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30 January
NO 1258
A.S. Neill
Absolutely paramount was his belief that children are innately good. Of course he could not prove this assertion in any way that would be recognised as scientific, just as those who believe the opposite cannot prove that a child is born a creature of sin, or is inherently wicked in some more secular way. Neill's importance lies in the fact that he made this statement at a time when people were only just on the threshold of beginning to understand the way that a child's mind worked. In place of the old authority, the subordination of children to a life of fear, ignorance, and stern distrust, he offered them friendship, understanding, knowledge. In this he was certainly years ahead of his time, anticipating many of the findings of modern child psychology. He stuck tenaciously to this belief in the essential goodness of the child, sometimes in the face of apparent evidence to the contrary. Though he frequently and increasingly despaired of what he saw as a sick society, he rarely gave up on any individual child.
David Wills, Homer Lane's biographer, suggested that `Neill helped people to get a "child's-eye view" of life, instead of expecting children to see things through adult eyes.' Others working in education, psychology, social work and psychoanalysis of course contributed to this shift of emphasis, but perhaps no one did it in quite such a dramatic fashion as Neill. Whatever the unconscious motives for his determination to be `on the side of the child', the very fact that he was so consistently in that position forced many adults to reconsider their attitude towards children. Leila Berg, the children's book writer, saw Neill's impact across the generations in this sphere: 'Our generation felt we knew best, and that it was our duty to teach the child: you were made to feel you were ruining a child's life if you gave in to him or her. Neill's idea of leaving the child alone, not pushing your ideas on the child but following the child, was fresh air in the 1930s and 1940s. But the younger generation are not so accepting of authority; many of them are able to leave children alone without feeling odd about such an attitude. In quite a large measure that is due to Neill.'
Another crucial part of Neill's philosophy was his conviction that children are sufficiently self-motivated to want to learn, and are therefore the best judges of when they should start to do so. Learning should be based on specific need, as Samuel Butler suggested in his Note Books when he wrote: `Never try to learn anything until the not knowing it has come to be a nuisance to you for some time.... A boy should never be made to learn anything until it is obvious that he cannot get on without it.' In Neill's view, a child would learn best if he or she saw a point to that learning, even if it took many years beyond the `normal' age for such a connection to be made. This idea was certainly a startling and much-opposed one when Neill first started to propound it. That it is hardly less so today can be demonstrated by the fact that there is scarcely another school apart from Summerhill itself where such trust is placed upon a child's self-motivating potential.
Time and again, Neill made the assertion that `childhood should be playhood'. The response to this idea has been more positive, not least because we have gradually come to understand both the learning and therapeutic potential of play, and to recognise it as a creative activity. Yet children's play is still heavily curtailed or controlled by the adults around them: few have been able to stand aside in the way that Neill could. It was perhaps easier to do this if, as he did, you saw childhood not as a preparation for later life, but as life itself. Such an idea remains subversive in our grossly competitive educational systems.
JONATHAN CROALL
Croall, J. (1983). Neill of Summerhill. New York. Pantheon Books. pp. 390-391.
