Would you give your kids a free-range education?

by Martin Oliver October 24, 2016

Childhood is a time for growth and exploration. However, the growing years have traditionally been polarised between freedom and play on the one hand, and on the other a restrictive school system that conflicts with children’s inner natures. A growing number of schools have successfully broken down this polarised split, discovering that play can be an integral part of learning and that children tend to flourish when given a high degree of freedom to explore and discover what engages them, in an unstructured fashion.

The drawbacks of the mainstream

While some of the less pleasant aspects of schools have been toned down or discontinued over the decades, a number of questionable elements remain including:

A hierarchical relationship between teacher and pupil based on obedience, which prepares students for life in an authoritarian society.
Segregation into narrow age brackets.
A tendency towards disruptive behaviour by pupils who feel disengaged due to the style of teaching.
Until fairly recently, maintenance of discipline via corporal punishment was common, which in turn has been linked to bullying by those punished.
The occasional use of humiliation as a punishment, often leaving psychological scars that are carried into adulthood.
Standardised curricula.
Competition between pupils and an emphasis on grades and tests.

Working at cross purposes with children’s lively and boisterous tendencies, educational institutions generally see these natural energies as in need of taming and reining in by an external force. Much of this is rooted in the ideas of Enlightenment Western philosophers, such as Kant, who believed in the importance of sublimating one’s instincts and inclinations in favour of reason.

“Free schools”

A competition held in the UK in 2001 gave children free rein to imagine their ideal school, and a number of themes came up repeatedly. Students wanted respect; choice in their method of learning; an aesthetically appealing built environment; exposure to nature as a learning tool; comfortable and safe schools; less rigidity in the school organisation; and democratic representation by children.

This last factor is an important ingredient in free schools and other democratic education institutions. Their numbers have been steadily multiplying and today hundreds of these are dotted around the planet. Many are located in the US, Israel, Germany, Australia and the Netherlands.

These schools tend to share a range of holistic beliefs and values such as:

Children are seen as unique individuals with different talents and gifts.
Students are naturally inquisitive and this can be harnessed as a vehicle for learning.
Left to their own devices, children naturally tend to exhibit behaviours that will serve them as adults, such as creativity, imagination, alertness, curiosity, thoughtfulness, responsibility and judgement.
The most liberal institutions give pupils the freedom to make their own decisions, to have control and responsibility over their own lives and to choose whether to attend classes. There is nothing to rebel against.
Children are given space to discover their own values rather than have them imposed by an external authority.
Having democratic rights in childhood is one of the best ways to produce adults who are active participants in a democratic political system.
Modelling co-operation between teachers and students, and between the students, encourages more co-operative values in adulthood.

Conventional education tends to be associated with “extrinsic” motivating factors such as ego-identification, attempts to impress others, competition and fear of punishment. By contrast, “intrinsic” motivating factors include interest, enjoyment, challenge and a desire for excellence, and these are better encouraged in democratic schools.

The hidden history of youth self-government

Around the end of the 19th century, evolving ideas about progressive institutions for children were starting to be implemented on the ground. A self-governing and self-sufficient youth community known as the George Junior Republic was established in 1895 at Freeville, New York State, by wealthy businessman William Reuben George, with a goal of removing 12- to 18-year-old street gang members from an urban milieu into a healthy rural setting. His idea snowballed and was replicated in several other American states.

Neill’s libertarian philosophy was summarised by the term “freedom, not licence”. In other words, you can do whatever you want so long as it doesn’t negatively impact on others.

Very similar was the Little Commonwealth, a co-educational community that ran from 1913 to 1918 on a farm in the English county of Dorset. An American educator named Homer Lane, who had earlier run the Ford Republic near Detroit, was picked for this British project. Many of the children were delinquents from urban slums dubbed “criminals” by the justice system due to crimes ranging from loitering to theft. The first major challenge was steering their behaviour away from destructive activities, which Lane achieved with a deft psychological manoeuvre by sanctioning antisocial behaviour, and even joining in, thereby swiftly removing its illicit appeal. Children lived in groups known as “families” and from the age of 14 were regarded as “citizens”, made the rules and served as a jury that determined the penalties issued to rule-breakers. As with the Junior Republics, at the Little Commonwealth there was a strong emphasis on the beneficial effects of work and earning an income from a young age.

During the 1930s, four self-governing and autonomous children’s summer camps linked to the socialist movement were held in different years in Belgium, France and the UK, attracting up to 2000 children from a range of different countries. They were known as Children’s Republics.

Summerhill

An important milestone was the establishment of Summerhill in the UK by A S Neill, a Scottish educator who had received psychotherapy from Homer Lane. In 1924 he set up this seminal free school, which moved in 1927 to Suffolk and has remained there ever since without compromising its principles.

Summerhill started life as a dumping ground for delinquents that other schools had given up on, and somehow Neill’s approach always succeeded in turning them around. Today, Summerhill is administered by Neill’s daughter, Zoe Redhead. Its classes are optional and the school is run via weekly meetings in which every pupil and staff member has one vote.

