Life and writings of A.S Neill

A.S. NEILL, founder of the Summerhill School in England on which MLC was modeled, thereby the "inventor of the free school," wrote 20 books as well as piles of letters.

Most influential was Summerhill, published in the US in 1960, which largely sparked the Free Schools Movement. Two others, however, were the books the fates sent into your interim webmaster's hands, to draw impressions of the man.

For us from MLC, who endlessly contemplate the twists of fate that gave us our life foundation and extended family, Neill has to be the greatest twist of all. He had a lousy childhood. His father was a Scots schoolmaster or dominie who was hard on his awkward fourth child, shaming him in matters of sex, calling him good-for-nothing, sending his seven siblings off to school, but not him, and forcing Neill to study while others went off to play.

No wonder Neill believed children ought to be free to play, and no wonder he founded a free school to prove they could learn better by doing so!

Neill's bad dad clearly did not reckon on his son's hard head concealing a world-class brain accompanied by a huge heart, a Mister-Rogers-level abilty to relate to children, the rare kind of builder mentality that creates and nurtures strong institutions, and tremendous communication skills.

Books authored by A.S. Neill

• Neill, A.S. (1917) A Dominie Abroad.

• Neill, A.S. (1917) A Dominie Dismissed. New York: R. McBride & Co.

• Neill, A.S. (1918) A Dominie’s Log. London: H. Jenkins Ltd.

• Neill, A.S. (1922) A Dominie in Doubt. New York: Robert M. McBride & Co.

• Neill, A.S. (1921) Carroty Broon. London: Herbert Jenkins.

• Neill, A.S. (1924) A Dominie’s Five. London: Herbert Jenkins.

• Neill, A.S. (1925) The Booming of Bunkie. London: Herbert Jenkins.

• Neill, A.S. (1927) The Problem Child. New York: Robert M. McBride & Co.

• Neill, A.S. (1932) The Problem Parent. London: Herbert Jenkins.

• Neill, A.S. (1936) Is Scotland educated? London: G. Routledge and Sons.

• Neill, A.S. (1939) The Problem Teacher. London: Herbert Jenkins.

• Neill, A.S. (1944) The Problem Teacher. New York: International University Press.

• Neill, A.S. (1948) That Dreadful School. London: Herbert Jenkins, Ltd.

• Neill, A.S. (1949) The problem family; an investigation of human relations.

• Neill, A.S. (1953) The Free Child. London: Herbert Jenkins.

• Neill, A.S. (1960) Summerhill: a radical approach to child rearing (Foreword by Erich Fromm). (Also published, 1962, London: Victor Gollancz.)

• Neill, A.S. (1968) Summerhill. Pelican Books.

• Neill, A.S. (1966) Freedom—not license! New York: Hart Publishing Co.

• Neill, A.S. (1967) Talking of Summerhill. London: Victor Gollancz.

• Neill, A.S. (1970) Summerhill. For & Against. New York: Hart Publishing Co.

• Neill, A.S. (1972) Neill! Neill! Orange Peel! A Personal View of Ninety Years. New York: Hart Publishing Co. (Also published in Great Britain, in a revised form, 1973.)

Book of Neill's correspondence, belonging to Geoff Seaman.

The book Talking of Summerhill (cover image and table of contents adjoining) was written in 1967, six years before Neill's death at age 79; it is the book MLC founding scholar Manny Bernstein owned and had had inscribed to him by Neill himself. By the time Neill wrote the book he'd been running his school for 46 years and had a head full of knowledge, practices, and opinions, which he poured garrulously onto the 136 pages.

The book's style and structure seem consistent with an approach Neill preferred throughout his life—highly pragmatic, internally integrated, interpersonally engaged, scholarly but not academic. The book presents 91 questions Neill says he'd most frequently been asked, with 91 clear and definite answers developed over those 46 years:

"Why should a child do only what he likes to do? How can he face life which demands a thousand unpleasant duties?" [".... [N]o child ever gets enough play. The Summerhill theory is that when a child has played enough he will start to work and face difficulties, and I claim that this theory has been vindicated ...."]

"Has Summerhill had any failures?" [".... Every school has failures. Yet I know of only one old pupil so far who has not been able to hold down a job .... Does a young thief go on stealing after a few years in the school? Not if he comes in early enough, say eleven. Does a bully remain a bully? Alas, a few bullies do .... Does a child who comes in full of hate go on hating ... ? Seldom if ever, so that I repeat what I have so often said, that freedom cures most things ...."]

