A S Neill

Who was A S Neill? Quite simply, an educational genius. On reading the original Penguin edition of Neill's book "Summerhill" (now published as The new Summerhill and edited by Albert Lamb) after leaving school (a Scottish Comprehensive c1973) my immediate thoughts were "I wish I'd gone to school there" and "Why isn't there a school like this in Scotland ?" The book "Summerhill" left me with a high opinion of A S Neill, and an appreciation of what he had achieved at Summerhill, and had tried to do for schoolchildren everywhere. He is, to this day, the only writer on education that can make me laugh, so much of what he had to say in his writing has the ring of truth to it. Not ever having been one to take a pride in being Scottish I felt intensely proud of sharing nationality with Neill.

On reading Jonathan Croall's biography of Neill I discovered that Neill's first job was at Durham School, Bonnyrigg near Edinburgh. This school subsequently became Bonnyrigg Primary School, which was the first school I attended. Neill did not have a happy time at Durham School; nor did I, a few decades later, at Bonnyrigg Primary School.

Much later, of course, I discovered that there was a school like Summerhill, called Kilquhanity, or "Killy" for short, and that it was located in the "Stewartry of Kirkcudbrightshire" (as John A seemed to like to refer (correctly) to that part of Dumfries and Galloway). In 1988 I had just qualified as a Mathematics teacher from the School of Education at the University of Durham, and as fate would have it Killy was looking for a Maths teacher!