I I

72-4474

EDMONDS, Victor Earl, 1942- DEFINITION OF THE FREE SCHOOLS MOVEMENT IN AMERICA, 1967-1971.

The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1971 Education, curriculum development

University Microfilms. A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan

(c) Copyright by

Victor Earl Edmonds

1971 DEFINITION OF THE FREE SCHOOLS

MOVEMENT IN AMERICA

1967-1971

DISSERTATION presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

3y

Victor Earl Edmonds, B.S. in Ed., M.A.

The Ohio State University 197.1

Approved by c Adviser College of Education PLEASE NOTE:

Some Pages have indistinct print. Filmed as received.

UNIVERSITY MICROFILMS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Professor Paul ICLohr for making this possible. And to Eric for nearly making it impossible by continually reminding me that kids are more important than education. Thanks to Faith for taking care of everything else in our lives while I wrote. And thanks to my sister Nina for much of the work on the bibliog~ raphy• VITA

March 24, 1971* . • Born - Covington, Kentucky

1 9 6 4 ...... B.S. in Ed., University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio

1964-1968 ...... Teacher and Counselor, Grades 6-12, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Chicago

1968-1969 ...... Counselor, The Ohio Youth Commission, Columbus, Ohio

1969...... M.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1969-1971 ..... Teaching Associate, Department of Curriculum and Foundations, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

PUBLICATIONS

“Rock Music and the Political Scene." Interface, No. 1, Fall, 1968.

“The Beaties' New Album." Interface, No. 2, Winter, 1969,

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: Curriculum

Studies in Curriculum: Professors Paul R. Klohr and Alexander Frazier

Studies in Media of Instruction: Professors I. Keith Tyler, Robert Wagner, and Edgar Dale

Studies in History of Education: Professor Bernard Mehl

Studies in Guidance and Counseling: Professor James Wigtil

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS oo....o...oo<>ooo.. ii

VITAo .o.o»»o.oooo..o.oooo.o. ixi

LIST OF TABLESo oooooo.o.oo.ooo.o. V

CHAPTER

I* AIMS AND METHODOLOGY oooo.ooo... 1

IIO THE PERIODICALS OF THE FREE SCHOOLS MOVEMENTo • o o o 000000.0000 24

III. THE WRITERS OF THE FREE SCHOOLS MOVEMENT oo..ooooooo.«.o. 90

IV. THE SCHOOLS OF THE FREE SCHOOLS MOVEMENTO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 135

V. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS, ooooo.o.o 163

BIBLIOGRAPHYo ooo.oo.oooo.oo.oo.o 175 LIST OF TABLES

TABLE Page

lo Mutual Recommendations of the Eleven Publications of the Free Schools Movemento •ooooo»o«o*o*« 34 2. Two Dimensional Continuum Showing the Relationships of the Educational Purposes Found in Movement Publica­ tions o*»ooooooo*oo*«« 87

v CHAPTER I

AIMS AND METHODOLOGY

The Free Schools Movement

Many people see education undergoing a far-reaching change. Defeat of school bond issues is fast becoming the rule at the polls. Meanwhile the courts are finding it increasingly impossible to uphold the kinds of disregard of students' rights that have been the backbone of the

American system of schoolingStudents are rebelling not just against the irrelevance of the schools, but against schooling itself. They see the injustice of a system that precludes success for the vast majority of poor people and blacks. They see the denigration of their civil rights in a compulsory subjection to. the arbitrarily conceived and executed curriculum. They see the schools working in close ties with business and industry to train persons for service to these segments of society, while concern for

^Nat Hentoff, "Why Students Want Their Constitutional Rights," Saturday Review, May 21, 1971, pp. 60-74.

1 2 the poor or the unhappy is never dealt with in any but an 2 abstract way.

The depth of such thinking among college, high school, and elementary school children is hard to judge.

It is important to note that the recent White House Confer­ ence on Youth, painstakingly planned to keep out radical young people, condemned the White House in nearly every 3 resolution.

The SDS said year ago that schools function in our society as concentration camps; teachers are merely guards.