"Is your self-government phoney? David Holbrook [in an article in the Summerhill journal Id] would seem to think it's no good ...." [".... Self-government to [our pupils] means dealing with situations that arise in their communal life; they can say what they like, vote how they like in a meeting, and they never wait to see how the staff votes .... We never ask children to decide on things that are beyond their ability to grasp ...."]

"How does Summerhill handle the sex question?" [".... There are but two ways to handle the sex question. One is the moral or religious way ... sex is sinful or wrong or dirty. The other way is to be realistic about it ...."]

The book is a rich and accessible resource for understanding both non-coercive education generally, and the origins of MLC's approach specifically.

The second book, All the Best, Neill: Letters from Summerhill (cover image above), was lent after it showed up in the large collection belonging to MLC alumnus Geoff Seaman.

In it we glimpse in an intimate way the workings of Neill's mind as educator, innovator, schoolmaster, applied (some would say amateur) psychologist, public intellectual, and iconoclast.

Neill was neither shy nor the least bit uncomfortable engaging with anyone at all on his one topic: educating children with freedom. He corresponded with intellectual luminaries including H.G. Wells, author of The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine with its dystopian take on the future of education; William Golding, author of The Lord of the Flies about young boys who revert to savagery; and Henry Miller who wrote Tropic of Cancer among many other books. Neill was in regular touch with his friend the philosopher Bertrand Russell, author of the book On Education, considered a classic. In practically every letter, Neill sought conversation about children's lives and reality.

Perhaps most tellingly, Neill became an acquaintance and devotee of Wilhelm Reich, the post-Freudian Austrian psychoanalyst who became infamous for his views on sexuality and who invented an "orgone accumulator" to capture the energy of orgasm. Reich was hounded out of Germany by the Nazis, lived in Norway then moved to the US, ran afoul of courts and communist-hunters in the fifties and died in prison. Neill cared little that some of Reich's theories were viewed as pseudo-scientfic; he found so helpful and accurate Reich's view that repressed emotion is reflected in body woes that he defended Reich's work his entire life, and past the point of judiciousness, as appears in the letters. Reich represented practical observational psychology, which was also Neill's way.

Other correspondence is with newspapers, authorities, fellow-educators, and friends. Neill is said to have answered every letter he ever received.

In 1960 he anxiously corresponded with his American publisher, Harold Hart, wondering and worrying over how well Summerhill might sell. Little did he suspect the book would bring him international fame, a reputation as a revolutionary, mountains of mail, and unwanted worry over schools founded in his name but using his ideas badly.

Neill was Neill, not a 1960s US educator, not an MLC founder (if perhaps a godfather), removed by an ocean, culture, and two generations of time from the concerns of urban America. He worked in a surprisingly modern way to put a wrench in the gears of an old Scots-and-British system that tended to brutalize, not merely bore and homogenize very young tender people.

Nevertheless there are a few contrasts it seems important to draw between the legacy of Summerhill, and the experience of MLC.

Summerhill, Neill's books make clear, was expressly intended for "troubled kids"; MLC was not, except to the extent it welcomed them, integrated them with better-adjusted kids, and gave everyone Summerhillian freedoms. So it was different from Summerhill, with different needs and situations; maybe upping the ante, attempting something Neill could only have dreamed of; maybe de-ghettoizing the troubled; yet maybe giving some kids more freedom than they needed. These are debates that in the case of MLC may, it seems, rage to this day.

Then, MLC, at least early MLC, with the possible (and brief) exception of Manny, did not really have a Neill—someone quite as preternaturally conversant with the inner lives, daily concerns, troubling issues and communication styles of the young. Every beloved founding teacher owned a piece of the skill set, and every (or nearly every) student found the mentoring they needed most, but at MLC, often a component of Summerhillian freedom was being left on one's own to figure things out emotionally. Whether this was by design, default, or dereliction is also a subject of 57 years' debate.

It is a bit painful to read the words of Summerhill's detractors, for they impugn not only Neill's passionate project but also underpinnings of our own identity. According to the Wikipedia entry, one critic "... called Summerhill 'a caricature of education' and felt threatened by the implications of 'the spread of Neill's hedonism to the majority of the next generation.' Others criticized Neill for his progressive ideals ... and bemoaned his 'outdated radicalism' and 'dangerously enthusiastic following in teaching training institutions'." The dialogue continues.

Cover and table of contents from Manny Bernstein's copy of Neill's 1967 Q&A book.