Neill liked his idea and gave the publisher wide liberties in the manuscript's preparation, preferring to write a preface or appendix in reflection on the writings. In a letter to Neill, New York publisher Harold Hart suggested a book specific for America devised of parts from four of Neill's previous works: The Problem Child, The Problem Parent, The Free Child, and That Dreadful School.

Neill and published by Hart Publishing Company in 1960. Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing was written by A. The book begat an American Summerhillian following, cornered an education criticism market, and made Neill into a folk leader. They put Neill in a lineage of experimental thought, but questioned his lasting contribution to psychology. Reviewers noted Neill's charismatic personality, but doubted the project's general replicability elsewhere and its overstated generalizations. The book was used in hundreds of college courses and translated into languages such as German. Neill discarded other pedagogies for one of the innate goodness of the child.ĭespite selling no advance copies in America, Summerhill brought Neill significant renown in the next decade, wherein he sold three million copies.

The school makes its rules at a weekly schoolwide meeting where students and teachers each have one vote alike. 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 seven chapters of the book cover the origins and implementation of the school, and other topics in childrearing. The foreword was written by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, who distinguished between authoritarian coercion and Summerhill. Its contents are a repackaged collection from four of Neill's previous works.

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. It is known for introducing his ideas to the American public. Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing is a book about the English boarding school Summerhill School by its headmaster A.

Summerhill alexander neill