Imagine a school…
- Where kids have freedom to be themselves…
- Where success is not defined by academic achievement but by the child’s own definition of success…
- Where the whole school deals democratically with issues, with each individual having an equal right to be heard…
- Where you can play all day if you want to…
- And there is time and space to sit and dream…
I am talking about Summerhill – one of the most famous schools in the world. It was founded in 1921 by A.S. Neil, an educator who believed that
The function of the child is to live his own life – not the life that his anxious parents think he should live, not a life according to the purpose of the educator who thinks he knows best.
I know about Summerhill from Vlad and I always wanted to know more about it, to go beyond the comments that reject the school as being an utopia. This is why, when I met Phillipp (a professor from Summerhill) in November I was one of the happiest persons at the Symposium. We were at the Symposium for recognition of non-formal learning and Phillipp was invited to share the view of a democratic school – where most of the learning is non-formal and informal. He showed me pictures with kids from Summerhill, a book with “evidence” for the inspectors in the Office of Standards in Education(OFSTED) and I talked about CROS, about how we develop a programme for self-directed learning and how we work for our school to become as attractive and useful as Summerhill is.
Last weekend, Summerhill and CROS really came together in Romania at Imaginarium – a conference on projects that can make a difference in education, when Leonard Turton, professor and Curriculum Manager at Summerhill came to talk to us about democratic education. Leonard founded a democratic school in Canada, is teaching maths at Summerhill for 10 years now and he has “a hat full of relevant examples” on how kids are choosing what’s best for them, if we let them choose.
He brought a wonderful present – a fiction film on Summerhill based on a true story (the trial between the school and the Blair government that wanted to close them for not meeting the standards in education).
Partially filmed at the real Summerhill School and including many Summerhill students, the drama contributes to the wider debate around the fundamental aims and methodology of education. The film was first broadcast on the BBC in January 2008 and was nominated for three children’s BAFTA awards: Best Drama, Best Writer and Breakthrough Talent. It won the awards for writer & breakthrough nominations.
After seeing the movie, I felt that the atmosphere in CROS and in our learning communities is close to that from Summerhill. I also understood that there is no perfect school, that on an axis that goes from “total freedom” to “no freedom at all”, your school and system can be anywhere. Everything can be questioned when it comes to designing curriculum and what is best for students, but our right to be happy and our right to be equipped for living a happy life in society cannot be questioned.
Someone came to me after the movie and told me that he saw similarities between the movie and CROS Camp (the summer school that starts every year the activity in the CROS programmes); they thought we studied the movie and Summerhill very well and then we designed the summer school after the model. We didn’t, but the observation makes us very proud and happy.
For you to see the resemblance or the differences, you have to see both movies:
and
- CROS Camp – Invata cu atitudine (a documentary directed by Tedy Necula)
After you see both movies, please share your comments with us and with the community that is passionate about a different type of education for happy students and happy persons.
