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. I had this idea because 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. The other way dated from the days when psychology was still and unknown science.

　　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. For almost forty years, this belief in the goodness of the child has never wavered; it rather has become a final faith.

　　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. But, what is Summerhill like? Well, for one thing, lessons are optional. Children can go to them to 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 taught.

　　Children who come to Summerhill as kindergarteners attend lessons from the beginning of their stay; but pupil from other schools vow that they will never attend any beastly lessons again at any time. They play and cycle and get in people's way, but they fight shy of lessons. This sometimes goes on for months. They recovery time is proportionate to the hatred their last school gave them. Our record case was a girl from a convent. She loafed for three years. The average period of recovery from lesson aversion is three months.

　　Summerhill is probably the happiest school in the world. We have no truants and seldom a case of homesickness. We very rarely have fights - quarrels, of course. I have seldom 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 breads 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 what he is approved of.