I was referred the other day to the story of Summerhill school in England - an alternative school founded by A S Neill. This school is structured on the basis that children have an innate sense of what they need.
There are some links on my weblog. But I would like to add a few quotes here from Neill whose belief is that our current model crushes children into conformity and prepares them for a robotic world of industrial work and obedience.
Neill feels that fear blocks development and learning. "Summerhill has shown the world that a school can abolish fear of teachers and deeper down fear of life"
"There is no necessity for a gulf separating pupils from teachers...Teachers want to be little gods protected by dignity. They fear that if they act human, their authority will vanish and their classrooms will become bedlams. They fear to abolish fear"
"Obviously, a school that makes active children sit at desks studying mostly useless subjects is a bad school. It is a good school only for those that believe in such a school for those uncreative citizens who want docile, uncreative children who will fit into a civilization whose standard of success is money"
"When my wife and I began the school, we had one idea: to make the school fit the child - instead of making the child fit the school"
"Whether a school has or has not a special method for teaching long division is of no significance, for long division is of no importance except to those who want to learn it, And the child who wants to learn it will learn it no matter how it is taught"
"The function of a child is to live his own life - not the life that his anxious parents think he should have, nor a life according to the purpose of the educator who thinks that he knows best, All this interference and guidance on the part of adults only produces a generation of robots"
From Summerhill Scool - A New View of Childhood by A S Neill edited by Albert Lamb
10:55:41 PM 
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