Freer’s is one of many ex-Summerhill pupils’ memoirs featured in After Summerhill by Hussein Lucas, recently published by Herbert Adler Press.
This compelling book gives a voice to the benefits of a school run democratically and governed by decisions made in a thrice weekly meeting where school “laws” are made and in which everyone has one vote including all the children. It is composed of short testimonies from ex-Summerhillian’s about the impact their time there had upon their lives. It is chock full of positive and interesting real-life outcomes for them and the communities they went on to contribute to.
I was so intrigued that I wondered how outcomes for children of Steiner schools and mainstream schools might compare.
She remembered that one day a prospective pupil for the primary class had come on a visit with his mum. While he was there a wasp was noticed struggling on the floor. Realising it might sting someone, the teacher and children gathered round and decided that the wasp should be placed carefully in a covered glass by the teacher and given a chance by being set free out of the window. When the teacher turned to collect the glass the little boy on the visit simply stamped on the ailing wasp. The Steiner-educated children were devastated at this inexplicable destruction, yet the little visitor who had stamped on the wasp had no sense of having done any wrong.
In common with pupils of Summerhill, Sue said that Steiner kids tend to find that “their needs in life are fulfilled in what they themselves choose in their own hearts“. She said they don’t conform to what they don’t believe in: ”In other words they have a confidence in their own beliefs rather than being cowed by modern society’s.” Sue said Steiner was based on “nurture, but not over-nurture – create a nurturing environment but let them get on with it".
“Mainstream education can over-fertilise,” she added. “What matters is not always what is actually being done but what is expressed in the eyes, in the voice, from the heart.” She described the Steiner school as a place where children like to be: “They enjoy it, they are happy; they have calmness and are never out of control.”
The similarities continued to strike me when, speaking of After Summerhill’s contributors, publisher John Adler told me that ex-pupils “discovered“ rather than artificially manufactured ”an interest in a field of work” and were “well-balanced, rational people who do interesting and exceptional things”.
“Ex-Steiner children sometimes move around like journeymen and see lots of places because they’re engaged with life. Their initial education is all hands-on – the first thing kids do is bake bread and they do that every week,” Sue said.
A regular state school teacher friend of mine said that owing to Health and Safety considerations, in her classroom a candle can be present only as a projected image. Sue, in contrast, said that “not only are there small candles in the classroom that direct children’s attention like around a hearth, to mark festivals, pupils also light a Spiral of Candles – each child lights a candle in turn forming an unfolding spiral of light. Very positive spiritually.”
Steiner had provided Sue with a welcome choice for her children. Sue felt that “children in mainstream [education] can be burnt out by its system and curriculum” whereas Steiner teaches “being”, rather than the accumulating of facts. Children don’t learn to read at Steiner schools before the age of seven and classes are low technology – any TV before school is discouraged and younger kids learn as they play.
Read on The teacher is basically like a mother or father
Sue’s husband and Steiner Trustee, Robert Hughes-Parry, who was not sure that children can fully self-discipline, said Steiner valued the experience of adults and children alike. He explained that Steiner kids gained an appetite for learning rather than for regurgitating data. He described Steiner’s as an active education – from the hop-skip-jump-and-clap method of learning the alphabet, to the personal morality children who are trusted naturally develop as they get older, tempered by consideration and respect for each other.
Freer Spreckley echoed the importance of this element of life at Summerhill in a recent Radio Four programme when he described being shocked at the disrespectful approach his non-Summerhill contemporaries had towards girls. He had learned to respect girls completely as equals in an environment where everyone’s example mattered.
According to Robert, Steiner teachers live their jobs and are required to be aware of what they look and act like. Sue said, “They are asked to be ‘mindful’ of their effect on children’s thinking even down to the tone of voice when speaking to children, which is moderate and modulated.”
Trust is a common basis of both the Steiner and Summerhill approaches, with personal morality valued and achievement measured not only by statistical benchmarks but by quality of life, the mastering of life skills, and positive engagement in society.
Zoe Redhead is the current head teacher of Summerhill and daughter of Neill, the much loved and admired Summerhill founder. She took over the running of the school from her mum who had carried on her father’s work after his death. She said that teachers there had a vocational approach to their jobs and understood and believed in the school’s philosophy.
Read on Zoe is quite realistic about the desire of Summerhill children to at some point gain qualifications.
Zoe is quite realistic about the desire of Summerhill children to at some point gain qualifications. She finds that they have no particular trouble adapting to exams when they decide that is their path. Most mainstream subjects are on offer at the school, but lessons are attended only when children themselves decide they want to attend. Some not-so-common subjects like sound engineering and Japanese are also on offer, and if an individual child wants to learn an unusual subject, the school does its best to find a teacher to deliver it.
“Due respect,” she said, “should be paid by all government bodies to parents who choose alternatives as in the cases of those choosing religious schools. Summerhill parents save the local education authority a lot of money by doing so.”
Zoe, whose four children were educated at Summerhill, said that she favours the idea of low fees. “I am agreeable to scheme discounts for younger children or temporary fees arrangements to spread payments if the parents have cash flow issues at any particular point,” she said.
