in the knowledge graph.
Hardly had he proposed this bill, when the ten hours' agitation was begun again more vigorously than ever. Oastler had just then regained his liberty; a number of his friends and a collection among the workers had paid his debt, and he threw himself into the movement with all his might. The defenders of the Ten Hours' Bill in the House of Commons had increased in numbers, the masses of petitions supporting it which…
Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 with a Preface written in 1892
Close in meaning to A. S. Neill; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed A. S. Neill
Related ideas
- Emile, or On Education
- William Godwin
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Alfred the Great
- Wilhelm Reich
- Mary Wollstonecraft
- UNESCO
- University of Edinburgh
- Rudolf Steiner
- Sigmund Freud
- Stalinism
- Robert Owen
- Voltaire
- Dresden
- World War I
- Reformed Christianity
- Maria Montessori
- Communism
- Edinburgh
- Summerhill School
Place in the tradition
Part of Anarchism.