Dr Fiona Beals

Understanding Alternative Education

Refresh• What is it questioning?• Why?• Illich• Holt• Gatto

Let’s Go Alternative• A.S. Neil and

Summerhill School• Out with

socialisation – in with exploration

• Focus on flexible curriculum

• Built on progressive pedagogy

“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…

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”

(Neill, 2006, p.6, authors italics)

The Policy of Summerhill• Providing choices and

opportunities to young people (individualisation not socialisation)

• Compulsory assessment is not the benchmark standard

• Encourages free play• Provides students with

the freedom to express and experience all feelings

• Focuses on using a democratic process

“Do you think that non-compulsory lessons were an advantage or a disadvantage?An advantage with a big A because the pressure in compulsory lessons is ridiculous. If somebody is telling you that you have to go and that getting exams is the most important thing in the world then it is a lie.”

Carla

The Summerhill Movement - Metro• The onslaught of

the Hippy Era• Freedom Schools• Freire, Ilich and the

Latin American Thinkers

• Metro High School starts in 1977 – 4,000 students apply for 120 places

“The Auckland Metropolitan College, as a redefinition of the form of the school, frees the student from the “dehumanisation” found in the isolation of the traditional school from the community and in the restriction of the timetable which predefines when learning will

occur.”(Hoskins 1975a: 42 in Vaughan,

2001)

The Death of Metro• Key Problem –

State Funded so bound to policy

• Tomorrow’s Schools• Alternative

becomes a cabbage label

• ERO gets the reports out

The school has become a school of last resort for students and parents…The school has retained its original philosophy and structures and has tried to make such students fit them. It has not successfully adapted its programmes, management style or teaching methods to meet the needs of its present students. (Education Review Office 1996, November: 5)There is little evidence that the majority of students are being educated as intended for all State school students. The school has failed to meet the terms of its charter. (Education Review Office 1996, November: 12).

Concluding thoughts??

“Real education is about getting people involved in thinking for themselves – and that’s a tricky business to know how to do well, but clearly it requires that whatever it is you’re looking at has to somehow catch people’s interest and make them want to think, and make them want to pursue and explore”

(Chomsky, 2003, p.27, author’s emphasis)