Summerhill

A Radical Approach to Childrearing

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Summerhill
A. S. Neill, A. S. Neill
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  • 5.0 (1 rating) ·
  • 17 Want to read
  • 2 Currently reading
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Last edited by IdentifierBot
August 6, 2010 | History

Summerhill

A Radical Approach to Childrearing

  • 5.0 (1 rating) ·
  • 17 Want to read
  • 2 Currently reading
  • 1 Have read

Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing is a book about the English boarding school Summerhill School by its headmaster A. S. Neill. It is known for introducing his ideas to the American public. It was published in America on November 7, 1960, by the Hart Publishing Company and later revised as Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood in 1993. Its contents are a repackaged collection from four of Neill's previous works. The foreword was written by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, who distinguished between authoritarian coercion and Summerhill.

The seven chapters of the book cover the origins and implementation of the school, and other topics in childrearing. Summerhill, founded in the 1920s, is run as a children's democracy under Neill's educational philosophy of self-regulation, where kids choose whether to go to lessons and how they want to live freely without imposing on others. The school makes its rules at a weekly schoolwide meeting where students and teachers each have one vote alike. Neill discarded other pedagogies for one of the innate goodness of the child.

Despite selling no advance copies in America, Summerhill brought Neill significant renown in the next decade, wherein he sold three million copies. The book was used in hundreds of college courses and translated into languages such as German. Reviewers noted Neill's charismatic personality, but doubted the project's general replicability elsewhere and its overstated generalizations. They put Neill in a lineage of experimental thought, but questioned his lasting contribution to psychology. The book begat an American Summerhillian following, cornered an education criticism market, and made Neill into a folk leader.

Publish Date
Publisher
Pocket Books
Language
English

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Previews available in: English German

Edition Availability
Cover of: Summerhill
Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Childrearing
August 1977, Pocket Books
Paperback in English
Cover of: Summerhill
Summerhill: a radical approach to child rearing
1977, Pocket Books, Hart Pub. Co.
in English
Cover of: Theorie und Praxis der antiautoritären Erziehung
Theorie und Praxis der antiautoritären Erziehung: Das Beispiel Summerhill
1970-06, Rowohlt Verlag
Paperback in German - 276.-325. Tausend Juni 1970
Cover of: Summerhill
Cover of: Summerhill
Summerhill: a radical approach to child rearing
1960, Hart Publishing
in English

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Book Details


The Physical Object

Format
Paperback

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL7665221M
ISBN 10
0671790013
ISBN 13
9780671790011
Library Thing
289786
Goodreads
178734

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History

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON / OPDS | Wikipedia citation
August 6, 2010 Edited by IdentifierBot added LibraryThing ID
April 24, 2010 Edited by Open Library Bot Fixed duplicate goodreads IDs.
April 16, 2010 Edited by bgimpertBot Added goodreads ID.
December 14, 2009 Edited by WorkBot link works
April 29, 2008 Created by an anonymous user Imported from amazon.com record