ABSTRACT

Alexander Sutherland A. S. Neill was born in the small Scottish town of Forfar, fifteen miles north of Dundee in 1883. His father, George Neill, was a schoolmaster who taught in the neighbouring village of Kingsmuir, where Neill received his own schooling. However, difficulties arose with the local population, prompting Neill to return to England in 1924. He then opened his own school in Lyme Regis in conjunction with Frau Neustatter with whom he had worked in Germany and Austria, and whom he married in 1927. There Neill began to implement systematically his revolutionary ideas of pupil freedom and lack of teacher authority. The widespread influence of Neill's Summerhill is attributable in no small measure to the twenty books Neill wrote between 1915 and 1972 in which he expounds clearly and forthrightly his educational ideas. Neill's strong belief in freedom was linked to another cherished conviction, the innate goodness of children.