1970: Chris White: Case Study of a Progressive School: Kilquhanity
Council Meeting: Useful Work: Philosophy
Chris White sent John his: Case Study of A Progressive School: Kilquhanity House
Transcript
. . . The school accepts a rather high proportion of children with problems which made their experience in other schools unsatisfactory, though it is emphatically not a school for the maladjusted. Between a third and a half of the present pupils fall into this category. Problems include two autistic children, one pupil who was previously violent and impossible to manage, one who was in a severely depressed state, and several who were retarded in reading, writing or other skills. But over half are at Kilquhanity simply because their parents are in sympathy with the school’s educational outlook.
. . . The character of the school has naturally always reflected the ideas of its founder and only Headmaster. These ideas, however, are flexible enough to admit of considerable variations in practice from one staff member to another and from year to year. The school’s aim is to provide a community in which children may find themselves, learn to live together, discover their natural bent and pursue whatever studies will enable them to follow that bent. But this aim is not merely a causal element in the creation of the school; it is also a reflection of the reality of the school as it has developed, and of the features of it which seem good to the adults involved.
John Aitkenhead certainly has strong convictions of the harm done to most children by compelling them to study things which have no interest for them, and which consume time which should have been spent learning the really important things – how to live together, and how to find a satisfying direction in life; and these convictions are shared by his staff.
. . . It could be said that the broad characteristics of Kilquhanity were established by John Aitkenhead in founding it; that these characteristics are largely self-perpetuating through the attraction of staff who hold sympathetic ideas; and that John Aitkenhead and his wife remain a stabilising element which ensures that it ensures that there is no gradual departure from the original aims.
Within these broad outlines, there is little detailed interference by Aitkenhead in the work of individual staff. For it is felt important that the staff should be offering the children the things which they personally feel valuable and are able to offer. There is no reverence for a particular canon of skills and knowledge, rather a feeling that the skills and knowledge acquired in the pursuit of all human activities are valuable.
. . . There is a teaching staff of eleven, four of whom are houseparents, and two other staff whose duties are wholly on the ‘house’ side. They are all paid a salary considerably lower than Burnham Scale. The turnover of staff is fairly rapid – apart from John and Morag and one senior member of staff the veteran is in his fourth year – but only two are new this year. However, it seems fair to say that the staff are happy in their work; remoteness and poverty seem to be the main reasons for short stays, rather than discontent with the school as such.
. . . Adult-child relationships are much nearer to parent-child than to teacher-pupil relationships of an ordinary school.
Council Meeting: These meetings are rarely staff-dominated. Many issues are settled without a contribution being made by any member of staff, and it is by no means uncommon for staff members’ opinions (including John Aitkenhead’s) to be overruled by the meeting. John Aitkenhead imposes his decision on the meeting only in cases where the safety of children or the survival of the school are concerned, and in the case of this kind which occurred during my stay the meeting was quite prepared to accept the force of these arguments. Of course such arguments are open to abuse – they can be used as a pretext for the imposing of decisions which are not in fact necessitated by considerations of safety or viability. My experience included no examples of this.
A Council Meeting
The second important regular meeting is the staff meeting held once a week, in which various types of business are conducted. Staff contemplating Council Meeting proposals, for instance, may bring them to the staff meeting first. On one occasion a staff member suggested that the Saturday bedtime extension of one hour be reduced, as the children couldn’t adjust to the extra hour on the day and moped around bored whilst refusing to go to bed ‘early’. The question was discussed at length, and eventually it was decided to put to the Council Meeting a proposal for the reduction of the extension.
Decisions about jobs which need to be done and allocations of responsibility for them also take place. For example, a decision has often to be made about which member of staff is to drive the school ’bus on a trip to the swimming baths or some local event; this sort of decision is made by the staff meeting and simply communicated at the next Council Meeting. There is also a discussion of the progress and needs of individual children.
