RH: Did your father apply his educational ideals to family life?

ZR: I always felt that he put his money where his mouth was. I always felt that I had his support and I know, for instance, that he would have loved me to have gone to university and got a degree and I didn't even take any GCSE's but I've never felt bad about that, I never felt a bad conscience about it, I never felt uncomfortable and that I should be pleasing him so he must have been very, very good at making me feel completely comfortable with myself and what I wanted to do. I think that was really, really important and I remember when I was about sixteen I wanted to go to America and he wasn't really very keen on the idea but he just said, "OK, if that's what you want to do then go". He was very trusting and I felt that that was important.

RH: What fathering qualities did you admire in him? How has his fathering influenced you as a parent?

ZR: It's very difficult again because his fathering and Summerhill are all kind of mingled and clouded together and he gave me Summerhill. He gave me a kind of approach to child-rearing which I think is second to none. I've reared my kids like that and my granddaughter is now being reared like that and I can't find a fault in it, I cannot find a single fault in this method of child-rearing. But in a way he didn't teach me child-rearing, I had to learn that for myself because... because I guess he hadn't written anything about it. He hadn't really experienced it except with me and I was just going... I was just learning as I went along and it's just been a doddle [laughs] quite honestly. It's just the right way. I have no doubt in my mind at all that if everybody was reared the way I was and the way I've reared my kids then there just wouldn't be a smidgeon of the problems that there are in the world.

RH: Have your own children gone through Summerhill?

ZR: Yeah.

RH: And grandchildren too?

ZR: Well my granddaughter's nine months old. We have every intention of her going. Amy was down there today with me and saying to Jasmine, "You're going to be coming here soon", so that's what she wants to do. I've got four children and they all went... well, my youngest one is only eleven so he's still there and my oldest son is working with me there.

RH: Do you see the role of the father changing in the 21st. century?

ZR: I hope so. I hope so but not for any other reason except that I would like people to bring their kids up the way I want them to bring them up [laughs] because I think that's the right way. That just means the father being a person. There's nothing sacred about mothers and fathers. There are some wicked mothers and fathers about and this kind of ideal that we have these days that the mother and father are these sacred beings, that if children are being tortured and abused by them we have to make sure that the parents have the right to have them back eventually because they are their 'real' parents. That's absolute rubbish. Somebody who brings up a child and nurtures the child and loves them, that's their parent and I think that being a parent is just about being a real person who's got the right attitude towards their kids.

Date: 2016-01-05; view: 707