Columbus, Ohio, recently gave official status to such a description by making it a crime for a student to leave a school building during the day.4

All this is to say that the school is dead in

America. It is a hard thing to face and, for a people who have traditionally seen education as the solution to every problem, it is hard to understand— even when the truth is

Cf. John Birmingham, ed., Our Time Is Now (New York: Bantam, 1970). Also Diane Divorky, ed., How Old Will You Be In 1984? (New York: Avon, 1971). Also Marc Libarle ana Tom Seligson, eds., The High School Revolu­ tionaries (New York: Vintage, 1970). 3 Roger Rapoport, "Report from the White House Con­ ference on Youth," Rolling Stone, May 27, 1971, pp. 1-26. Also Bonnie Barrett Stretch, "The White House Conference on Youth," Saturday Review, May 22, 1971, pp. 66-76. 4 Columbus Ci112 en-Journal, M?rch 17, 1971, p. 1, March 23, 1971, p. 1. Columbus Dispatch, March 17, 1971, p. 1. 3

so plain. Education docs not solve the problems of our world. Sex education has not cut down on divorce or VD; drug education has not stopped the heroin epidemic; social

studies has not made us more tolerant; history has not kept us from Vietnam; language arts has not raised us above

"The Beverly Hillbillies."

The American plan for compulsory education was based on the idea that all the citizens would be well enough informed to be responsible makers of the country. Later

the idea that education is every man's ladder to success

became central. Education has failed to deliver on either of these counts. And on most of the other hopes that have 5 arisen here and there.

Some of the first people to become aware of the final failure of the public schools were the teachers.

Many were part of the patch-up programs of the early sixties. They began to see that something was very wrong.

In the mid-sixties a group of irrefutable books were pub­ lished which showed from first-hand experience the oppres- sive nature of the schools. At the same time A. S.

5 See Paul Goodman, Compulsory Miseducation (New York: Vintage, 1964). Also Henry Perkinson, The- Imperfect Panacea: American Faith in Education, 1865-1965 ‘(Hew York: Random House, 1963). Also Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (New York: Harper and Row, 1971).

^Jonathan Kozol, Death at an Early Age (New York: Bantam, 1967). Herbert Kohl, 36 Children (New York: Signet, 1968). James Herndon, The Way It Spozed To Be (New York: Bantam, 1968). 7 Neill's Summerhi11 began to be widely disseminated.

A movement began to emerge. Teachers began to found their

own schools, exploring their own powers outside of the

restrictions of the public school and relying on an emerg­

ing new education literature. The writers became involved

with the teachers in a series of conferences. The movement

became known largely as the "free schools movement" or the

"new schools movement."

The beginning of the movement is hard to place, per­

haps the Menlo Park conference of March, 1969, at which

the New Schools Exchange was founded, could mark the new

movement well under wayThe Summerhill Society had been

organized in New York in February, 1961, for the purpose

of founding a free school. The next two years were spent

collecting money and "laying the groundwork for this kind

of education." The Society had over seven hundred members 9 in those days. Somehow no free school network emerged from all that effort. Some individuals began to found free schools. The Minnesota Summerhill Community School,

^(New York: Hart, 1960). O Salli Rasberry and Robert Greenway, The Rasberry Exercises: How To Start Your Own School (An5~Hake' A Book) (Freestone, California: Freesrone press, 1970), pp. 106- 107. g "The Summerhill Socxety," (New York: The Summer­ hill Society, n.d.). 5 for example, dates from 1962, Herb Snitzer's Lewis-Wadharas

School from 1963. Summerhill sold well through the years, undoubtedly influencing to some extent the operation of some private schools. John Holt’s How Children Fail, the book recommended most often by free school people, was pub­ lished in 1964.'1"0 The history of the Summerhill Society would be a fascinating study. Perhaps it had a solution before enough people saw the problem. But by the late sixties it had not reached the large segment of unsatisfied teachers, parents, and students. Schools began to form, especially on the West Coast, as a rebellion against the public schools. Harvey Haber, founder of the New Schools

Exchange, tells of visiting a museum with his scruffy bunch of free school students and to the amazement of all, meeting another group of equally scruffy free school students.^'1’ The Peninsula School held the conference in

March, 1969, that brought together txvo hundred free school teachers in Menlo Park, California. These working schools decided, to set up an exchange of information. Haber, then of Santa Barbara Free School, volunteered to organize what became known as the New Schools Exchange. In April,

1969, the New Schools Exchange Newsletter began publish-

■^(New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1964, 1970).

