A.S. Neill

A.S. Neill (born Oct. 17, 1883, Forfar, Forfarshire, Scot.—died Sept. 23, 1973, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, Eng.) was a British educator and author who founded the Summerhill School and championed free self-development in the education of children.

The son of a schoolteacher, Neill graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an M.A. degree in 1912 and became headmaster of the Gretna Green School in Scotland in 1914. He recorded his initial teaching experiences in the autobiographical novel A Dominie’s Log (1916) and wrote several sequels to this work, with some of them being reprinted in 1975 as The Dominie Books of A.S. Neill (dominie is Scottish for “schoolteacher”).

Neill and others founded an international school near Dresden, Ger., in 1921. The school was moved to Sonntagberg, Austria, three years later but was soon closed because its unconventional curriculum and teaching methods were opposed by the local authorities. In 1924 Neill moved the school to Lyme Regis, Dorset, in England, and named it Summerhill after the building he had leased for its quarters. In 1927 he moved the school to its permanent home in Leiston, Suffolk. Summerhill School became internationally known for its self-governing student-teacher body and its flexible curriculum that emphasizes the student’s own motivation to learn. Neill drew considerable criticism for his permissive attitudes toward academic discipline, but by the 1960s his school had become popular for its progressive approach to child rearing.

Neill’s principal book about his educational methods, Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing (1960), stimulated debates about alternatives to conventional schooling. The book was more influential in the United States, West Germany, and Japan than in Great Britain. His other books include The Problem Child (1926), The Problem Parent (1932), The Problem Family (1949), The Free Child (1953), and an autobiography, Neill! Neill! Orange Peel! (1972).