The third of the regular meetings is the Staff and Outsiders. (Outsiders are the older children who live outside the main building.) To this the Council Meeting refers matters which require lengthy discussion with both staff and pupils present, but in which the younger children cannot be expected to take a full part. One such matter was a discussion of what steps should be taken about the proposed seniors’ common room.
Occasionally matters of discipline concerning only Outsiders are raised here. For example on one occasion the school ‘bus had been driven up the drive and back as a prank. No younger children were involved, so the matter was discussed in a specially called Staff and Outsiders, where both staff and children expressed their opinions, and various proposals were made for seeing that the slight damage was paid for.
Occasionally specific areas of responsibility are delegated by the Council Meeting to sub-committees – the Kitchen Committee is one example. There is also a special meeting called to make arrangements for the twice-termly parties.
Classes: All pupils are expected to attend regularly the classes of their own class teacher, and those of the options they have chosen. There are no punishments for non-attendance; children who have been missing classes are simply reminded that they must go, and if the situation becomes serious enough it is discussed in the relevant meeting.
This is an important point between Kilquhanity and A. S. Neill’s Summerhill. Kilquhanity tries to communicate to he children its feeling that some organised learning is important by making some classes obligatory, though the time allocated is small (1 -2 hours per day), and the subjects those which are most readily accepted as basic and necessary for everyone. The options range widely, and a genuine feeling of parity of esteem has been achieved – there is no status attached to attendance at, say, history rather than workshop.
Exam success – as will be obvious by now -is not accepted by the school as a criterion of successful education. To such an extent is this so, that records of exam success as such do not exist. However it seems fair to generalise by saying that some 80% of the pupils pass ‘O’ Grade English by the time they leave, and about half obtain one to three passes in other subjects. Highers results are, as one would expect even in a conventional school of this size, very erratic, but a total of about one quarter of the pupils obtain at least one pass at Higher Grade, and most years at least one of them obtains several.
There is evidence in the questionnaire answers that some pupils attach more importance to exam success than does the school – but no evidence that the pupils are critical of the school over its attitude to exams as such.
Useful Work; Every child in the school above the primary stage spends the period 8-45 – 9.30 each morning engaged in useful work, which may involve anything from lighting fires or mending bicycles to helping on the farm. There is also a rota for clearing the dining room and washing up, which includes the staff. This scheme enables the children to take part, with a degree of responsibility, in various types of work activity which have their counterparts in the larger society. Further work may be made available to the children in the form of ‘paid jobs’ from time to time. For example, potato peeling, and looking after the kitchen Agas are paid jobs allocated by the Meeting, to suitable applicants.
The ’useful work’ principle extends also into the preparation for the twice-termly parties, which are major events in the school’s calendar, and though very enjoyable, are seen not just as times for enjoyment but as focal points for a great variety of educational activity and experience. The two principle rooms in which the party is held are elaborately decorated, using a them appropriate to the season; vast quantities of sandwiches, cakes and pastries are prepared; and various ceremonial events are traditional parts of each party – a turnip lantern parade and fancy dress parade at Hallowe’en, carol singing round the tree and a visit by Father Christmas at the Christmas party.
The work involved in all these preparations is shared out by the children amongst themselves, very often joining with a staff member to form a combined work group. The whole of the day of the party and the day before are given over to the preparations. The party itself is a marathon, lasting from 5pm till midnight, and even the youngest children are allowed to stay up till the end if they wish. Apart from the seasonal ceremonies, the main activities are games in the earlier part of the evening (including traditional Hallowe’en games at Hallowe’en), and country dancing. These parties are very much landmark events, which give a shape to the Kilquhanity year. Country dancing is however not confined to parties. Regular evening sessions of country dancing are held once a week for teaching, practice and sheer enjoyment.
Games are not compulsory. There is a football team which plays several fixtures a term, but for the most part games are informal – football and cross country runs in the winter and continuous cricket in the summer. Swimming is made available through weekly trips to the swimming baths in Dumfries.