11 . Rasberry-Greenway, Exercises, p. 9. ing.'*’2 The Summerhill Society had tried to build from an idea and an organization to schools. New Schools Exchange began by simply putting in contact with one another people who were currently operating or hoping to begin free schools. As the Newsletter's distribution widened, so did the feeling that the new schools phenomenon was a

"movement." And a movement it truly was; the reported success of schools encouraged others to found their own.

The Newsletter also served to connect free schools with other publications and to recommend readings. Free school teachers in Toronto had already begun This Magazine Is

About Schools. In 1967, 1968, and 1969 dissatisfied public school teachers in Portland, San Francisco, and Boston were organizing publications. Members of the National

Student Association were starting the Center for Educa­ tional Reform with headquarters in Washington. Graduate students at the University of Massachusetts soon began a placement service for teachers who were dropping out of the regular system. All these organizations recommended the others, and wrote about the good things that so many others were doing. By the end of the 70-71 school year there existed a diverse but interrelating network of pub­ lications and schools, with no mutual name, certainly no

12 Ibid., pp. 106-107. Also Big Rock Candy Mountain, April, 1971, pp. 16-17. 7

institutional organization, but with a strong sense of

being about the same job, members of the same movement*

Review of the Literature

By this time also the new schools movement had been

recognized by the established education press* Both

editorials in Saturday Review* s tenth anniversary issue

saw the free schools as one of the products of the sixties 13 that may influence the next ten years of education.

Three months earlier, Saturday Review ran "The Rise of the

Free School," an eight-page introduction to the movement

based mostly on an interview with Harvey Haber of the

New Schools Exchange and staff members of three schools*.

The writer, Bonnie Barrett Stretch, sees the movement as

a result of a parents' revolt, not against out-dated,

curriculum or ineffective teaching methods, but against

the public school as an institution. "Schools," she.

writes, "tend to hold children in a prolonged state of

dependency to keep them from discovering their own capacity for learning, and to encourage a sense of impotence and

lack of worth. The search is for alternatives to this kind of institution." Ms. Stretch lists New Schools Exchange

Newsletter and Big Rock Candy Mountain as organs of the

^James Cass, "The Crisis of Confidence--And Beyond." Saturday Review, September 19, 1970, pp. 61-62. Also Paul woodring, "Retrospect and Prospect," Saturday Review, September 19, 1970, p. 66. " 8 movement and recommends publications from four other sources*14 In the same issue Matthew B. Katz reviews

Radical School Reform, perceptively criticizing the liter- 15 ature of the movement*

In March, 1970, Phi Delta ICappan ran a short review of New Schools Exchange Newsletter, the Teacher Drop-out

Center publications, and the Teacher Paper. The writer,

Donald W. Robinson, approaches the literature as a source of ideas for.the public schools. He concludes, "The entire movement may prove ephemeral. But even if few alternative schools survive, the movement will have made its contribution to reform, much as third parties in our political history have forced the established parties to 16 adopt social reforms."

Most recently the movement received national pub­ licity with the Time article "Chaos and Learning, the Free

Schools," a very favorable report centering on Exploring

Family School in El Cajon, California.1^ Newsweek1s cover story of the following week combined many open school

14 Saturday Review, June 20, 1970, pp. 76-92.

15 Saturday Review, June 20, 1970, pp. 88-89.

16 ."Alternative Schools: Challenge to Traditional Education," Phi Delta Kappan, 51 (March, 1970), 374-75. 16 Time. April 26, 1971, pp. 81-82. 9 public schools and free schools under the name "informal education."^®

ERIC, not surprisingly, lists no research on the nexv schools movement, the alternative schools movement, of the free schools movement.

