Killy on BBC Radio Scotland Breakfast Show Summer 1990

Eddie Mair (for it is he):...will be celebrating it's 50th anniversary, Carol Godridge(?) reports.

The sound of Dorothy playing Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious on the piano accompanying the kindergarten may be heard.

Carol: Some of the kindergarten rehearsing for the review that is being staged as part of the celebrations. Kilquhanity School was founded by John Aitkenhead in 1940 after he visited the famous Scottish educator A S Neill's school, Summerhill, in Suffolk. There in the midst of the war he saw boys and girls of all ages and nationalities living together and learning in freedom. He himself was a consciencious objector and knew that he would not be allowed to continue his career as a teacher in the State system, so he established Kilquhanity in the Galloway hills. 50 years on and now aged 80, he's still there.

JohnA: It was a different kind of school, a school where it would be non violent. I mean here we were in the middle of a war; the school would be totally non-violent, and no kid has ever been punished here over the 50 years that we are now celebrating. It would be international, and as soon as we started I deliberately sought to have Italians and Germans in the school. So the school was iternational, non-violent, co-educational, and it was called a free school.

Carol: The school sits in seven acres of land, which is partly used for play and games, but is also essentially a mini farm and estate which provides much of the school's food, and the children and staff run it all themselves.

JohnA: The children are involved in decision-making, the children are given a big share in their own program, in their own school program. Because it was a boarding school completely to begin with the children were given an equal place with the adults in the running of the school, in the weekly meeting there has been in every week of the school since 1940; it lasts for about an hour; a boy or girl in charge; a boy or a girl taking minutes; published in The Broadsheet the school's magazine (chuckles).

Carol: I had plenty of opportunity to talk to some of the fifty pupils at Kilquhanity during the two hours each day when they choose what activities they'd like to do. I found them variously making musical instruments, developing photographs, printing T shirts, and painting murals. But what did they feel was special about their school?

Ka: Probably the council meeting. Oh you can...well, if anything goes wrong at the school, like breaks, or somebody gets bullied, you just bring it up and it's dealt with by all the school.

Tom Sutcliffe: I think the best thing is that you get a choose (sic) where you want to go at free choice between 11 and 1, where you get to choose instead of having to go to a compulsory class.

Carol: Are you choosing to do something now? Can you describe to us what you're doing?

Tom Sutcliffe: I'm, ah, straitening up a wall that's been built but I'm just putting cement over it to fix it. It's maintenance which is just basically going round the school fixing fences, building walls, doing basically things that need doing.

Carol: Well who needs geometry lessons in a classroom when you can learn it building walls and even buildings. The staff and pupils have built a number of the school buildings including the rotunda which serves as a council meeting room, theatre and badmington (sic) hall. Kilquhanity School does have its share of academic successes; that's not a priority as far as John Aitkenhead is concerned.

JohnA: The main purpose of education at Kilquhanity is the development of a whole person, a person who has learned to live with other kids, with other people, and to find out about himnself. I believe that the arts are the road into education, because the way in which humans are different from other creatures is exemplified and expressed in the arts. Only humans, only humans, can be educated, other creatures can be trained.

Carol: It is very hard to describe Kilquhanity school, but the atmosphere of freedom is very easy to feel when one visits.

JohnA: The children are at ease, and the adults are at ease, and children grow here. (More chuckles.)

Eddie Mair: Carol Godridge at Kilquhanity School. Now it's...