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Questions for discussion

1. Were your answers to the ‘Questions for prediction’ right? Were you surprised by any of the answers?

2. In what way does a child usually have to fit a school? To what extent do you think Summerhill fits a child?

3. What are the freedoms that children at Summerhill enjoy?

4. Neill holds strong views on education, the innate qualities of children, and the way adults interfere with learning. Which of these views do you agree with?

5. What do you understand by the last sentence of the extract? What were you afraid of when you were young?

6. Here are some more of A.S.Neill’s ideas. What is your reaction to them?

 

‘I hold that the aim of life is to find happiness, which means to find interest. Education should be a preparation for life.’

‘Most of the schoolwork that adolescents do is simply a waste of time, of energy, of patience. It robs youth of its right to play and play and play; it puts old heads on young shoulders.’

‘Traditional education produces children for a society that needs obedient sitters at dreary desks, standers in shops, mechanical catchers of the 8.30 suburban train…’

You are going to read a text about a boarding school – this is a school where the students live during term time. This particular school is unusual in that it does not force pupils to go to lessons if they don’t want to. Point for discussion: What is your initial reaction to the idea of giving pupils the freedom to decide whether or not to attend lessons?

SUMMERHILL: A PIONEER IN EDUCATION OR A SCHOOL ON THE LUNATIC FRINGE?

Summerhill School in Suffolk, England is well-known around the world for its novel approach to education. The original idea came from its founder, A.S. Neill, who set up the school in 1921. He was an experienced teacher who had become dissatisfied with the rigid hierarchy, the compulsion, the repression and the consequent unhappiness of children he saw in conventional schools. Neill insisted that young people ought to enjoy learning and that schools ought to foster the independence, self-confidence and self-esteem of pupils, and these are precisely the values that the close-knit community of about 120 pupils and teachers has striven to promote ever since.

The teachers organize a timetable of lessons but the pupils only attend if they want to do so. Records of pupils’ progress are kept but reports are only sent to parents with the child’s permission and no one is forced to do any exams. The school has rules that everyone must abide by but these are determined at regular school meetings where pupils and teachers have an equal vote. The aim, though, is not to let children just do what they want, but to welcome them into a community where they feel recognized as equal members – a community that supports them and encourages them to develop and mature, both in the classroom and out of it. Although this would sound to many like a recipe for disaster, in practice it works well. New pupils soon realize that they have to take responsibility for their education and they begin attending lessons, and the final academic results are at least as good as those achieved by pupils in conventional schools. This is despite the fact that many children are sent to Summerhill because they have experienced problems coping with school and have already fallen behind academically.



One study of the views of parents and ex-pupils revealed that parents were entirely satisfied with the education provided by the school. Turning to the most controversial aspect – the non-compulsory lessons – the researchers found that the overwhelming majority of former pupils were grateful for the experience. One woman who went on to complete a university degree and work for a national television station said, “Prior to Summerhill I had hated school and was constantly anxious. Non-compulsory lessons gave me the confidence to make my own decisions and let me feel trusted.” Another former student, who subsequently went to work for the “Times” newspaper, was equally positive: “People learn best when they are personally motivated. It is much better to arouse children’s curiosity than to compel them to absorb a list of facts. Anyway, making students attend classes doesn’t ensure an education. But to instil excitement about learning creates an interest that will last a lifetime.”

 

Questions

1. The first paragraph highlights three aspects of the contemporary education system that A.S.Neill was very critical of. What are they?

2. What does the first paragraph imply about the effect conventional schools in 1921 were having on the self-esteem of pupils?

3. What do we learn about Summerhill that makes it less hierarchical than other schools?

4. Can you find anything either explicit or implicit in the passage that makes the school less repressive? (By the way, you feel repressed when you feel that there is something stopping you expressing yourself.)

5. What is implied in the third paragraph about how some new people behave when they first join the school?

6. Often in these cases how does their behaviour change with the passage of time?

7. What is said about the reason why some parents send their children to Summerhill?

8. How do the two former pupils who are quoted in the final paragraph feel about non-compulsory lessons?

 

Vocabulary

Exercise A

1. You know the verb “to find” but do you know the verb “to found” (a regular verb)? A synonym is the phrasal verb “set up”. E.g. “The Volkswagen company was founded by Adolf Hitler in 1938.”

2. Literally, you knit (silent “k”, by the way) when you take some wool and two long needles and start to slowly make something like a scarf or a jumper. Bearing this in mind, what do you think a close-knit community is?

3. The word “striven” at the end of the first paragraph is the past participle of the verb “strive” (strive, strove, striven). You are doubtless striving to improve your English. What do you think this lovely English verb means?

4. The third paragraph says that Summerhill’s approach will sound to many like a recipe for disaster. What do you think this means?

5. What is the word in the last paragraph that we use to describe a majority when it is very big?

6. Ex-pupils and former pupils are the same thing. Which school are you an ex-pupil of?

7. At the end of the last paragraph two words have very similar meanings. Which are they? One of them means make someone feel something (probably for the first time) whereas the other has more to do with making a feeling stronger or more intense. Which is which?

 

 

Exercise B


Match the words from the text and the subtitle with the following definitions:

a. follow (the rules)

b. an innovator

c. new, original

d. force

e. what stops people expressing themselves freely (noun)

f. inflexible, stiff

 

g. to take in (like a sponge)

h. margin, edge, outer limit

i. crazy, insane

j. afterwards

k. decided on

l. no longer childish

m. before

 

 


Over to you

1. How surprising is it that the academic results of Summerhill are on a par with those of many conventional schools? Do you think your academic performance would suffer if you were not forced to attend lessons and take exams?

2. Does it make sense to let pupils have an equal say in the formation of school rules? Is school an appropriate place for this degree of democracy?

3. We are told that a number of Summerhill pupils had previously had serious difficulties in a conventional school. How might the Summerhill approach benefit pupils like these?

4. The approach at Summerhill seems to work, but the school is very small and it is one where the students live together. Are these important factors in its success? Why/why not?

 


Date: 2016-01-14; view: 1513


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