The Aim of the Study

The aim of this study is to define and describe the free schools movement in America from its national emergence in 1968 through the end of the 1970-1971 school year. The future will tell whether these can be called its formative years.

The periodicals and writers of the movement will be identified. The periodicals will be described and generalizations made about their views of educational purposes and curricular principles. The works of the major writers of the movement will be described and the works of other important writers in the movement will be briefly noted. Generalizations will be made about the literature of the movement. The self-descriptions of a sampling of schools will then be analyzed and. the prin­ ciples and curricular ideas of the movement formulated.

The conclusion of the study will be the formulation of a

18,,Does School + Joy = Learning?" Newsweek, May 3, 1971, pp. 60-68. definition of the free school movement.

This study is not based on visits to free schools; such a study is now under way by Tim Affleck of New

Schools Exchange and Allan Graubard of MIT."^ This present study should provide a framework for future inquiries into the history, purposes, and curricula of free schools.

Resources

Three sources of information were utilized for this study: periodicals, writers, and information directly from a sampling of schools.

This study began with the New Schools Exchange

Newsletter. The newsletter was combed for references to other publishing organizations. These were then combed for references. The network of cross-references will be detailed in Chapter II. It should be noted here, however, that the same results would have been achieved if the study had begun with the Teacher Drop-out Center mailings, the Summerhill Society Bulletin, the Vocations for Social

Change education listings, Big Rock Candy Mountain,

Teacher Paper, or Outside the Net. An almost complete set of the New Schools Exchange Newsletter was obtained, miss­ ing only six of the first eight issues, for which stencils

^ New Schools Exchange Newsletter, No. 51, p. 8, and No. 59, p. 4. 11 were not saved, and Issues 30 and 38. The completeness of sets varied depending on need and availability. A com­ plete set of Big Rock Candy Mountain was necessary and available, as was Outside the Net. A complete set of

Teacher Paper would have been useful, but the co-editor wrote that even she does not have the early issues. All available issues of EdCentric, No More Teacher*s Dirty

Looks, and Red Pencil were also acquired. This Magazine Is

About Schools is a main organ of the movement, but its role is in content, and its editorial policy consistent; references to other sources of information are seldom.

Consequently a complete set was not necessary. It did not seem necessary to acquire the last nine years of the monthly Summerhill Society Bulletin or all available copies of Vocations for Social Change. Representative recent copies of both were used.

The second source was the books of the movement.

Availability was no problem; many are available even in department stores. Some of these, such as John Hdlt’s

What Do I Do On Monday? and Ronald Gross and Paul Oster- 20 man’s High School, include bibliographies.

What Do I Do On Monday? (New York: Dutton, 1970) pp. 313-18. High School (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971), pp. 346-52, 12

The third set of resources is self-descriptions, written by free schools and obtained directly from them.

For this purpose a mailing was made to one hundred and four schools selected from the New Schools Exchange

Directory of New, Innovative Schools. Schools were selected on two criteria: regional diversity and likeli­ hood of response. The vast majority of free schools are located on the West Coast, a lesser number on the East

Coast, and very few in between. Every free school address in the Ohio-Michigan-Western Pennsylvania area was used, as were most of those in the middle country.

From the coasts and Southwest only those were used that had received special mention in the text of New Schools

Exchange Newsletter or on the lists of the Teacher Drop-out

Center or the Summerhill Society and had apparently been in operation for a while.

The mailing asked for information about the school and for a bibliography of "the titles of some books or magazines and the names of some writers that have helped inspire or guide your school."

The response was good. In two months, forty-three responses had been received. Three of these were "no longer at the address" notices from the Post Office. Two were polite letters from school secretaries disclaiming any connection with any new schools movement. There was 13 impatience in some of the answers. Akron Free School wrote: "All you guys in the ivory tower safe places, please stop studying free schools--and start helping.'1

The tone of the rest of the Akron note was friendly-- inpatient and warm. Redwood School in California was blunter: "The deluge of mail is out of proportion to the motivation for any response. Your specific request is out of touch with the realities...."

