Customer Reviews

Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing

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A friend of mine gave me this book, and, after reading it, I remarked to him that, if it weren't against Neill's "principles of freedom," Summerhill should be mandatory reading for everyone who wants to become a parent, before they can have children! This was one of the best books I've ever read. I instantly recognized many elements in Neill's teachings, and realized my parents had used some of them in my upbringing. I have bought this book for all of my friends who have or plan to have children, and I plan to read my own copy over and over, as I raise my own. If more people knew about and studied Neill's teachings, the recent violence in schools would not exist, and our current society would be a much healthier and happier place.

We used this book as a guide for our first child, now 25.
We dug it out for reminders during our second child's early years (now 14).
Our daughter has informed us that we are soon to be grandparents, and we are impressed with the fact that she and her husband are also interested in the code of freedom for children that this book declares necessary.
It's very satisfying to know that one's children have turned out happy, caring and thoughtful.
This book is an insightful guide to achieving that success.

I am in college and in the process of reading this book for a book review for my parenting class. My mother recommended it to me because it was the book that she based her methods of child rearing after. I am 20 years old and number 7 out of the 8 children in my family. None of us are psychopaths, all of us are quite happy. My parents did give us a lot of freedom when we were being raised and am grateful to them for it. I love life and I love my family dearly. As I prepare for marraige and raising children, I am sure I will look to this book frequently for inspiration.

This book and Neill's thoughts will awaken hidden and
possibly repressed thoughts and feelings that you have
about yourself. Neill has a way of making an alternative
(and radical) approach to child rearing seem perfectly
logical and natural. I can't help saying "he's right"
on every subject he addresses. I highly recommend it.

This book was given to me by a well meaning friend, who brought up her kids this way. I loved it and think that the titel should be revised "a sensible approach to child rearing". The book might be a little old but has not lost any of its appeal today. It is a valid, reassuring and very helpful guide to viewing child rearing from a new perspective for many - even today. It took me a while to track down some more copies of this book, but the chase was well worth it. I think I will keep this book for another 20 years and will return to it many times over, whilst raising my daughter...

Not just about how to raise children, but how to live your own life. Children are the truest expression of human intention, and somewhere along the way we lose sight of what it means to really live and not just survive and exist. Anyone has the power to make their own Summerhill.

Its a magnificient book that has helped me greatly to understand and support my children. The author utilizes a method that has the potencial to awake our minds from our sleeping society.

I reread Summerhill after a lapse of many years. And the wisdom - and love of life - is as fresh as ever. Summerhill was not just a school, but a philosophy. Honest, sensible, and very much an advocate for life and the living.

Summerhill looked beautiful on the surface, and A.H. Neill made it sound idyllic, but like many cultish organizations it was partially rotten at the guts. Although A.H. Neill labeled himself a champion of freedom, underneath it he retained a strain of the covert authoritarian. He was so confident in the correctness of his partially twisted, denial-laden philosophy that he had no hesitation in bending vulnerable children to it -- in the name of loving them! And while it is true that he was a step up from the overtly authoritarian pedagogues of his time, and that a lot of his point of view truly was healthy, in the sick parts of him he was simply a reaction to them -- an example of the pendulum swinging almost as far from truth in the opposite direction.

For instance, Neill's cure-all for so many psychic ills in his students was to convince them of the incorrectness of the masturbation prohibition. He held this as a cornerstone of his philosophy, to a ludicrous degree. He publicly lectured students as young as eleven on the inherent healthiness and even importance of masturbation -- and rationalized the intrusiveness and violation of his lectures by pointing out that the real damage was done by their repressive parents. True, their parents were repressive and damaging, but this doesn't give an adult carte blanche to brainwash children in the opposite direction - and subtly invade their private sexualities.

Or try this quote of Neill's: "I have gone nude myself, or encouraged one of the women on the staff to do so, in order to satisfy the curiosity of a small child who had a sense of sin about nakedness." Talk about a twisted rationalization! One can only speculate on his own perverse motives for privately stripping naked in front of a little child -- much less on the psychological effect on the child!

He then pointed out that NEVER in his forty years at Summerhill did they "[turn] out a single homosexual" -- which he holds as proof of the sexual healthiness of his school. Oh? If his claim is true, it was only because Summerhill was such an incredibly repressive force in his students' lives that they couldn't bear to follow some of their deeper inclinations. But I would suspect that his claim of "no homosexual graduates" is patently impossible. It is far more likely that those graduates who did go on to have homosexual adult experiences -- or heaven forbid turn out fully gay! -- just didn't go back and share it with their semi-delusional cult leader. Bursting his bubble would hardly have won them any more of his clearly conditional love.

And winning his love was certainly a huge part of their lives. After all, Summerhill was a boarding school for rejected children who had been torn from their families. They needed to do anything to win the love of the new parent figure -- Neill! And if his some of his ideas were wacky and anti-life, well, so be it, because at Summerhill his ideas were the norm, and children feel massive pressure to conform. And so much for Neill championing freedom when he's regularly lecturing them on his version of psychology -- and even forcing the more recalcitrant kids into one-on-one therapy with HIM!

Similarly, Neill also stated that "I never consciously told my pupils a lie in thirty-eight years" -- as if that proves what an honest person he was. Does he fail to realize that many of the world's biggest liars also consciously believe their own lies? Clearly he, just like any other cult leader with an impaired sense of self-reflection, does not understand the nature of his own self-deception. And sadly, Summerhill, whatever its positive qualities, reflects this.

Thank you Mr. Neill for your contribution to the Columbine massacre. Your approach to child rearing has spawned such mentality, in my opinion.