Other ‘trips’ include a weekly Library trip, and from time to time outings to plays or concerts being presented locally.
Each term sees some kind of dramatic production, and sometimes more than one. At the end of the term I spent there, two one-act plays were produced.
Major construction projects are fairly common too. The most impressive, now nearing completion, is a plywood and timber cabin on stilts built by a member of staff with the assistance of some older pupils. A log cabin was constructed some three years ago (?), nd various tree houses are scattered round the grounds. Boats made include a dug-out canoe, and two experimental designs, one in corrugated iron and one with a polythene skin. Skating, and sledging on workshop made sledges are favourite winter pastimes, and sailing takes place on a nearby Loch in summer.
The television is freely available to the children, but there seems to be little indiscriminate viewing.
One other ‘extra-curricular’ activity should be mentioned, the publication of Kilquhanity Broadsheet, the school’s weekly duplicated magazine, Broadsheet contains ten sides, most of which are filled with children’s original work – poems, reports, stories and drawings. It also includes a brief report of proceedings at the last Council Meeting.
Issues: It will perhaps throw a little further light on the school’s workings to look at the way in which it deals with one or two problems. I heard it said more than once in a Council Meeting that it was no good having rules which didn’t work, a principle which seemed to have the support pf the Meeting as a whole. And in practice there seemed at least some indication that it was of little use pretending something in the Community was working satisfactorily when it was not.
One issue that came up during my stay was that of irregular attendance at classes of one of the teachers. As it concerned particularly the older children, it was raised at the Staff and Outsiders Meeting. The member of staff concerned, new that term, pointed out that several children who had asked to be members of his class had become very irregular in their attendance, and that on occasions he kept an appointment for a class only to find that he had no pupils to teach.
The pupils concerned, silent at first, were then asked by one the other children why they were failing to attend regularly, and one of them said that she felt she wasn’t gaining anything from attending, so she stopped going. Pressed to be more specific, she said that she didn’t like the teacher’s method of teaching. He, the teacher, said that he was quite ready to admit his methods had their shortcomings, but he couldn’t teach non-existent pupils, either by his present method or any others.
Two other members of staff pointed out that pupils always found it difficult adapting to a different teacher with different methods, and that they too had experienced difficulties when they first came to the school. By this time the discussion had overcome the initial feelings of awkwardness, and another pupil explained that she thought one important factor in discontent with the methods was that the teacher assumed too much prior knowledge of the subject in his pupils, and didn’t offer sufficient basic explanations. The teacher undertook to bear this in mind, and the pupils to be more regular in attendance. This did not necessarily solve the problem, but it did ease feelings on both sides, and established lines of communication for attempts to solve it which could be used again as necessary in the future.
Another issue discussed during my stay was the smoking situation, which is treated as important, but not as the key issue of discipline as in some schools. A smoking meeting – special session of the Council Meeting was held, not as an emergency measure but to review the situation which had not been discussed for some time. Some people felt that more children were smoking, and in particular that several younger children who hadn’t previously been smokers were starting.
Smoking is not an offence at Kilquhanity, but certain restrictions are enforced. These include a ban on smoking in certain fire risk areas (principally dormitories), and an understanding that those who do smoke will not do so in the presence of younger children who might thereby be influenced to start. There was general agreement that, even if the habitual smokers were incapable of stopping, it was important not to encourage non-smokers to start, and those who did smoke agreed to be more scrupulous about not smoking in the presence of non-smokers.
Some Assumptions to Avoid: Religion has not been mentioned, simply because the teaching and practice of religion have no official place in the life of the school – though individuals, of course, may well hold religious beliefs and practice them to a greater or lesser extent. There are a few pupils who feel actively opposed to religion and religious organisations, but the feeling of the community as a whole is that respect should be shown to those who wish, say, to say grace before meals, and a Council Meeting reprimand was issued to those who had been ridiculing one such pupil.
