A. S. Neill

Biography

Scottish educator, born in Forfar, Scotland, in 1883. He worked as a teacher and journalist before turning, under the influence of Freud and psychoanalysis, to an educational view centred on emotional health. In 1921 he founded Summerhill School near Dresden, Germany, and moved it in 1927 to Leiston, Suffolk, where he insisted on pupil self-government, free attendance at lessons and no corporal punishment. Summerhill (1960) made the experiment widely known and became a key text of progressive and free-school education.