Discussion

1) What are the differences between modern and traditional boarding schools?

2) What are the advantages and disadvantages of boarding schools?

3) What are the difficulties a child or his parents can face during the first term at school? What are the ways of coping with them?

Text 10. A brief history of Summerhill (The founder A. S. Neill)

Lead-in:

-Read the introduction and say how A.S.Neill came to the decision to establish a new type of school.

-What is an “alternative school”? What are the advantages and disadvantages of such schools?

- Were there any questions that remained unanswered about Summerhill? Read the extra information about the school.

A. S. Neill was born in Forfar, Scotland in 1883, the fourth of 13 children. He was son of the village schoolmaster or “Dominie”, a stern, puritanical man who ruled his classroom with a rod of iron. In those days the strap or “tawse” was commonly used in schools in Scotland and when at the age of 15 Neill was taken on as a pupil teacher by his father, he was expected to use it on the other children.

At the age of 25, Neill went to Edinburgh University and took a degree in English. Afterwards he became a journalist, and later head of a small school in Gretna Green. It was there that he wrote his first book, A Dominie’s Log, and began to form his ideas on freedom for children. After a year in the school he wrote:

“I have converted a hard-working school into a playground, and I rejoice. These bairns have had a year of happiness and liberty. They have done what they liked; they have sung their songs while they were working at graphs, they have eaten their sweets while they read their books, they have hung on my arms as we rambled along in search of artistic corners.”

In 1917 Neill visited Homer Lane’s “Little Commonwealth”, a community for delinquent adolescents, and saw self-government at work. Lane was a firm believer in the innate goodness of children. He acquainted Neill with Freud’s “New Psychology” and later became Neill’s psychoanalyst. Thus he introduced Neill to two elements that were essential to the founding of Summerhill: the self-government meeting, and the importance of a child’s emotional well-being over academic development.

<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
It will take time for you and your child to settle in	\|	SUMMERHILL: the early days

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