#summerhill school

[anarkittyuwuuniverse]

Hi, I want to say: thank you so much for your anti school posts. It gives me comfort. Since I was young, I suffered alot at school due to dealing with racism from white classmates and a learning disability which I got made fun of...

I'm very glad to hear that my posts are having a positive effect on someone, and I'm so sorry to hear you had such bad experiences with school. I suffered a lot from going to school myself but it's only been during the last two years or so I've started to really consider how much it's affected me (I'm autistic and have a learning disability too but I can only imagine how tough it must have been to deal with racism on top of that too). I think people really tend to underestimate how traumatizing school can really be, both because school has become one of those unquestioned and naturalized things in our society that we just can't imagine doing without, and because of this general approach to children as a subhuman category who are subservient to the fantasies and egos of adults but whose own autonomy and own struggles are devalued and not taken seriously.

One of the things that's given me most comfort about anti-school has been to read about various alternatives to school that are more democratic/anarchic and actually respectful of the wishes of children. I found that it can be very healing to get a view of how school could have been, to know that it is possible to live a happy childhood and get educated without all this trauma and oppression. I will post some titles down here for folks to get started, and anon if you ever feel the need to talk to somebody about your struggles with school without getting judged you can feel free to message me. Take care <3

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gray-unschooling-surveys http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/robert-h-haworth-anarchist-pedagogies

"Free at Last - The Sudbury Valley School" by Daniel Greenberg

"Summerhill School - A new view of childhood" by A. S. Neill And for those who struggle to read: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoE480mzrk0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIm7dmEJKfM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6wlTtQBlhI

[uwu-vision]

The other day in sociology we watched an interview from 1964 of the first "head teacher" or Summerhill School (aka the school where everybody is pretty much free to do what they want, unless it's harming others), A. S Neill. I have decided to base like 90% of my morals off of this dude now.

He said "Kid's lie because they are scared" and "There are no problem children, there are problem parents and problem humanity"

I can't beleive people have been saying this since the fucking 1920's and some of y'all adults still treat your kids like shit cause you think "Oh mY KiDs ShOuLd bE oBeDiAnT" naw mate fuck off, your kid only disobeys you cause you ain't worthy of that kid now shut the fuck up and share some fucking love.

https://youtu.be/SIy7Xj6P4Xg

[bellemaddox]

How can we have happy homes with love in them when the home is a tiny corner of a homeland that shows hate socially in a hundred ways?

A.S. Neill

[refcampbell]

Freedom to Learn Forum. April 6th 2018 - Personalised Education Now

The Freedom to Learn Forum is an annual festival, celebrating humanity in education, bringing together progressive educators, families and other pioneers to showcase and inspire unique learning communities governed by equality, freedom, and collaboration.

[mayflolikes]

A.S Neill's Summerhill School, a co-educational boarding school in Suffolk, England, is the original alternative 'free' school.

The oldest democratic school.

[laurenathalasa]

Summerhill school

Summerhill school, for those who don't know about it, is a school in England which is one of the most amazing things I've heard of. It's a democratic school, which don't really survive well in England, and no one knows that better than Summerhill, as the government was very set on shutting them down until recent years. The whole point of summerhill is that it's a democratic society. People are in positions of power yes, like leaders of houses or people in charge of 'lights out'/'curfew times', but ultimately, everyone in the school has their fair say; each member of the school had one vote. Twice a week the students, and staff, all attend a meeting to discuss issues and to do justice to those who have done wrong or been wronged, or to put rules or motions in to place. It then, of course, is no surprise, that a rule was passed making all lessons optional. At the beginning of every term the students are given a timetable which they fill in with the subjects THEY want to study. While this can include English and maths, these subjects can be replaced with more vocational lessons including woodwork, art or even magic trick classes! And even then, you have no obligation to show up to classes. The students can literally do nothing but play the entire term, but that's the beauty of the system. The founder of summerhill, A.S Neill, held a philosophy to do with this boredom; he believed that eventually a time comes for each student where boredom must be replaced by curiosity, and this is what he believed forces the students to motivate themselves to learn- because of what they want to learn, rather than what a curriculum dictates. So I hear you ask, is the school actually viable? Well yes, it is. Though the school doesn't particularly agree with report cards or standardised testing, there was an Ofsted report completed for the school in 2015, which inspected the school to see if it was fit for purpose. Remarkably, summerhill outperformed my own school judging by this report, summerhill being literally 'outstanding' in many areas. What was most obvious from my research into summerhill so far, was that students attending democratic schools are happier and safer than those who don't. In a recent survey, 0% of students who had attending democratic schools said they would attend any other kind of school. Which begs the question, how on earth are we still following the factory model for schools?

[principleofplenitude]

[pingu89]

Sorry for the Summerhill School spam, I was rereading  A. S. Neill books again and got a bit carried away