Summerhill

My first quarter at Lowood seemed an age; and not the golden age either: it comprised an irksome struggle with difficulties in habituating myself to new rules and unwonted tasks. The fear of failure in these points harassed me worse than the physical hardships of my lot…Sundays were dreary days in that wintery season…Jane Eyre…(C. Bronte)

 

As I read the biography of A.S. Neil’s Summerhill School in England, I tried to be objective and see the benefits of a rule-free environment. I can see the logic behind Neil’s theories and appreciate the noble gesture of creating a hate-free environment. I suppose Jane Eyre would have been less dreary had she attended Summerhill. Mostly, I see an anarchist tribe of 2nd graders sticking forks into electrical sockets. I wonder if Michael Foucault would call this proof of his Panopticon Theory? A tidy little school without structure, functioning as an institution of learning with only the child’s will as source of restraint?

 

 However, my parents have finally learned to trust the Internet, touchtone phones and cable TV, which means that anything is possible. So maybe I should try to trust in Neil’s ideas; even though they resemble nothing I have ever witnessed and they appear chaotic by their very nature. Utopian? Yes. Practical? No.

 

One would think that with modernization our society would become more open-minded and free, but recent trends in bureaucracy show an increased allowance of government control and interference. A kid at Summerhill might be allowed to play on-line poker, call Iraq, smoke a cigarette, and masturbate to gay porn instead of learning algebra, but that same kid will find it pretty hard to stay within the good graces of his own government. Who drugged the Watchman? 

 

 

 

 Education is the point at which we decide if we love the world enough to be responsible for it…. The Human Condition, The Crisis of Education…

                                                                                   Hannah Arendt   

I can see the necessity of freedom, but I do not feel boundaries are the equivalent of hate as Neil suggests; I think most people crave or require perimeters. Imagine the Summerhill method playing out in federal penitentiaries. I imagine it would be a little like crossbreeding Cool Hand Luke with Peter Pan. The Neverland Correctional Facility! But prisons, like the Summerhill School, are isolated communities and their residents will ultimately have to return to the general population. 

 

A.S. Neil’s school is still in operation. I suppose this means he had a valid plan. But the term rehabilitated, is almost as stupid as the word educated.  Unlike prison inmates, Neil’s test subjects were an elitist troupe of upper-class children, who had never been subjected to any kind of real oppression or misery. I would guess that most of them were already yawning with the ho-hum melancholy of their disengaged privileged lives by the time they were five. When there is nothing to fear, there is no need to run.

 

 I want to believe in Summerhill as much as I want to believe in Santa Claus or bi-partisan politics, and yet something seems a little fishy about all three. The only proof I can offer against these institutions is A. There was no Mercedes under my Christmas tree this year. B. I keep voting for Nader without success, and C. Wal-Mart on a Saturday. Our society becomes more narcissistic all the time. We tend to see ourselves at the center of the universe. The only one- with a problem- a deadline- an opinion. I would think that a place like Summerhill would fuel this growing trend. Be an individual! Be ignorant! Be free! I think a Karl Marx Elementary would be a better concept. “If you break the rules…we shoot your parents.”

 

 

<font f

ace=”Times New Roman”> Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry humans pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other…. Palo Freire

 

A middle ground is starting to sound pretty good about now. Maybe somewhere between Raskolnikov’s Happy Prison and Neil’s Negligent Carnival there exists a happy medium. Home schooling is out because it’s stupid. Public education seems ok. My seven year old seems content and she’s never committed acts or violence during math even though she isn’t fond of it. She is picking up some interesting ideas on the bus, but that’s to be expected. Unfortunately, the powers that be have come up with a method to destroy the public school system.

 

They call it No Child Left behind. It is supposed to create teacher accountability, but it has turned the classroom into a proverbial sinking ship, with both teacher and student paddling towards shore in a lifeboat full of bureaucratic holes. The person who coined the phrase, No Child Left Behind should be taken out and beat with his own rhetoric.

 

If a child does fall behind, they are left behind, but rather they are eliminated, cast off into Special Education, where they lick chalkboards and stick forks in light sockets, and where they cannot disrupt the curve. Basically, they go to a low-budget Summerhill- happy and heavily medicated.

 

Marxist methods are used to educate the rest. There will be no tolerance for overachieving geniuses here! Neil said that some kids will grow up to be trash collectors and some will grow up to be scholars, but in this case, some of our children will grow up to push the carts and the rest will get to run the cash registers. The Watchman just got his GED, but he can’t spell it.

 

What will happen in the future? Will the Watchman be aiming his academic trajectory at our children’s heads or will he be wearing a sign taped to his back that says, “Kick Me.” Maybe he’ll move to Summerhill and wait for Santa Clause to show up with a key to the Ralph Nader Presidential Library. Yes Virgina, there is a Watchman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.