Descriptions and bibliographies were sent by many schools; a surprising number took time to write a personal letter. Sunrise School in Cleveland wrote a detailed response, for example, and Open Living School in Denver even sent a complete copy of Joseph Featherstone's report on the British Infant Schools.

Despite the bias toward middle country schools, more letters-were sent to California than any other state.

Ohio sent the most responses.

Methodology for Defining the Movement

The model chosen for defining the free schools movement is that of the sociogram. This instrument is normally used to describe the informal relationships in a group. Since there is no institutional organization and since the relationships in the movement are based on mutual 14 interests of unspecific definition, the model of social relations seems most appropriate.

It is necessary first to define the class in which these interrelationships are to be described. It would be most accurate to speak to each teacher in each free

school in the country and ask who he considers to be his

source of inspiration and knowledge about free school.

A pattern could develop that would uncover some not well known people who have had a larger influence on the move­ ment than could be discovered any other way. Perhaps Herb

Snitzer in his eight years as director of Lewis-Wadhams

School has had more real influence on individuals and their schools than the often quoted John Holt. Or perhaps

Jerry Freidberg as a professor at Fordham or Frank Linden- feld of Summerhill West and various places in California have been a stronger influence on large numbers of people than the writings of A. S. Neill. Such an approach would best be used in case study research. Salli Rasberry and

Robert Greenway in Exercises identify as a matter of unsys­ tematic course many of the people who inspired their free school efforts. In June, 1972, Simon and Schuster will publish No Particular Place To Go: Making of a Free High

School by Steve Bhaerman and Joel Denker of The New Com­ munity School in Coburn, Pennsylvania. These sorts of books may be to the seventies what the books recounting the 15 horrors of city schools were to the sixties. The partici­ pants’ accounts of the free school experience define the movement with more depth than any other method. The method here, however, is aimed at making generalizations about the movement. The type of definition needed is a comprehensive one, one that accounts for the huge number of schools throughout the country. Since 1969 the most regular sharing among these people and the only concrete mutual bond has been a group of publications, central among them the New Schools Exchange Newsletter. Individual schools are usually founded because of a particular set of local circumstances, usually connected with disgust at the public schools. Rut the schools’ consciousness of being a part of a movement is connected largely with the publi­ cations shared with other free schools. Conferences bring this mutuality up to a high pitch of awareness, but the conferences are called together through the publications and are given credence by the names of the authors who will be in attendance. The New Schools Exchange resulted from the first free school conference and it is significant that even with the large number of free school publications currently in circulation, the recent Bronx Konference on

Alternatives (publicized through New Schools Exchange) °1 resolved to start an East Coast exchange newsletterThe

21 Kommunications on Alternatives, No. 1 (May, 1971), p. 2. 16 thinking seems to be much in line with Boorstin's sug­ gestion that, in our culture, media coverage makes an 22 event real, even in the minds of the participants. The publications make the schools feel themselves a movement.

The publications of the free schools movement may addition­ ally play such a strong role because the schools are usually isolated from their fellows and surrounded by a

• « huge system of public schools and public school teachers which consider them out of step with the realities of education. The writers of the movement are still called 23 '•the Romantic critics” by the education establishment.

Each new school must fight for its life in an economy inimical to small private ventures. The publications say that success is possible and that many others are involved in the same venture. The feeling of being part of a young, growing movement helps carry schools along*

To present a comprehensive picture of the free schools movement, therefore, and one that deals with those things which make the movement a movement, the class in which interrelationships are to be charted is the publi­ cations of the movement.

22Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Harper Colophon, 1961), p. 39. 23 Charles Silberman, Crisis in the Classroom (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 209. 17

The New Schools Exchange Newsletter was chosen as the starting point for the charting. The publications recommended there were checked and lists made of the pub­ lications they recommended. The total list of recommen­ dations is very large and constitutes, strictly speaking, the class being considered. Certain publications, by repeated recommendations, became the center of the movement and it was soon evident that the same group of eleven pub­ lications would have proven to be the center of the move­ ment no matter which one was used as a start. Many of the publications recommended nearly every other in the central group of eleven. Because the group was so tightly knit and because choices were not limited, the traditional sociometric charts were not viable. The table included in Chapter II is designed to describe the relationships in a small, highly interrelated group.

