There is a good background article in the Scotsman this weekend on Scotlands own libertarian educator; A.S. Neil and his Summerhill school.
So when a young idealist from Scotland, Alexander Neill, opened a school where attending classes was optional and all the rules were decided in weekly meetings with pupils and teachers having an equal say, it was written off as a short-lived libertarian experiment of the fairly eccentric 1920s. Predictably the Establishment and right-wing press had a field day, deriding Neill as a "corrupting influence" on children and labelling his establishment the "Do As You Please School".
![Alexander Sutherland Neill.](http://images.scotsman.com/2006/08/25/neilli1.jpg)
Alexander Sutherland Neill.
Neill's philosophy was simple. He believed that the happiness of the child was paramount and that self-respect and respect for others would result. "There is more true education in making a snowball than in listening to an hour's lecture on grammar," he once said.
Summerhill, the school he established between the world wars, far from being a passing fancy, is still being run to this day in rural Suffolk, with a greater pupil roll than ever, a testament to its progressive founder.
Arguably, outside a few interested circles - education, libertarianism and various branches of psychology - the Summerhill project is little known.
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