The Free Child
AS Neill
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MISCELLANY
PROPAGANDA
In my school I have never attempted to get children to share my beliefs
or my prejudices. In the matter of health I am a believer in Nature Cure.
I do not take medicines or drugs or injections; they seem to me to be
treating symptoms and not causes. I accept the Nature Cure view that a
cold in the head is a kind of Spring Cleaning, which sneezes and coughs
out stuff that the body has not been able to eliminate by the usual channels,
and I fear that, if ever doctors discover that cure for a common cold
they look for so assiduously, the poison will find a more dangerous way
out. I have no scientific knowledge of the body; I accept the Nature Cure
explanation because it sounds likely and natural, and possibly also because,
after a cold, I feel in the pink. But I should never think of trying to
convert my pupils to Nature Cure. I know that the doctors have most of
the heavy artillery on their side, but I do not consider it my duty to
preach to children. In any case, with my lack of medical knowledge, I
should not be able to present a good case.
I have no religion but have never taught one word against religion, nor
against the barbarous criminal code, nor antiSemitism, nor imperialism.
I have never influenced children to become pacifists or vegetarians or
temperance reformers. My propaganda is a subtle one; I know that preaching
cuts no ice with children, so I put my trust in the power of freedom to
fortify youth against sham and fanaticism and isms of any kind. Yes, I
leave freedom to counteract organised propaganda for what, to me, are
evil things . . . not meaning that pacifism and vegetarianism, etc. are
evil of course.
The advocates of propaganda say something like this:
There is a vast amount of subtle propaganda that must affect the childrenthe
pornographic laugh in the cinema, the hushhush about birth, the press
with its reports of crimes, the news reels with their glorification of
tanks and bombs, the magistrates with their moral lectures. Is it fair
to children to let the devil play them all the worst tunes? IF answer
cheerfully that if you preserve your child from guilt, especially guilt
about its body and its sex, it will come almost unscathed through the
most dangerous barrage of moral and sinister big guns. I say almost unscathed
and that “almost” is what makes me keep a sharp eye on the Grundy woman.
How much should we censor a child’s reading and cinema? On my office bookshelves are various books on psychology and sexology; any child is free to borrow them at any time, but I question if more than one or two have ever shown any interest in them. Not one has asked for Lady Chatterley’s Lover or Ulysses or Krafft Ebing, and only one or two seniors have borrowed the Encyclopedia of Sex Knowledge. I am strongly against any cencorship of books at any age. In our young days we had our reading censored and our great ambition was to get hold of Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Rabclais and translations of French yellowbacks; in other words censorship was used as a criterion for selecting the most interesting books.
The cinema is in a different category. Fifty years ago a book like Dracula
made children shut their windows fearfully against human vampires, but
what is written is not so terrifying as what is seen or heard. Some films
give children terror and one is never sure where and when something frightening
will come in. Bambi is a charming story, so humane and loving that I cannot
understand how anyone can shoot a deer for mere sport after seeing it;
children love it, but I have seen small children cry in fear when the hunters’
dogs attack Bambi. I have seen small children afraid of the crocodile or
the pirates in Peter Pan. I think, therefore, that a parent is justified
in banning certain films for children under the age of twelve or so. There
is so much brutality on the screen. Men slosh each other in the jaw, men
sometimes hit women, news reels display boxing contests, and all we need
to complete the sadistic picture are a few films dealing with Spanish bullfighting.
Cowboy films with shooting do not seem to affect children much, and I do
not know why.
I wonder if X films would do most children any harm; certainly not
free children. I fancy my pupils could see La Ronde without much emotion
and without any bad effects. Children see what they want to see, and most
children who read The Prisoner of Zenda never notice the fact that Rudolf
Rassendyl was a bastard. My crowd, of course, might notice it but the fact
would mean nothing to them, for they have not been taught to look upon
illegitimacy as something evil. Speaking of La Ronde my own criticism is
that there is no love in the film; the succession of goings to bed with
different women emphasises the inferior attitude to sex, even though the
film is charmingly done and the music haunting.
To censor a child’s companionship is too difficult in most cases. I think it should be done only when a neighbouring child is cruel or bullying. Luckily most children have a natural selectiveness, and sooner or later they find the companions they like.
A child should be given the food it wants. To compel a child to eat bacon and eggs when it hates bacon and eggs is absurd and cruel. Naturally the parents will make the menu according to their own ideas of diet. In Summerhill we have had wholemeal bread for over thirty years, but for some years we have had to give white bread at weekends because so many children like it better. We have always had lots of raw greens, but some new children come and refuse them; usually in course of time pupils accept them and like them. If parents are vegetarian they will give their children vegetarian meals; I often notice, however, that children from vegetarian homes wolf meat portions with great gusto. As a layman unskilled in dietetics I am of the opinion that it does not matter whether a child is a meat eater or not. So long as the diet is balanced health is likely to be good. At my father’s village school long ago I recall that many children seemed to suffer from constant diarrhoea; this must have been primarily due to wrong diet, for I never hear of diarrhoea in my own school, and seldom of constipation. Food is of great importance but it is not everything. I often say that the good health bill of Summerhill is due to freedom, good food, and fresh air ... in that order.
At what age should we allow our child to drink alcohol? I am on unsure
ground here because I have a complex about alcohol. I can have my pint
of beer, my glass of whisky (preferably Rye); I like wines and liqueurs.
