Contents
Humanistic education in real life
«The school they don’t talk about»
Try to imagine children between the ages of five and twelve riding a tricycle around the school hall, painting on the walls whatever they want and how they want, doing whatever they want and when they want, communicating with their teachers at ease using any expressions. , including non-print, and dictating the school’s curriculum, teaching methods and direction of study at its discretion. And it all takes place in a public school in the city of Seattle! Do you think that this is an exaggeration, that this cannot be? No, it’s happening today in the old, conservative Seward Park neighborhood, funded by the Seattle School District.
Alternative Elementary School is the name given to a pilot project run by the school district. It was launched in November 1970, and its starting point is the assertion that regular elementary schools are too restrictive for children’s freedom. It is believed that the cognitive process in children at school should take place in a more natural environment, and the motivation for learning should come from the child himself. It is also assumed that a child of any age is able to make decisions independently and should not be interfered with in this.
This is a paradise for children. There is no formal timetable, no age barriers, no class division, no general program. In fact, if a child does not want to learn the alphabet, no one will force him to do so.
At the time when we were at the school, there was no formal teaching work. Children wandered aimlessly around the three classrooms, where there were no teachers. Apparently, there were no classes in any of the classes. On the first floor of a neighboring building, we met with Mr. Bernstein, the headmaster, and asked for some clarification. He emphasized that here we are dealing with “a completely new concept of education, pioneered by A.S. Neil of the Springhill Progressive School in the Eastern United States. The Principal said that non-printable expressions were often used for persuasiveness when he was in college, and he did not believe that they could do any harm in the Alternative School entrusted to him. “Children need to be spoken to in a language they understand,” he said.
We argued how children who graduated from the sixth grade of this school would be able to enter regular schools if there were no classes and no grades. «In six years,» replied Bernstein, «all schools will probably be like this, and the problem will disappear by itself.»
The main elements of Neil’s philosophy are:
- Adults have no right to demand obedience from their children. Attempts to force children to obey have the sole purpose of satisfying the lust for power inherent in adults. It is inexcusable to impose parental will on sons and daughters. They must be free. The best situation for a family should be considered to be full equality between parents and children. You can not demand from the child to perform certain actions until he himself wants to perform them. The teacher must show his students that he is on a par with them, but not above them.
- Children should not be asked to do any work until they are 18 years old. Parents should not even require them to help around the house or give them small assignments. By forcing them to carry out such assignments, we thereby insult them, turning them into lackeys.
- Religion should not be taught to children. The only reason for the existence of religion in society is to seek an outlet for the false guilt about sexual issues that religion itself has created. Our ideas about God, heaven, hell and sin are based on myths. The future enlightened generation rejects traditional religion.
- Neil’s philosophy strictly forbids punishment of any kind. The father or mother who spanks the child actually hates him, and their desire to hurt him stems from an unsatisfied sexual feeling. At Summerhill, one student broke seventeen windows and did not receive even a verbal reprimand.
- Adolescents should be taught that promiscuity is not a moral issue. In Summerhill, premarital sex was not sanctioned simply because Neil was afraid of arousing public outrage. He and his staff appeared naked from time to time to eliminate the students’ sense of curiosity about gender issues. He predicted that the teens of tomorrow would live healthier lives thanks to the lifting of sexual inhibitions.
- Children should not be shielded from pornographic books and other materials. Neil indicated that he was ready to purchase the most obscene literature for any of the students who asked him for it. In his opinion, this can satisfy their interest, does not harm the child.
- Parents should not demand that their children say «thank you» and «please.» Moreover, they should not even be encouraged to do so.
- Rewarding a child for good behavior humiliates and demoralizes him, representing a hidden form of coercion.
- Neil believes that books do not play a significant role in the school. The training should consist mainly in working with clay, paints, tools and various types of dramatic art. Knowledge itself has some value, but it must come as a result of the game.
- Even if the child does not do well at school, parents should not interfere in this matter, since it is purely his personal matter.
- Neil’s philosophy in brief is as follows: give up all power over the child, let him grow without any external interference, do not instruct him, do not impose anything on him.
Since then, we have had twenty-five years to evaluate the results of this experiment.
What happened to the generation that was most affected by this? In the late 60s, they concluded that God was dead, that immorality had become the new morality, that disrespect and disrespect for elders were the norm, that unpopular laws could be disobeyed, that violence was an acceptable tool for achieving change (as was scandals that they made in childhood), that power is evil, that pleasure is above all, that elders should not be trusted, that diligence and diligence are vulgar, and that their country is not worth either loyalty or respect.
This philosophy not only contributed to the student revolution of the late 60s, it also dealt a heavy blow to our school system and children. While this theory was popular, anarchy and lack of control reigned in schools at all levels. The tiny first graders terrorized their twitchy teachers as systematically as the raging upperclassmen. Some classes became so notorious for their constant disorderly conduct that teachers were simply afraid to teach in them.
«Confessions of a Lost Youth»
“The idea of permissive education appealed to my bohemian mother when I was four years old. In Greenwich Village, she found a small private school whose owners shared her views, and she was very happy to put me there. I know it was an act of motherly love on her part, but it’s probably the worst thing she’s ever done for me. This school — I will call it «Sea and Sand» — seemed attractive to other such parents, belonging to the upper middle class, who wanted to let their children grow up outside the constant oppression that they themselves were subjected to in their time.