Not included in the table, but included in the bibliography, is the list of writers and sampled schools which recommended each publication. These sources did not bring any new information; they reinforced the position of the eleven major publications.

By this method, the free schools movement is defined first in terms of the eleven publications shown to be interrelated. Inspection of the.publications shows them to be highly influenced by a group of writers and to 18 be sharply aware that they exist as a service to a group of schools. Although the definition of the movement starts with publications, the definition necessarily includes writers and, as the publications exist only as organs of a movement taking place in schools, the most important parts of the definition must come from the literature of the schools.

The methodology, therefore, leads us to define the free schools movement as an informal network of schools interrelating through the eleven identified publications and inspired and informed by a defined group of writers.

Methodolociv for Analvainn the Periodicals — -ii i — ■- M- ii - i i -■ — r- r .- -— --

It seemed best to analyze the periodicals with the most simple and straight-forward methodology. Each pub­ lication will be described, its major themes illustrated, and its educational purposes and curricular principles formulated.

Educational purposes are closely related to philoso­ phy of education. The term is chosen here over philosophy of education to avoid any tendency to fit the writers into trends in that highly developed field. Most of the free schools relate to the work of John Dewey, but further categorization could shift the concern of this study away from the day-to-day concerns found in the movement to the 19 academic concern of relationships of schools of thought.

References to philosophy of education will be made when appropriate, but the intent of the statements about educational purposes is to afford some depth to the treatment of movement thought, a depth short of philosophy.

Some summary statements will be made about each periodical's attitude toward matters of curriculum and toward instructional materials. Curricular matters will be treated more fully in Chapter IV, the analysis of the schools' descriptive literature. In that setting the curricular probings of Chapter II will take on meaning.

At the end of Chapter II the educational purposes as defined by the periodicals will be drawn together; the range of common characteristics of the free school periodicals will then be illustrated.

Methodology for Identifying the Literature

The method for identifying the literature was basically the same as that for determining the periodicals.

In this case the three sources had a balanced effect.

Under each author *s name recommendations of his books or articles by the movement periodicals, other writers, and the sampled schools were listed. The lists were totalled by sources. For example, three references 20 in Teacher Paper counted as one reference by Teacher Paper*

At the end of the counting it was evident that results would not have been different if each reference had been counted. Originally it was planned to introduce diversity factors, so that a writer held in high esteem by other writers but not by schools, for example, might not be given a questionable high position. As things turned out, there was such wide agreement, especially about top choices, that controlling restraints were not necessary.

The bibliography at the end of the study will be ordered according to the number of recommendations each author received in the survey of periodicals, writers, . and schools, modified slightly to group related books. In

Chapter III the major writers and major books are des­ cribed. The cut-off point between authors treated is not strictly numerical. Authors with six recommendations or less are included or dropped according to their relevance to the issues under discussion. Each author with two or more recommendations is included in the bibliography.

Authors with only one recommendation were not included in any list. Most of these were from the New Schools 24 Exchange Bibliography which listed, along with most of the important books of the movement, a large number of

24NSE Newsletter. No. 55. 21 books with alluring titles which, had they been read, would not have been included, in fact, they were not in­ cluded on any other list and so were dropped.

Methodology for the Analysis of the Descriptive Literature of the Sampled Schools

Three sources of the schools' descriptive literature will be used. The first is the descriptions of schools printed in the movement publications. These are often short, but usually well selected. They may sometimes represent schools that are no longer in operation, but at least they represent ideas that have been tried at one time; so many free schools do not survive that it is impossible to be certain that any sampling includes all surviving schools. The second source is descriptions of schools provided by the writers of the movement. Two of the most widely esteemed free school books, for example, are A. S. Neill's description of Summerhill and George

Dennison's of the First Street School.25 The third source, and the most important, is the self-descriptions received from the sampled schools. A large and diverse group of responses will be used.

