ABSTRACT
The last two chapters looked at the complexity of the learning process and what affects it. So what can you do about the issues raised? Without getting involved in the more direct act of instruction you can and have been supporting pupils' learning by all that you do in school. We now recognise that just reacting to pupils is not enough although in the 1960s and 1970s there were some people who thought that this was all one had to do to educate children. If the environment was designed in the right way and children were tracked through it, they would learn all they needed. The most famous example was the school in Suffolk called Summerhill, started by A. S. Neill (Neill 1962). It still exists. Lessons were optional, the main hallmark of the school was freedom; pupils could take examinations if they wanted to. The growth of the ideas of freedom, discovering knowledge and allowing children to develop had grown through the twentieth century for several reasons. The ideas of the psychologists described in Chapter 3 became more widely known, but it was also more widely recognised that adverse social and emotional conditions as described in the last chapter prevented children from growing, not only physically but also intellectually.