Democratically schooled children moving into adulthood are often well-rounded, emotionally mature, versatile, empowered and creative.

Neill was a prolific writer and, while his ideas were sometimes seen as extreme by contemporary progressive educators, this is perhaps because he was ahead of his time. He saw a “sick and unhappy” society as rooted in children’s education practices. To him, children needed love and the space to freely express their personalities.

Seen through a psychoanalytic prism, authority was viewed by Neill as a type of repression. People were naturally good and in the absence of coercion they would self-regulate while exhibiting desirable personality traits. Neill’s libertarian philosophy was summarised by the term “freedom, not licence”. In other words, you can do whatever you want so long as it doesn’t negatively impact on others.

Sudbury Valley school

Following the release of Neill’s bestselling 1960 book, Summerhill, the 1960s saw an upsurge of free schools across the US. While most of these have since disappeared, some survived. Sudbury Valley School was established in 1968 at Framingham, Massachusetts, on similar lines to Summerhill, but in an even more unstructured way.

With no classes or classrooms, students are instead encouraged to explore their interests and engage with staff members about these passions. Intermixing between older and younger students occurs regularly. A relaxed ambience gives the school an appearance of being in a state of permanent recess. There are no tests or evaluations. A former student says about this process, “You would be doing a lot of different things and would learn them in little bits and pieces that would start adding up to much bigger pictures.”

The Sudbury model has been widely replicated in different countries and at the latest count there are at least 50 Sudbury schools around the world.

An extraordinary Russian school

Close to the Black Sea, near the small Russian city of Tekos, is Kin’s School, a remarkable institution run by educator Mikhail Schetinin. Compared to some free schools, Kin’s School is a more ordered environment, but is exceptional at nurturing children’s potential. Central is the philosophy that each child is an innate genius, but this quality is shut down by mainstream education.

At the school, children designed, built and decorated all the buildings. They also carry out administration, cleaning, cooking school meals and maintenance. In addition to academic subjects, they learn how to build a house and master less practical skills such as sword fighting and folk dancing.

In a co-operative learning effort, children simultaneously learn and teach in small groups of five or six around a table. Textbooks are rewritten by students to help others understand and each subject is pursued intensively to its conclusion before moving on to the next. There is no homework. Pupils are subject to standard tests and generally pass with outstanding scores.

Democratic choices in Australia & New Zealand

Schools in Australia running on similar lines often tend to be located in peri-urban rural settings and include:

Pine Community School, Arana Hills, Brisbane (Primary)
Brisbane Independent School (Primary)
Maridahdi Early Childhood Community, Toowoomba (K–7)
Blackall Range Independent School, Sunshine Coast hinterland (Prep–12)
Currambena, Lane Cove, Sydney (K–Primary)
Kinma School, Terrey Hills, NSW (K–Primary)
Preshil, Kew, Melbourne (K–12)
Hurstbridge Learning Co-op, Victoria (Primary)
Sherbrooke Community School, Victoria (Prep–12)
Village School, Croydon North, Melbourne (Prep–6)

In New Zealand, democratic schools frequently come under the heading of “character” schools:

Discovery 1/The Hub, Christchurch (Prep–12)
Tamariki School, Christchurch (Prep–8)
Freyberg Community School, Te Atatu South, Auckland (Prep–6)
Timatanga Community School, Waitakere City, Auckland (Prep–8)

A fear of freedom

Adults who grow from free-range children are liable to be less acquiescent to the authoritarian aspects of modern society. They are more likely to turn into active citizens, thinkers and entrepreneurs and less likely to become drones.

Government authorities have sometimes gone out of their way to target these institutions. During the 1990s, Summerhill found its way onto a secret “watch list” and was inspected nine times by the government’s education watchdog. This culminated in the school going to court to defend its policy of optional lessons, ultimately with success.

In Australia and New Zealand, the main point of friction between democratic schools and the education bureaucracy is adherence to a standardised curriculum. Some schools of this type use the curriculum but do not apply it rigidly. In the Sunshine Coast hinterland, the Sudbury School at Booroobin had its accreditation removed in 2003 by Queensland’s Education Minister for not adhering to the curriculum and has since closed.

Pros outweigh the cons

Criticisms aimed at free schools are relatively few, especially for younger children, who are less focused on academic development. Some concerns are linked to the risk that in an unstructured environment the students could sit around all day doing nothing. However, boredom is likely to drive them to engage in a personally meaningful activity, especially where they are surrounded by creative and inspired peers.

Today’s democratic schools tend to attract children from a higher socio-economic background, partly due to the fees involved. In the cases where the most unstructured free schools do not focus on reading, writing and arithmetic, some more affluent parents tend to bring in outside tutors. Parents on lower incomes are less likely to be able to afford this.

Democratically schooled children moving into adulthood are often well-rounded, emotionally mature, versatile, empowered and creative, which might make them better suited for 21st century employment than graduates who are rote-learning academics. How children are educated will have a strong influence on the future of society, for worse or for better. Democratic education is a valid alternative that works for many children, as evidenced by the plethora of highly positive testimonials.