1976: Mark Featherstone-Witty: Article
". . . like Summerhill"
Transcript
Just before the start of the Second World War . a young scoutmaster, visited Summerhill. I was bowled over by what was happening. I saw boys and girls living together with grown-ups without the authoritarian approach and doing exactly what Baden-Powell had proposed youngsters should be able to do.
Within two years, John Aitkenhead had cashed in all his worldly goods to find the first year’s rent for the first free school in Scotland. This year the mortgage on Kilquhanity has been paid off.
The underlying philosophy came straight from A.S. Neill. John states:
‘Children should be free to find themselves. This means a whole approach, not of permissiveness, but of a genuine meeting of person to person.’
This led to his belief in a small school, despite the emphasis this puts on the older pupils to set the mood of a small school. There are fifty in this co-educational boarding school, ages ranging from 8 to 18, with fifteen staff, seven of whom teach full-time.
‘People say big schools allow diversity of experience. The youngsters there are like people in a department store: see everything, touch nothing. Diversity of experience comes paradoxically when you can enjoy the depth of one relationship. In the human environment, small is beautiful.’
One expression of a ‘person to person’ meeting occurs in public:
the Council Meeting. . . . The achievement of the Council Meeting should be seen against the number of maladjusted pupils in the school. From the start, there were two main pressures: take the school south of the border and so nearer population centres and make it a school for maladjusted pupils. John set his face against both, the latter since ‘it would have killed the experiment, for Neill was concerned with the psychology of a sick society.’ Both for educational reasons and to help cash flow, Kilquhanity started a real farm in the war years, a benefit John sees reaching into the life of the school.
‘For one thing, the tempo that animals produce is salutary. You cannot chase on the time of calving or farrowing or hatching. Also animals cannot talk; therefore they cannot cheat. Today the quality of too few experiences, too few school lessons, is as unquestionable.’
Still, a quarter to a third of the pupils have been referred to the school by local authorities, who would, if allowed, fill the entire school. If these pupils provide some behavioural difficulties for the school to ease, they also supply cash, £1150 of it, the full year’s fee. Parents of other pupils are asked to assess themselves. A fee of £600 has been accepted in this way and another pupil has been kept on free when her parents could not pay – and this in a school which has continued to face financial difficulties.
The practical realities of living with Neill’s philosophy of freedom demand a series of balances and a degree of vigilance which is difficult and often exhausting to maintain. ‘They also pose a perennial question’, notes Kharis, an English teacher, ‘What use are adults to children?’
Because there is such a considerable free time, the degree of adult activity is critical. ‘If the adults initiate too much,’ notes John, ‘the youngsters can begin to assume the world is there to entertain them. We must somehow be able to encourage youngsters to think and act without totally dominating their creations.’
An interesting example outside the classroom was the advent of television, which was hotly debated within the school and a relatively recent arrival. (indeed, when the BBC made their film of the school, Kilquhanity had to hire an outside set to watch themselves entertain the world). Pressure groups emerged with slogans, one of the most effective; Make a Date with DAT.(one group of pupils decided to provide an hour of live entertainment each Monday night as a ‘Definitive Alternative to Television’)
During my visit, the younger pupils threw a party for themselves, making the food, decorating the room, and arranging the music. On this occasion adults were barred. This so impressed the older pupils that, when I left, they were making plans to arrange their own party. There are tree houses in virtually every tree in the grounds.
Using the example of home:
‘which is a free school. After all speaking is learnt without structured lessons.’
John believes:
‘youngsters quite naturally assume they will master the skills of society unless some difficulty is thrown in their way.’
Past pupils include thatchers, stone dykers, market gardeners, university students, furniture builders, lawyers and journalists, ‘nearly every walk of life except the armed forces’.
Because of the importance given to ‘person to person’ relationships, there is an atmosphere at Kilquhanity as remarkable as it is hard to define. The unreality which characterises many teacher – pupil relationships is absent. No mock dignity, no false respect, an awareness of mutual rights, a lack of fear. A nice expression of a phrase John is fond of repeating,
‘Grown ups and children, we are all waves on the same sea.’ (quoting Samuel Marshiak)
Kilquhanity like Summerhill, is a mecca for those interested in education from the world over. John, who has a place on the SNP Education Committee, sees the school as a centre of experiment, an example of an alternative.
‘I am always aware we have no right to violate the parents’ place, so I’ve no feeling that boarding is a natural thing to do. Better a school like this down the road, part of a small community, an extended home. Every educational area should have an alternative school. Why not have a real choice of schooling in a democratic society? Why pay taxes for schooling you may not agree with?’
