We are used to the fact that any school is based on strict rules that have an educative and disciplining effect on the younger generation. We are so used to this idea that any other concept of organizing school work is perceived with hostility. So it happened with the Summerhill school in England. Since its inception to this day, attacks on the leadership and principles of the work of this institution have not ceased. Let's see what is so terrible in her parents and teachers of other schools.
Summerhill School - Freedom Education
In 1921, in England, Alexander Sutherland Nill founded the Summerhill School. The main idea of this school is that it is not children who need to adjust to the rules, and the rules should be set by children. Later, A.Nill's book "Summerhill - Freedom Education" was published. It covered in detail all the issues related to the approaches to the upbringing of children used by the teachers of the school. Also, it reveals the reasons why children from well-off families seem so often unhappy. This is due to the fact that a small person from the moment of admission to school is beginning to be forced to do what he does not want. As a result, the child becomes embittered, loses self-esteem. And it is for this reason that many school leavers do not know what they want to do in life, because they were not allowed to even understand what they like to do. Nilla resented the existing approach to education, "knowledge for the sake of knowledge." No one can be pleased with the teaching imposed forcibly.
That is why Neil's school in Summerhill is based on a system of free education. Here, children themselves choose which items to visit, participate in meetings about hooliganism. The voice of the child is equal to the voice of the teacher, everyone is on equal terms. To receive respect, it must be earned, this rule is the same for both children and teachers. Nill refused any restrictions on the freedom of the child, all sorts of moral teachings and religious teachings. He said that the child is trustworthy.
It is this freedom of the Summerhill school in England that so annoys the eyes of all who adhere to the old conservative foundations. Many believe that it is only possible to raise an anarchist, and not to form a responsible person. But it is not the problem of modern society, that almost all of us were formed by other people, molded according to their tastes, and we, growing up, had to destroy these forms with the pain and blood, attached by strange inept hands. Many psychological problems would not have existed if a person were allowed to develop independently, and not drove into a rigid framework almost from birth.