Neill, op. cit. George Dennison, The Lives of Children (New York: Vintage Press, 1969). ' 22

The school descriptions will be treated in three ways. The first section will define the range of free schools, emphasizing their diversity. The second section will treat the educational purposes of the schools. These purposes usually appeared in the schools' literature as statements of beliefs. In Chapter IV they will be organized into six principles; these principles will be defined and illustrated. The third section will organize the'curricular concerns of the free schools into three characteristic curricular modes.

Summary: Aims and Methodology

This chapter has shown the methodology to be used in formulating the identity of the free schools movement as it has developed up to the end of the 1970-1971 school year. The resources utilized will be movement periodi­ cals, the recommended writers, and a sampling of partici­ pating schools.

The free schools movement will first be defined in Chapter II by defining the periodicals of the movement, using the cross reference method based on the sociometric model. The periodicals will be described and note made of their characteristic educational purposes and curricular principles. 23

Chapter III will identify the writers referred to

by free school people and describe their relevant works.

Chapter IV will be concerned with what the

schools have to say about themselves in the accounts the

sampled schools have sent and in the descriptions printed in the movement publications. These materials will be

analyzed to make clear the range of the movement, the principles on which the schools operate and the curricular modes in use.

Chapter V will summarize the study, pull together the findings into a definition of the free schools move­ ment, relate the movement to the mainstream of education, and suggest further research. CHAPTER II

THE PERIODICALS OP THE FREE SCHOOLS MOVEMENT

Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to define the free schools movement according to the periodicals of the movement. First the terms will be clarified. Second the sociogram model will be utilized to define the movement in terms of its publications. Then each of the eleven major publications will be described. Lastly, generali­ zations about the movement will be drawn from the analyses of the periodicals.

Clarification of Terms

The movement under study here is variously known as the new schools movement, the alternative schools movement, and the free schools movement. The choice of terms here was not important; no matter which was used the results were the same. The trouble with the "new schools" desig­ nation is that some persons involved with the education establishment and minimally involved with the movement under question took this to be a reference to the program

24 25 run by the New School of the University of North Dakota.

There is some connection; the North Dakota program has been mentioned a few times in free school literature'*’ and shares with many free schools the open classroom curricu­ lar mode; but it is by no means at the center of the movement. North Dakota's New School is not included in the school lists of New Schools Exchange or the Summerhi11

Society; it is listed by Teacher Drop-out Center. To avoid confusion, the term "new school," though common in the literature, was not chosen for this study. The term

"alternative education" and its variants also could have been used with no change in findings. The "free school" is more descriptive and less ambiguous. It will be given a detailed definition in Chapter V.

"Movement" is used here in the common meaning--a group of organized activities leading toward an objective.

This definition must be qualified by two sets of connota­ tions .

"The movement" is a term that usually refers to radical student groups and their older radical brothers and sisters also known as the New Left.** An SDS working paper

■*-E.g., Rasberry-Greenway Exercises, p. 96.

2 Staughton Lynd, "Open Politics and Community," in This Book Is About Schools, Satu Repo, ed. (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 242. 26 from 1965 characterizes ’’the movement” as having two types of goals--existential humanism and the radical transforma­ tion of the social order.3 The SDS members of those days have since divided themselves into various degrees of radicalism and various types of movement work, as have members of other radical groups. Many have moved into education. The New University Conference represents many of the radicals involved in college teaching. The free schools movement has become home for many others.4 Mike

Rossman of the New Schools Exchange is a former leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.3 Historian James

O ’Brien, speaking of the various types of activities the New Left had taken on in the years after 1965, states that, "they are all variations on a theme: the recognition that American liberalism was not enough, that the good society was one in which people shaped their own institu- 6 tions to meet their own needs.”

3 Dick Flacks, ’’Some Problems, Issues, Proposals,” in The New Radicals, Paul Jacobs and Saul Landau, eds. (New York: Vintage, 1966), p. 163.

4Staughton Lynd, pp. 240-52.

