The Idea of Summerhill

Reading two

Sum up what the author says for and against egalitarian and elitist approaches to education. Add your own arguments.

Speech activities

Replace the italicized parts with the words from your functional vocabulary.

Language focus

1. Explain the meaning of each of the following words and phrases used in the text. Translate them into Russian/Belarusian.

– X per cent of nature, plus Y per cent of nurture;

– advantaged background;

– to be deeply rooted;

– to slip through the net;

– to encourage social cohesion;

– a comprehensive school system.

2. Match the adjectives with the nouns they collocate with. Translate the collocations into Russian/Belarusian.

inborn	training
hereditary	home
egalitarian	society
inventive	arguments
comprehensive	musician
tone-deaf	abilities
disadvantaged	child
gifted	right
conclusive	person

1. The state Department of Education does not allow students who cannot read at the third-grade level to advance to the fourth grade.

2. They believed intelligence was innate and unlikely to change.

3. Even talented children fail to progress without good teaching.

4. Everyone irrespective of means or occupations, shall have an equal opportunity.

5. He thinks that maths is somewhat overestimated as a school subject.

6. It is difficult to prove convincingly that such treatment is beneficial for the child.

7. I told you not to underestimate this pupil.

8. The research shows that students who have been held back in earlier grades are more likely to quit school.

2. Say if you agree with the following statements. Use evidence from the books and articles you have read (films you have seen) to back up your opinion. For more information and new ideas read the supplementary text Buddy, can you spare $50 000?

1. A private education is incompatible with the ideals of democracy.

2. Those parents who prefer to send their children to private institutions and can afford it are free to do so.

3. The elite of society is its major driving force.

The following text is an extract from the book “Summerhill”. Summerhill is a well known boarding school which was founded by Dr. Neill in 1921 and still represents a unique experiment in education.

This is a story of a modern school – Summerhill. Summerhill began as an experimental school. It is no longer such; it is now a demonstration school, for it demonstrates that freedom works.

When my first 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.

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 who believe in such a school, for those uncreative citizens who want docile, uncreative children who will fit into a civilization, whose standard of success is money.

I had taught in ordinary schools for many years. I knew the other way well. I knew it was all wrong. It was wrong because it was based on an adult conception of what a child should be and of how a child should learn.

Well, we set out to make a school in which we should allow children freedom to be themselves. In order to do this, we had to renounce all discipline, all direction, all suggestion, all moral training, all religious instruction. We have been called brave, but it did not require courage. All it required was what we had – a complete belief in the child as a good, not an evil, being.

My view is that a child is innately wise and realistic. If left to himself without adult suggestion of any kind, he will develop as far as he is capable of developing.

Logically, Summerhill is a place in which people who have the innate ability and wish to be scholars will be scholars; while those who are only fit to sweep the streets will sweep the streets. But we have not produced a street cleaner so far. Nor do I write this snobbishly, for I would rather see a school produce a happy street cleaner than a neurotic scholar. What is Summerhill like?

... Well, for one thing, lessons are optional. Children can go to them or stay away from them – for years if they want to. There is a timetable – but only for the teachers.

The children have classes usually according to their age, but sometimes according to their interests. We have no new methods of teaching, because we do not consider that teaching in itself matters very much. Whether a school has or has not a special method for teaching long division is of no significance, for long division is of no importance except to those who want to learn it. And the child who wants to learn long division will learn it no matter how it is taught.

Summerhill is possibly the happiest school in the world. We have no truants and seldom a case of homesickness. We very rarely have fights – quarrels, of course, but seldom have I seen a stand-up fight like the ones we used to have as boys. I seldom hear a child cry, because children when free have much less hate to express than children who are downtrodden. Hate breeds hate, and love breeds love. Love means approv­ing of children, and that is essential in any school. You can’t be on the side of children if you punish them and storm at them. Summerhill is a school in which the child knows that he is approved of.

The function of the child is to live his own life – not the life that his anxious parents think he should live, nor a life according to the purpose of the educator who thinks he knows what is best. All this interference and guidance on the part of adults only produces a generation of robots.

In Summerhill, everyone has equal rights. No one is allowed to walk on my grand piano, and I am not allowed to borrow a boy's cycle without his permission. At a General School Meeting, the vote of a child of six counts for as much as my vote does.

But, says the knowing one, in practice of course the voices of the grown-ups count. Doesn't the child of six wait to see how you vote before he raises his hand? I wish he sometimes would, for too many of my proposals are beaten. Free children are not easily influenced; the absence of fear accounts for this phenomenon. Indeed, the absence of fear is the finest thing that can happen to a child.

Headway Advanced. 1999

Дата добавления: 2017-01-14