Similarly, dress has not been mentioned for the simple reason that there are no restrictions whatsoever on dress or hairstyle. There are no office bearers amongst the children (except the chairman and scribe to the meeting), and every child has a share of responsibility for seeing that the Council Meeting’s rulings are enforced, as well as a contribution to make to the work of running the school. There are no special privileges linked to age or position in the school, no colours for games, no prizes.
The school’s attitude to relations been the sexes has not yet been mentioned, largely because no problems occurred in this area whilst I was at Kilquhanity. It so happens that at present the oldest group is very small, and there are no acknowledged serious and long-standing boy-girl relationships. Of course the situation has not always been so straightforward, and the school’s attitude to the problem when it arises is obviously important. As far as I can judge from discussions, and the re-telling of history, the school does not disapprove in any way of the forming of such relationships.
However in the current climate of opinion and under existing laws its survival as a school would be impossible if it allowed pupils to sleep together or have sexual intercourse whilst at school. This is made clear to any pupils who have formed close relationship such that clarification seems necessary. Information on the Physiological side of sex is made freely available, and the awkward consequences of an unwanted pregnancy are discussed. The need for contraception is stressed in general terms.
Philosophy: The school’s philosophy is to a large extent clear from its practice. Social development, and the development of individual interests and directions are the prime considerations. Knowledge, it is felt, - apart from a bare minimum – is best and most easily acquired once the interests and directions have formed sufficiently to give motivation and a basis for discrimination. . . My purely subjective reaction is that some opportunities are lost which could be realised in a more intensely stimulating environment. But, on the other hand, there seems to be very little activity which is carried out mechanically without having any meaning for the individual concerned.
One point of assessment, however, seems to be well enough established. Children who go to Kilquhanity with behaviour problems which made them impossible to keep in the ordinary school almost without exception show dramatic improvements and, through being accepted unconditionally, come to be acceptable members of the community. This tallies closely with experiences of others using similar methods – Homer Lane, A.S. Neill, George Lyward.
Reactions to the different elements in the Kilquhanity approach are bound to be intuitive and subjective. Hard evidence of anything like a comprehensive or conclusive nature is impossible to collect, because the crucial factors are to be found in atmosphere and relationships.
The formal Investigation: At the end of the period I spent in the school I administered a questionnaire to the pupils containing some questions given by Royston Lambert in his ‘Manual to the sociology of the School’, and some questions with special relevance to Kilquhanity. . . There is no doubt in my mind that Kilquhanity as a totality is fundamentally different from any other school I have known well; and whilst it would be possible to base an investigation on pro- and anti-school groups, for instance, the results would in no way touch upon the essential differences either of organisation or atmosphere.
(I do not have a copy of the questionnaire administered AP)
One question shows:
What is your attitude towards the following aspects of life here?
Staff Opinion: The most frequently mentioned need for change is a means of ensuring greater continuity and permanence of staff. The importance of some increase in Staff pay. The need for more space and improved facilities both to develop existing activities and increase the range available was also mentioned.
Improvement of staff quarters and the need for a music teacher. More trips to local cultural events, and closer links with the educational developments and social services associated with the state educational system. A reduction of the administrative load on the headmaster was mentioned twice. (I think some of these responses are likely to have been made by co-authors of the Blueprint above)
Conclusion: . . . Could it be that, given the choice, social development and the pursuit of a child’s own interests put him in a more favourable position for acquiring socially useful skills later on than does the mere absorption of knowledge? Or does the relaxed environment of a school like Kilquhanity lack the varied and exciting stimuli and presentation of possibilities for excellence which alone can enable a child to realise his full potential and live his fullest life? Does the relaxed atmosphere in fact, necessarily, go with freedom of choice and the scope for social development, or could an equally free educational institution nevertheless offer greater variety and a higher standard in each area?
