Topic 9. Freedom for children

Task 20. Read and translate the texts and answer the questions after them.

Freedom for Children

Any state educational system is organized in order to educate a person with a wide range of interests, an intelligent and well-adapting person in our surrounding world, a person who is capable of realizing his/her ideas in modern society.

It is necessary that a person should identify his/her inclinations; it may help him/her direct energy into the right channel and develop individuality.

The aim of life is to find happiness, which means to find interest. Education should be a preparation for life. But educational establishments presuppose that schoolchildren, students obey definite rules and regulations while studying…

The Idea of Summerhill

(adapted from A. S. Neill’s story about Summerhill school)

This is a story of a modern school (it was found in 1921) – Summerhill. Summerhill began as an experimental school. It is no longer such; it is now a demonstration school, for it demonstrates that freedom works.

When A. S. Neill, the founder of this school, and his first wife began the school, they had one main idea: to make the school fit the child – instead of making the child fit the school.

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 who behave in such a school, for those uncreative children who will fit into a civilization whose standard of success is money.

A. S. Neill had taught in ordinary schools for many years. He knew the other way well. He knew it was all wrong. It was wrong because it was based on an adult conception of what a child should be and how a child should learn.

So, they set out to make a school in which they should allow children freedom to be themselves. In order to do this, they had to renounce all discipline, all direction, all suggestion, all moral training, all modern religious instruction. They have been called brave, but it didn’t require courage. All it required was what they had – a complete belief in the child as a good, not an evil, being.

Mr. Neill’s view is that a child is innately wise and realistic. If left to himself without adult suggestion of any kind, he will develop as far as he is capable of developing. Logically, Summerhill is a place in which people who have the innate ability and wish to be scholars; while those who are only fit to sweep the streets will sweep the streets.

What is Summerhill like then?

… Well, for one thing, lessons are optional. Children can go to them or stay away from them – for years if they want to. There is a timetable – but only for the teachers. Children have classes usually according to their age, but sometimes according to their interests. They have no new methods of teaching, because they do not consider that teaching in itself matters very much. Whether a school has or has not a special method for teaching long division is of no importance except to those who want to learn it. And the child who wants to learn long division will learn it no matter how it is taught.

Summerhill is possibly the happiest school in the world. They have no truants and seldom a case of homesickness. They very rarely have fights – quarrels, of course, but seldom has A. S. Neill seen a stand-up fight like the ones they used to have as boys. He seldom hears a child cry, because children when free have much less hate to express than children who are downtrodden. Hate breeds hate, and love breeds love. Love means approving of children, and that is essential in any school. You can’t be on the side of children if you punish them and storm at them. Summerhill is a school in which the child knows that he is approved of.

The function of the child is to live his own life – not the life that his anxious parents think he should live, nor a life according to the purpose of the educator who thinks he knows what is best. All this interference and guidance on the part of adults only produces a generation of robots.

In Summerhill, everyone has equal rights. No one is allowed to walk on Mr. Neill’s grand piano, and Mr. Neill is not allowed to borrow a boy’s cycle without his permission. At a General School Meeting, the vote of a child of six counts for as much as the headmaster’s vote does.

Free children are not easily influenced. The absence of fear is the finest thing that can happen to a child…

 

1) What kind of school is Summerhill School?

2) What is the child believed to be at this school?

3) Is there a timetable for lesson in Summerhill School?

4) Can children have classes according to their age or interests?

5) Does Summerhill have special teaching methods?

6) Express your opinion about Summerhill School.

7) What is your opinion, can schoolchildren be free about their behaviour and subjects to choose?

8) Should schoolchildren wear a school uniform?

 

Task 21. Decide if the following statements are true or false.

1) A school that makes active children sat at desks studying various (useful and useless) subjects is a good school.

2) Summerhill is a school in which teachers should allow children freedom to reveal themselves.

3) Schoolchildren do not miss classes and they rarely feel homesick.

4) Children should listen to their parents’ advice and choose what their parents want them to.

5) Free children are easily influenced.