Leila Berg and Michael Duane

We must not lose the people who, however long ago, were involved with children and young people in innovative ways and who blazed trails which have impacted on our own field until today, even though many have forgotten their names.

Leila Berg, journalist and writer. After WWII she began writing for children, inspired initially by Susan Isaacs (the child psychologist, who did some very important work, and whom she feels is outrageously neglected), then by her own children. Her anti-authoritarian and anarchic attitudes, contrasting with the school experiences of her children, led her to an interest in children's rights, alternative education, and informal teaching methods. She began to meet people like A S Neill, Michael Duane and other progressive education leaders, forming a long-lasting and deep friendship particularly with the American writer and educationist John Holt. She became Children's Books Editor for Methuen, then a well-respected independent publisher in London.

Now aged 81, Leila is taking it easy, battling age and arthritis, though she is considering further projects – perhaps a book for teenagers on Janusz Korczak, who died with his orphanage charges in the Holocaust, and whose story has haunted her for 30 years, since she first heard it from George Him (illustrator of her Folk Tales) and his friends, who had known Korczak in Poland.

William Michael Duane (1915-1997), teacher, headmaster and lecturer, was best known for his 'progressive' educational views, his belief in inclusivity and a multi-racial approach, his encouragement of informal relationships between staff and pupils and his opposition to corporal punishment.

In 1959 that he took the headmastership of Risinghill School in Islington, a post which was to make Duane a famous figure. Risinghill opened in 1960 after the amalgamation of four pre-existing schools and under Duane’s headship became the subject of much public and media attention and controversy focused on his non-authoritarian approach. There were difficulties with the London County Council and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Schools, Risinghill was closed in 1965.

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What links these two characters significantly is Risinghill Comprehensive School, which was built in 1960 and closed in 1965 amidst a blaze of controversy and publicity. The book, Risinghill: Death of a Comprehensive School was written by Leila Berg and published by Pelican in 1968. The briefest search on the internet will find you a copy. A compelling read.

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Below is a short address given by Leila Berg in response to her award of a Doctorate by the University of Essex:

Thank you for this great honour that is being paid me.

All my life I have sought to empower children. There are many strange words and phrases around now, some of them I think aiming to block communication rather than to ease it, but this is a straight forward and honest phrase “to empower children.”

In the twenties two biologists began to set up the Peckham Health Centre in London. A health centre to them was about health which is what they intended to study, not about sickness, as it is for us. So when, for instance, they made the cots for the cr–che that would be part of the centre, they made them not with high sides to deliberately imprison the babies and stop them getting out and crawling off, they made them with sides as low as possible so that when the babies felt strong enough, vital enough, to want of their own accord to get out and crawl off, they got out and crawled off. This was empowering babies.

In the sixties I worked out a series of first story books for children who are just beginning to want to read. It was about the life they knew and not manipulative. Here is one. (you must envisage pictures on every page with just a few words.)

"Nan, my nan,
Can sit
And knit
And knit
And knit.
Look at it.
Who will it fit?
Crocodiles?
Nan smiles.
Giraffes?
Nan laughs.
Gorillas going out?
Nan falls about.
Who’s it for Nan
Who?
It’s for you love,
You !*
Ooo!”**

That is empowering four to six year olds.

* (spoken aloud with surprise) * (spoken aloud with horror)

In the sixties, Risinghill Comprehensive school opened in a crumbling, decrepit, falling down part of London. Many of the kids” fathers were in jail, many of their mothers on the streets. “Comprehensive school” then was a totally new phrase.

One day two of the Risinghill boys were wandering in the local market and snatched a basket from an elderly lady out shopping and ran off with it. Because it was a true community school, and she was angry and upset, she went to Michael Duane, the headmaster. He instantly called a meeting of the whole school and told everyone what had happened. “Her money has all gone, she had spent it on food for the whole family for the whole week and now she has no food, no money either The family has nothing to eat. You understand what that means. We must put it right. If the boys come around to my study right away, we can sort it out quickly.”

The boys came, quite cheerfully. He said “What did you do with everything that was in the basket?” “Ate it” they said, as if it was obvious. “Well everything you could eat, some things you couldn’t – flour, cleaning stuff and that – so we chucked it in the road.” He said “Look, try and remember everything that was in the basket, absolutely everything, then go to the market and buy the whole lot again. Here’s some money. Take all the stuff round to her and then, when you've made it right with her, and she is happy, come back to me and we’ll work out how you can pay me back.”

They did all that with gusto, brought him the change, and they paid him back in quite a short time, the two of them doing odd jobs. The police were never called in, nor psychologists, nor social workers, nor governors, not even parents. They sorted it out themselves. Everyone was competent, cheerful, satisfied. That was empowering twelve year olds.

Here is a final happening. I wrote the book on Risinghill school. It became famous overnight and many things happened as a result, continue to happen to this day. One of the things that happened was, a drop-in centre was opened in one of the local streets to give the kids information they needed. Information for instance, on who the people were in these courtrooms they knew so well – the magistrates, the judge, the clerk, the jury. Even eight year olds needed information like this. They appeared as witnesses for older brothers and sisters and friends. To have their own legal centre that told them things empowered them.

Eventually I left London and came to live in Wivenhoe, a little riverside place. I chose it because I’d read so often, about so many people, who had moved out of a place where they’d been living for years (and I’d been in different parts of London for fifty years) and within a month or so, they were dead. I decided I would organise things better than that. So I drew up a list of criteria – what I would need in a place to be happy – and ended up with a short list, and finally, Wivenhoe.

After a little while, I needed to get in touch with the Children's Legal Centre again. I phoned the old number. No one there. Eventually I managed to get their new phone number. Somehow the area code seemed strangely familiar. “Where are you?” “Wivenhoe.” Imagine ! I was incredulous, amazed. They had followed me. “Where in Wivenhoe ?” “The University of Essex.”

I went round, and have been around again quite recently. Of course I found, not a drop-in centre, not a place for kids to use of their own accord for their gritty survival. It has become an important national organisation run by dedicated people to empower adults; parents, teachers, social workers, whoever, to help children. Which is fine. And there are many reasons for this to have happened: changing place, changing time, changing possibilities.
But to empower children is, above all, to equip them to move things for themselves, when they wish. Perhaps, since that astonishing coincidence at Wivenhoe seems to lay something on me, perhaps, coming to Wivenhoe was not only for the fish shop, for the book shop, for the river and the fields, for the nearness to Ipswich film centre, and all the other things that were on that list of criteria. Perhaps it was because the Children's Legal Centre was going to follow me and we would join up again, so that perhaps it could empower children again, as well as the caring adults.

Thank you again for bestowing on me the honour of Doctor of the University, and for giving me a chance to say something that has been niggling at me.

This feature: http://www.essex.ac.uk/vc/Orate%201999/LeilaBergRESPONSE.rtf