Carl Rogers

For Carl Rogers, learning is experiential when it
includes the ‘The whole person, both in feeling and in
cognitive aspects’ and when it ‘makes a difference in
the behavior, the attitudes, perhaps even the
personality of the learner’ (Rogers and Freiberg,
1994: 36)
A.S. NEILL (1883 - 1973)
AND SUMMERHILL:
FREEDOM AND
EXPERIENTIAL LIVING
Introduction

This week we turn to ideas and practice of the
Scottish educator, A.S. Neill (1883-1973).

Neill connected experiential learning to freedom.

For Neill, experiential learning is a way of life.
Summerhill School and experiential
learning as a way of life

‘When my wife and I began the school, we had one
main idea: to make the school fit the child – instead of
making the child fit the school’ (Neill, 1968: 20).

To understand Neill’s view of freedom and experiential
learning we engage with the following two questions:

What principles inform experiential learning in
Summerhill?

What is the nature of experiential learning in
Summerhill?
What principles inform
experiential learning?
What is it that Neill wants
the child to experience?

Neill had, he maintained, ‘a complete belief in the
child as good’, and for ‘over forty years, this belief in
the goodness of the child has never wavered; it
rather has become a final faith’ (Neill, 1968: 20).

Experiential learning is thus based on the principle
that children must be free to create their own
learning experiences.

Learning experiences cannot be imposed onto the
children.
Against authority



Obviously, a school that makes active children sit at
desks studying mostly useless subjects is a bad
school. It is a good school only for those …
uncreative citizens who want docile, uncreative
children who will fit into a civilisation whose standard
of success is money. (Neill, 1968: 19-20)
At Summerhill: ‘we had to renounce all discipline, all
direction, all suggestion, all moral training, all religious
instruction’ (Neill, 1968: 20).
There is ‘no deference to a teacher as a teacher. Staff
and pupils have the same food and obey he same
community laws’ (Neill, 1968: 26).
The positive aspect of freedom and
experiential learning: happiness



Experiential learning allows children to discover for
themselves, without interference from anyone else, what
their needs and concerns are.
‘I hold that the aim of life is to find happiness, which
means to find interest’ (Neill, 1968: 36).
‘It is an absurd curriculum that makes a prospective
dressmaker study quadratic equations or Boyle’s Law’
(Neill, 1968: 39).

The function of the child is to live his own life – not the
life that his anxious parents think he should live … All
interference and guidance on the part of adults only
produces a generation of robots. (Neill, 1968: 27)
The positive aspect of freedom and
experiential learning: happiness

For Neill, then, experiential learning is about
experiencing what makes one happy and not
conforming to the wishes of others. Neill asserts: ‘I
would rather see a school produce a happy street
cleaner than a neurotic scholar’ (Neill, 1968: 20).

‘Summerhill is possibility the happiest school in the
world’ (Neill, 1968: 23).
Approval

‘Summerhill is a school in which the child knows that he is
approved of’ (Neill, 1968: 23).

Neill claims that many parents do not grasp the ‘distinction
between freedom and licence’; he suggests that parents
and schools tend towards extremes:

In the disciplined home, the children have no rights.
In the spoiled home, they have all the rights. The
proper home is one in which children and adults have
equal rights. And the same applies to schools. (Neill,
1968: 105)
Experiential education and the
whole-person

Neill writes of talking to students in teaching training
colleges; he claimed that ‘they have been taught to
know, but have not been allowed to feel’ (original
emphasis, Neill, 1968: 38).

[C]assroom walls and the prisonlike buildings
narrow the teacher’s outlook, and prevent him
from seeing the true essentials of education.
His work deals with the part of a child that is
above the neck … the emotional, vital part of the
child is foreign territory to him. (Neill, 1968: 40)
Experiential education and the
whole-person

[M]y contention is that unfree education results
in life that cannot be lived fully. Such an
education almost entirely ignores the emotions
of life; and because these emotions are
dynamitic, their lack of opportunity for
expression must and does result in cheapness
and ugliness and hatefulness. Only the head is
educated. Of the emotions are permitted to be
really free, the intellect will look after itself.
(original emphasis, Neill, 1968: 99)
The negative aspect of freedom:
absence of fear and teaching

‘It is the idea of non-interference with the growth of the
child and non-pressure on the child that has made the
school what it is´ (original emphasis, Neill, 1968: 91).

The opposite of the freedom to engage in experiential
learning is, for Neill, the imposition of fear. Neill writes:
‘the absence of fear is the finest thing that can happen
to a child’ (Neill, 1968: 24)

Thus, Neill: no child at Summerhill experiences ‘wrath
or moral indignation’, no child fears ‘being lectured [at]
or being punished’ (Neill, 1968: 25).
Freedom from teaching

But freedom from interference means freedom from
being taught.

‘Every time we show Tommy how his engine works
we are stealing from that child the joy of life – the
joy of overcoming an obstacle’ (Neill, 1968: 37).

Neill presents as with a view of teaching as a form
of instruction, as a form of interference.
Freedom from teaching

In experiential learning, Neill suggests, the
emphasis is on the child’s learning and not the
teacher’s teaching:

Many so-called educators believe that it does
not matter what a child learns as long as he is
taught something. And, of course, with schools
as they are – just mass-production factories –
what can a teacher do but teach something and
come to believe that teaching, in itself, matters
most of all? (original emphasis, Neill, 1968: 40)
Questing Neill

Does Neill deny the important
responsibility of the teacher to know
the world and to pass on that
knowledge to a younger generation?

Without teachers performing this role,
how is knowledge of the world to be
sustained?
What goes on in a school where children
can constantly engage in experiential
learning?
Freedom of choice



‘The pupils do not have to stand room inspection and no
one picks up after them. They are left free. No one tells
them what to wear: they put on any kind of costume they
want to at any time’ (Neill, 1968: 27).
Optional lessons: ‘Children can go to them or stay away
from them – for years if they want’ (Neill, 1968: 20).
However: ‘The average period of recovery from lessons
aversion is three months’ (Neill, 1968: 21).
Only teachers have timetables.
‘My staff and I have a hearty hatred of all examinations’
(Neill, 1968: 23).
General meetings and ‘selfgovernment’

All school rules are determined at General School
Meetings, where each child and member of staff has
a vote: ‘everyone has equal rights’ (Neill, 1968: 24)

Again, this brings us to Neill view of experiential
learning as something that is constant, a way of life:

‘the school that has no self-government should not
be called a progressive school… You cannot have
freedom unless children feel completely free to
govern their own social life’ (Neill, 1968: 59).
Questing Summerhill

To what extent was your experience of
school similar to that of students at
Summerhill?

If your experiences were similar, do you
wish they had been different?
If your experiences were very different,
do you wish they had been similar?

Reflecting on experiential
learning:
Summerhill General Policy
Statement
1. To provide choices and opportunities that allow children to develop at their
own pace and to follow their own interests.
2. To allow children to be free from compulsory or imposed assessment,
allowing them to develop their own goals and sense of achievement.
3. To allow children to be completely free to play as much as they like.
4. To allow children to experience the full range of feelings free from the
judgement and intervention of an adult.
5. To allow children to live in a community that supports them and that they are
responsible for; in which they have the freedom to be themselves, and have the
power to change community life, through the democratic process.
http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/pages/school_policies_statement.html
In summery

According to Neill, experiential learning occurs
when children:



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learn without interference
can discover for themselves what their interests
and needs are
learn as ‘whole people’
feel they are approved of and not judged
allowed to ‘self-govern’