A. S. Neill
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.
"Alexander Neill" redirects here. For other uses, see Alex Neil (disambiguation).
A. S. Neill
Educator, author
Founding Summerhill School, advocacy of personal freedom for children, progressive education
Ada Lillian Lindesay Neustätter
Ena May Neill
Early life and career[edit]
Alexander Sutherland Neill was born in Forfar,[1] Scotland, on 17 October 1883[2] to George Neill and Mary (née Sutherland Sinclair).[3] He was their fourth son; one of the eight surviving children out of 13. He was raised in an austere, Calvinist house with values of fear, guilt, and adult and divine authority, which he later repudiated.[4] As a child, he was obedient, quiet, and uninterested in school.[3] His father was the village dominie (Scottish schoolmaster) of Kingsmuir, near Forfar in eastern Scotland, and his mother had been a teacher before her marriage. The village dominie held a position of prestige, hierarchically beneath that of upper classes, doctors, and clergymen.[3] As typical of Scottish methods at the time, the dominie controlled overcrowded classrooms with his tawse, as corporal punishment. Neill feared his father, though he later claimed his father's imagination as a role model for good teaching. Scholars have interpreted Neill's harsh childhood as the impetus for his later philosophy, though his father was not shown to be harsher to Allie (as Neill was known[3]) than to anyone else.[5] Neill's mother insisted on high standards for her family, and demanded comportment to set the family apart from the townspeople.[6]
Children usually left the local school for Forfar Academy at the age of 14, and with his father a teacher, Neill was especially expected to do so. Instead of wasting time and money,[7] Neill went to work as a junior clerk in an Edinburgh gas meter factory. His parents took pity on his hatred of the job, homesickness, and its low pay, and so Neill became an apprentice draper in Forfar. He found the work stultifying and came home after a foot inflammation. Neill tried to take an examination that would raise his pay grade, but could not bring himself to study. Now 15, his parents decided to make him his father's assistant "pupil teacher".[1] The children liked Neill, though he received poor marks from a school inspector. He taught a wider range of topics as his self-confidence grew, and he developed an interest in mathematics from the Forfar Academy maths master. After four years, he tried for teacher training college, but came nearly last in his class. He continued as a pupil teacher in Bonnyrigg and Kingskettle, where he found the teachers' instruction militant and loathsome.[8] He stayed in Kingskettle for three years, during which he learned Greek from a local priest, an experience that increased his interest in academicism and sublimated his interest in priesthood into a desire to attend university. After studying with the priest and the Forfar math master, Neill passed his university entrance exam and preliminary teacher's certification.[9]
Neill became an assistant teacher at the Newport Public School in the wealthy Newport-on-Tay, where he learned to dance and appreciate music and theatre. He also fell in love, and Margaret became an obsession of his. He adopted progressive techniques at this school, and abandoned the tawse for other forms of establishing discipline. Neill was friendly and relaxed with his pupils, and described his two years there as "the happiest of [his] life thus far".[10] He finished his university entrance exams and received his full teaching certification.[10]
In 1908, at the age of 25, Neill enrolled in the University of Edinburgh. He began as an agriculture student, at his father's behest for a well-salaried career,[10] but switched to English literature by the end of his first year.[11] Neill was excluded from cultural events due to his lack of funds, but participated in sports, showed interest in the military, and wrote for The Student (the university magazine) and the Glasgow Herald.[12] He became the student paper's editor during his last year, which opened Neill to a world of culture. He also felt more confident to pursue women.[11] In his editorials, Neill criticized the tedium of lectures and the emphasis on tests instead of critical thinking.[11] He began to develop his thoughts about the futility of forced education, and the axiom that all learning came from intrinsic interest.[13] Neill graduated in 1912 and began to edit encyclopedias and similar reference books. He took a new job as art editor of the Piccadilly Magazine, but its operations were halted by the 1914 onset of World War I,[14] in which he served as an officer in the army. He returned to Scotland, working as a head teacher at Gretna Green School during the first year of the war. The diary he wrote for this year was published as a book, A Dominie's Log, in November 1915 by Herbert Jenkins, and received good reviews for its humour and narrative style.
Neill was invited to join a progressive school in Dresden in 1921. The school moved to a monastery near Vienna in 1923, where the townspeople did not receive it well. He moved to England in 1924 and started Summerhill in Lyme Regis, where the name came from the estate.[15]
Reception and legacy[edit]
Critics regard Neill's influence and importance with mixed opinion.[72] Supporters counted Neill amongst the world's most influential educationists.[72] UNESCO listed Neill within its 100 most important educationists worldwide. The Times Educational Supplement listed him in its 12 most important British educationists of the millennium. Herb Kohl declared Neill "one of the greatest democratic educators of the last century" in 2005. Academics and teachers cited Summerhill as the common ancestor for free schools, and Neill was poised to become a public figure during Summerhill's heyday in the 1970s.[72] Its detractors do not classify Summerhill as a school. Max Rafferty 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".[73] Others criticized Neill for his progressive ideals despite agreement on his critique of traditional schools, and bemoaned his "outdated radicalism" and "dangerously enthusiastic following in teaching training institutions".[74]
Richard Bailey wrote that Summerhill received most of its public attention in the 1920s to 1930s and in the 1960s to 1970s, which were eras of social change (progressivism and the counterculture, respectively). Neill was known in British education circles by the 1920s and was "probably Britain's first educational celebrity" in the 1930s, though he was not driven by his reception. Journal reviews called Neill "the most popular writer on education today" and said of his works, "Nearly all the more alive and up-to-date teachers in Britain have read and argued about his notions". He was known via his books as a figure in the new psychoanalysis.[69] The accessible 1960 Summerhill crowned Neill the leader of a new avant-garde education and he became symbolic of the rebel decade.[70]
Neill is generally associated with democratic schools as a leader in its tradition.[75] H. A. T. Child associated Summerhill with the Bedales School, Alfred the Great, and Child's Dartington Hall School, and David Gribble wrote in 1998 about schools around the world that followed Neill's teachings. Timothy Gray linked the release of Summerhill with the rise of writers Herb Kohl, Jonathan Kozol, Neil Postman, and Ivan Illich.[76] Scholars debate whether Neill fits best in a progressive or more radical tradition.[75] Other schools inspired by Neill's philosophy in the UK include Sands School in Devon, Sherwood School in Epsom and Kirkdale School in London.
Few of Neill's acolytes continued his work after his death.[75] His family maintained Summerhill, with Neill's daughter as its headmaster as of 2013. Others influenced by Neill included John Aitkenhead, Michael Duane, and R. F. Mackenzie. Richard Bailey wrote that Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner's followers were more evangelical in character, and that Neill deterred would-be devotees. He specifically discouraged American association with his school in both name and likeness.[75] By 1972, Ray Hemmings wrote that Neill's ideas were misinterpreted in the hands of other schools.[69] Hemmings found Neill to have moderate influence on state schools in areas such as teacher–student interactions. Neill's views on sexuality and non-compulsory lessons did not have widespread acceptance.[69] Herb Snitzer said that Neill "influenced thousand of teachers". Both George Dennison and Bailey felt Neill's influence to not be easily measurable, with Dennison adding that non-Summerhill schools continue to adopt Neillian thought.[77]
Neill was awarded three honorary degrees: a master's and two honorary doctorates.[43] One doctorate was from the Newcastle University in 1966.[43] He was reportedly very proud of the awards.[43]