Customer Reviews

Summerhill: for & Against.

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Summerhill: For & Against

The backlash in the U.S. against freedom for children, as espoused by A.S. Neill at his school & the book describing it, Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing, could have been prevented by the clearheaded reviews of Neill's philosophy as contained in this monumental work. Essays by 15 of the top educators, psychologists, sociologists, social philosophers, & anthropologists of the time assess the pros & cons of freedom & childhood & explain the philosophy & the theories behind it even better than Neill did. Neill's original work was an excellent description of what he had created at Summerhill, full of delightful examples illustrating the points he was making, but this book draws on the insight of a wide array of thinkers who at times push Neill up against the wall, but with only one exception, come out as his & freedom's advocates.

I don't know if it was publisher Harold Hart's intent to set Max Rafferty up as a straw man or if he just couldn't find another educator, psychologist, social philosopher, or anthropologist who opposed Neill's basic philosophy of freedom as much, but having heard Rafferty speak at a convention, Hart would have been hard pressed to come up with someone as greatly lacking in knowledge of child development. His cavalier dismissal of the obvious simply because it doesn't fit his narrow view is symptomatic of similar vitriolic assaults on freedom & self-expression by those who feel that anything outside of narrow guidelines & traditional values is heresy & must be censored. Eda J. LeShan, one of the included reviewers, describes Neill as a "gardener of childhood." Rafferty, in contrast, would have made a cruel prison warden.

Well worth reading if you like the idea of Free Schools. The for's probably support your views and the againsts tend to give the standard arguments for the continuation of traditional public school education.

Dennis Charles