She said she had met “many lovely parents” who come along to see the school but can’t afford the fees, which are already kept as low as possible with teachers’ salaries being lower than in mainstream schools.
“I personally wouldn’t dream of having my children in mainstream school – it would be against what I believe best,“ Zoe said. ”It would be anathema to me to not have my children given the freedom to learn by their own experience as children do in the Summerhill environment.”
Zoe also felt that “morality in young people in today’s society is a really topical subject".
“Summerhill pupils don’t see the opposite sex as hostile but instead they check each other and are tempered by the community.”
Teachers at Summerhill have a live-in-job and have to understand and believe the philosophy. “On the whole teachers have a wonderful time at Summerhill. It’s a very hard job and they are on the job all of the time. Pupils can ask them questions any time,” Zoe said.
Contrary to what might be thought about a totally democratic school, Zoe says that Summerhill has rules and lots of them. She says the difference is that they work because they are made for that community by that community at that particular time. A rule can even apply to everyone except one person if the personal freedom of that individual is endangered by following it, a feature of the school described by former Summerhill pupil Dane Goodsman as “the perfect adaptation of community needs and individual needs”.
“If the rules need revision,“ Zoe said, ”it can be brought up at the meeting and what the majority agrees goes. The fact you can bring things to the meeting gives you a feeling of yourself and of your importance. That’s where you get personal self-esteem from. You learn that you can change the world if you want to but you will need to know how to compromise and maybe how to change your proposal.”
Zoe said that empowering people via the democratic ethos from the beginning is important. She spoke of visiting school councils formed of children from regular schools who told her they haven’t got any real power to make decisions about what they themselves wanted. They were only able to take positions on what the grown-ups wanted and complained that what they had was not the real power to choose anything.
Zoe sympathised with mainstream schools with very large classes, but still felt that some democratic elements could be introduced.
Mainstream primary school teacher Karen Mason agreed. She explained that “mainstream education does accommodate pupil-led lesson content and child-initiated learning that can be adapted to satisfy the national curriculum, especially in the foundation stages of primary school, which underpins the rest of the child’s school years”.
Unlike parents of those going to independent schools like Summerhill, Karen explained, many mainstream school parents had not bought into a particular ethos and may have provided very little guidance to the child at home. Inclusion strategies that had been introduced since the 1960s therefore worked for these children and made sure a baseline education was accessible to all, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Read on Karen felt that the advantage of independent schools was that families were already “half way there”
Karen felt that the advantage of independent schools was that families were already “half way there” as they had the opportunity to choose a school’s approach. Mainstream schools on the other hand are open to all, are to some extent at the mercy of everyone’s opinions, yet still provided a solid baseline from which to make progress.
She said that despite all the timetabling and measuring of performance there is an emphasis on skills rather than memorising facts. SATS and other tests could, she said, be made positive to the children and used to give them a chance to show what they had learned. This gave a sense of accomplishment and self-esteem.
Like other teachers, Karen relates to the best interests of her young charges and interacts with them authentically. “When I teach children, I share myself with them,” she said. “I couldn’t go in on a Monday morning and say ‘We’re going to paint’ and be completely restricted by the curriculum how I do that.”
Dane Goodsman, who attended Summerhill from 1962 to 1972, told me that pupils did well after leaving school because they had a sense of self and were “used to being a person”. She remembered equality between boys and girls, with boys often knitting and pupils generally not having their natural talents repressed.
She described a community of people who could “bring something up” at the weekly meeting, which symbolised the “outward facing self’s meeting with the inward facing self”. Some transgression may have occurred, it was discussed and a vote taken, everyone learned something, then everyone moved on. Dane sees Summerhill as a sanctuary in education where as a young person, you are allowed “internal self expression” and the chance to observe the consequences of choices on yourself: “I did this, this is what happened”.
Dane felt that society, with a duty of care to its children, should ask key questions of itself, like “Why have a mechanistic view of education? What purpose does it really serve and what criteria of achievements should we use when deciding what qualifies a school as a ‘good’ school?” She felt that most schools did not have huge disagreement about what they wanted children to come out with but it was how to get there that was debated.
Her conviction is that we should “believe in the child” and trust him or her to benefit from freedom and not take it as licence to do as he or she pleases despite others. Describing a secure environment that is nevertheless vibrant and dynamic, Dane said things remained exciting for pupils at Summerhill because “since the meeting is there, everything is up for grabs”.
Summerhill’s very survival was fought for by the school, who took Ofsted to court in 2000 to prevent them making changes to the way the school is run, which Zoe believes would have meant changing the philosophy and therefore closure. Summerhill, supported by well-known human rights barrister Geoffrey Robinson, QC, won the case. Evidence refuting the notion that Summerhill was failing to give a full and rounded education was presented. After four days of deliberations Ofsted capitulated. Robinson advised Summerhill to negotiate. Ofsted agreed that future inspections would be observed by a lay expert (currently ex-pupil Dane Goodsman) and an education department appointed expert.
Summerhill, different from any school in the world because lessons are not compulsory, continues at Leiston in Suffolk. The latest inspection report will be available online on October 27th.
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