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)