«Sea and Sand» was a school where students knew neither worries nor difficulties. And it was just the kind of school that rightfully arouses the greatest fear among people who call on us to return to the fundamental principles. Here I found freedom — the freedom not to study. Fifteen women worked at the school and one man taught «exact sciences». They were quite worthy people, some of them old, others young, and all of them, as one, devoted to the idea of cultivating the innate creative abilities that they believed were inherent in us. Great attention was paid to art education, but technique was not taught to us, because any kind of organization interferes with creativity.
In principle, a certain number of hours were allotted for various subjects, but we had the right to skip any lesson that we did not like. In fact, the whole method of the school was based on the fact that we could not be annoyed, we could not be upset or forced to compete with each other. There were no tests or exams. If I got tired of doing mathematics, I was peacefully allowed to go to the library to compose stories. We have studied history by reproducing its most unimportant elements. Within one year we pounded corn, built wigwams, ate buffalo meat, and learned two Indian words. This was the early history of America. The next year we made fancy costumes, sculpted clay pots and papier-mâché gods. It was the culture of Greece. And a year later we were all portraying beautiful ladies and armored knights, which meant that we were studying the Middle Ages. We drank orange juice from pewter goblets, but we never learned what the Middle Ages were. They remained for me a kind of terra incognita.
I learned that the Huns pierced the veins of their horses and drank a quart of blood before the battle, but no one ever told us who the Huns were and why we even need to know about them. And in the year of Ancient Egypt, when we were all building the pyramids, I created a fresco ten meters long, for which I diligently copied the hieroglyphs onto a sheet of brown paper. But I never knew what they meant. They were just lovely on their own.
We devoted a lot of time to creativity, because our mentors, incurable optimists, told us that this is where happiness lies. We learned to read only in the third grade, because it was believed that too early reading inhibits creative spontaneity. But one thing we were taught very successfully — to hate intelligence and everything connected with it. Accordingly, for nine years we were forced to be creative individuals. Nevertheless, the Sea and Sand school failed to make us people of art. What we were really doing was constantly thinking about interpersonal relationships, and since we believed that all teaching came down to this, we were correspondingly happy. For example, at the age of ten they were practically illiterate, but they could conclude that Raymond «expresses himself» when, in the middle of what we considered an English lesson, he began to dance on the desk.
We said that Nina is an introvert, because she was always trying to hide in the far corner. But when we left the walls of the school, the recent happy children turned out to be useless. We had a feeling of complete worthlessness. What can we say about our parents? After all the money spent, after the freedom and care that we were surrounded by at school, we had as much chance of getting into high school as the guys from the poorest school in the city’s slums. And it really was. Wherever we tried to enter, we inevitably found ourselves ill-prepared and culturally underdeveloped.
For some of us, real life is beyond our reach. One of my high school friends committed suicide two years ago after being expelled at the age of twenty for poor performance from the weakest school in New York. Some others ended up in psychiatric hospitals, where they enjoyed complete creative freedom during the course of occupational therapy.
As for me, when I was in high school, the school psychologist was alarmed by my lack of the necessary stock of knowledge. He suggested that my mother subject me to a series of psychological tests to find out why I was not reproducing information. The whole problem, however, was that I had nothing to reproduce. Most of my classmates at the Sea and Sand School experienced the same difficulties caused by serious gaps in knowledge. My reading comprehension abilities were at their lowest, and there was nothing surprising about that. Teachers were often interested in how I managed to get into high school. However, I managed, albeit with great difficulty, to master not only high school, but also higher education (first to finish a two-year college, because nowhere did they want to accept me for a full course of study, and then New York University), testing something for science the unchanging disgust that was instilled in me at school. It still amazes me that I received a Bachelor of Arts degree, and I prefer to consider myself a Bachelor of Science.
The parents of my former classmates cannot understand what happened. They sent bright, inquisitive children to school and nine years later they got helpless teenagers back. Some might say that those of us who were failures would have become failures under all conditions, but when you observe the same behavioral deviations in school graduates year after year, you have reason to draw certain and, moreover, quite frightening conclusions. . And now I see how my twelve-year-old brother, who, by the way, studies in a traditional school, solves math problems from the college program, and I know that he overtook me not only in mathematics. And I can see my 200-year-old brother doing well in a traditional school because my sensible mom took him out of Sea and Sand at the age of XNUMX and he didn’t become like me. Now, having studied for seven years, he makes excellent documentaries for the US Bicentennial project. His training was not limited to playing settlers for four and a half months and Indians for another four and a half months, which I understand they did during the year he spent at Sea and Sand.
And now I understand that the real task of the school is to captivate the student with a variety of knowledge, and if it fails to captivate, then draw him into this process by force. And it’s a pity they didn’t do that to me.»
Mara Wolynsky, Newsweek Magazine August 30, 1976
Explanation from N.I. Kozlova
Our readers traditionally confuse two different people. Alexander Neill, founder of the Summerhill School in Scotland, author of the book «Summerhill — Education in Freedom», there are practically no complaints about him. But A.S. Neil from the Springhill Progressive School in the eastern United States and his follower Bernstein are completely different people, they are radicals, and the main heap of claims goes to them. And the names are similar: A.Nill and A.S. Neil…