This merely to show that I am no rabid abstainer. I fear alcohol because
I saw so much damage done by it in my youth when whisky was three shillings
a bottle. Hence I am not inclined to give children alcohol. When Zoë
wanted to taste my Pilsener or my whisky I allowed her to do so. To the
beer she made a wry face and said: “Nasty !“ To the whisky she said: “Lovely
!“ but did not ask for more. Heredity maybe. In Denmark I saw small selfregulated
babies ask for a glass of Curaçoa; they were given one and drank
it to the dregs but did not ask for more. I recall a farmer who used to
come with his gig to pick up his children from school on a wet, cold day.
He always brought a flask of whisky and gave them each a dram. My father
shook his head sadly. “Mark my words, they will all be drunkards later,”
he said. The whole family was teetotal when they grew up.
No, I simply do not know what should be done about alcohol. Sooner
or later every child will meet it, and only the ones who cannot cope with
life will be likely to drink too much. My old pupils come here and go down
to the local and have a wet reunion, yet I never heard of an old pupil
who drank too much.
The question of sleep does not arise to any great extent in a home.
Some children resent being sent to bed because they feel they will be missing
something while their elders sit up. In a free school bedtimes are the
very devil, not with the infants nor with the juniors so much as with the
seniors. Youth likes to burn the midnight oil, and I sympathise with it,
for I hate going to bed myself. Work settles the problem for most adults.
If you have to be in your factory at 8 am. you have to renounce the temptation
to sit up into the small hours.
I wonder how much truth is in the dictum of doctors that so and so
much sleep is necessary for a child. With small children yes; allow a child
of seven to sit up late at nights and he suffers in health because he often
cannot go on sleeping late in the mornings.
Parents will decide what clothes small children wear. The matter becomes
acute when children grow to adolescence. Then they should be allowed to
choose their clothes themselves. A million daughters suffer because their
mothers insist on choosing their clothes for them. If a parent can afford
it, a good way is to give a boy or girl a dress allowance, and if he or
she wants to spend it on cinemas and cigarettes that is up to them. Boys
are easier to dress as a rule. The unpardonable thing to do is to dress
your child in a way that is different from that of his or her fellows.
To put a boy of fourteen into short pants when all his classmates are
wearing longs is cruel. Worse still is to send your son to an English school
in a kilt.
Daughters should be free to do what they like with their hair, to have
it cut or bobbed or plaited. If they want to use lipstick why not? Personally
I hate the sight of the stuff, but if my daughter wants to use it later
I shall not try to dissuade her.
Many parents have a cleanliness complex. This is most apparent in America where parents are so scared of germs that they keep washing their children’s toys and faces and clothes. Two small boys there expressed their astonishment when I dropped my cigarette on the floor and took it up again to smoke. Dirt never killed any child. It is natural for a child to get muddy and untidy. I simply will not believe that dirt causes a disease like Impetigo which arises in all schools, Public, Private and State. It seems to me to be more a question of bad feeding, for when we get an occasional case we put the child on a diet mainly consisting of raw greens and fruit, and the disease clears up. Acne is probably a disease of adolescents who are repressed about sex, at least I seldom if ever see it in free adolescents. In the country parents do not worry much about dirt; they say it is clean dirt and it usually is. In the city dirt is not so clean but it need not be dangerous if the child is well looked after otherwise. Too many children are sacrificed to tidy dresses and unmuddy trousers, and the parental motive is not always a health one, it is a fear of neighbours’ opinion. Only untidy souls ever see untidiness anyway.
LIES
A selfregulated child will not lie because there is no need to. If your
child lies he is afraid of you when he is not simply copying you. Lying
parents will have lying children. If you want the truth from your child
do lie to him. This statement is not a moral one; we all lie at times,
at the best to keep from hurting someone’s feelings. We lie about ourselves
in case we are accused of egoism or bumptiousness. I suppose that if someone
said to Henry Cotton: “What is your golf like ?“ he would give a gesture
of brushing the remark aside and say: “Oh, fair to middling.” Children
lie for several reasons, fear, shame, imagination, but mainly in defence.
I said to an adolescent problem boy: “Do you steal?” and he assured me
that he did not. Ten minutes later I remarked casually: “What do you think
about when you pinch money?” He replied: “Nothing in particular,” and
he did not see that I had tricked him, or just as probably he had discovered
that telling me did not matter.
I am more concerned with parental lying, lying about birth and sex and
money, lying in threats... “If you do that again you’ll go to bed without
any supper,” the child knowing full well that the threat will not be carried
out. Most children soon come to see through what are called white lies.
. . “Mummy has a headache, be quiet.” It is much better and more honest
to shout: “Stop that damned row !“ But you can only say that with impunity
if your children do not fear you. Parents lie sometimes in order to preserve
their dignity. “Daddy, you could fight six men, couldn’t you ?“ It takes
some courage to reply:
“No, my son, with my big stomach and my flabby muscles I couldn’t fight
a midget.”
The truth becomes awkward when the question is:
“Mummy, which of us kids do you love best.” The universal and often untrue
answer is the sweet: “I love you all the same, darling.” What it should
be I do not know. Perhaps the lie is justified here, for the shattering:
“I love Tommy best,” would have disastrous results. The case of parents
who are living a lie is too wide a subject to discuss here. A thick volume
could be written on it.
FAMILY PRIDE
It is dangerous to use your children as a means of showing off, so
that one should be as chary of praising as of blaming. It is bad to rhapsodise
about a child when he or she is present. . . “Oh, yes, Mary is getting
on. First in her class last week. Clever girl.” Not that one should never
praise; it is good to say to your little son: “That’s a very nice kite
you have made,” but the praise in order to impress visitors is wrong. Young
geese so easily stick out their necks like swans when admiration is floating
around.