3Riclc Kean, Change (Washington: The Center for Educational Reform, 1970), p. 86. Also NSE Newsletter, No. 51, p. 2.

6A History of the New Left (Boston: New England Free Press, 196b)'," p. 1. 27

The free schools movement, then, is a perfect field of work for a person who feels himself part of "the movement." It is a matter of the people shaping their own educational institutions to meet their own needs*

The free schools movement shares the goals of existential humanism and radical transformation of the social order.

The present free schools movement is not only related to the radical student movement, but is, to some extent, its product. As these people began to have children of their own, it became obvious that they could not hand them over to the state for five hours a day to be drilled in values that had been so vehemently rejected by their parents.

The ex-student radicals also brought with them organiza­ tional experience, the ability to put out printed infor­ mation, and teaching certificates. They found in the

Summerhill Society people and in the remnants of the progressive education movement a scattering of people with school experience and an educational literature who were in their own ways working toward the same humanism and democratic social order- that motivated the movement. It is the resulting union that generated the free schools movement as it exists today.

Consequently the word "movement" carries with it a special set of connotations. To what extent the free schools movement is part of the New Left movement varies 28 with the views and history of individuals and publica­ tions. EdCentric and Peter Marin and Michael Rossman of the New Schools Exchange see free schools as an integral part of '*the movement." Marin and Rossman are most con­ cerned that free schools be an active part of the radical political movement. They have carried on an active debate with readers on the topic.7 At the other end of the scale are those free people who see the movement as a way to save the public.educational system. Only a few of the responses from schools showed any conscious connection with the social-political movement. The overt concern was with offering a more humane alternative to the public schools* Illustrative of this is the wide population of

Charles Silberman*s Crisis in the Classroom, a book inimical to radical values, but a book that clearly docu­ ments the mindlessness of the public schools. But the schools were consistently based on the value system characteristic of the social-political movement; the very existence of a free school is a social revolution in a society so devoted to anonymous corporate authority.

And there is reason to believe that the results of the mailing were biased toward the less radical free schools.

7 NSE Newsletter, No. 42, p. 2, No. 44, p. 2, No. 47, p. 2, No. 51, p. 4, No. 52, p. 3, No. 53, pp. 2-7, No. 56, p. 5, No. 59, p. 3. 29

A less radical free school would be more inclined to

respond to university letterhead and more likely to have

readily available printed school descriptions. More

radical schools might have agreed with Redwood School

that the questions were exploitative, and consequently

not worth answering.

How much connection the free school movement has

or should have or will have with the New Left movement is

still a very live question. It may have quite a bit to do with the future of free schools and could very well lead to the fragmentation of what can now be called one free school movement.

A second connotation given to the word “movement" is that of a personal handing on of a tradition. The

standard definition of "movement"— a group of organized activities leading toward an objective— does not take this into account. The free schools movement thinks of itself as a loose organization of persons inspiring one another to ivork toward a common objective. A major thrust of the movement is that schools be humane and human; it is natural that the movement be person-centered.

A descriptive of "movement" in an early New Schools Ex­ change Newsletter illustrates this well:

A few years ago, a nice man by the name of Herb Snitzer read Summerhi11 by A. S. Neill. He then went to visit Summcrhill School to take pictures of it. Mr. Snitzer liked Summerhill so 30

much that he started his own school in New York, called the Lewis-Wadhams School. Two of the teachers at Lewis-Wadhams School liked the idea so much that they started their own school, called Collins Brook School. Soon teachers from Collins Brook School will be starting their own school. This is called a movement.

Such a definition leads to the importance of pub­

lications in the movement. As inspired persons go off

on their own, the periodicals serve as a network of

communications to keep the inspiration alive and to develop its various facets. The periodicals do not aim

at keeping the movement organized; they work at keeping

the persons of the movement in contact with one another.

With these clarifications made about the terms

"free school" and "movement" it is possible to move into

the definition of the movement.

Definition of the Movement in Terms of Its Publications

In Chapter I the rationale and methodology were presented for defining the movement in terms of its central publications. This section will show that methodology in action and describe the results.

The study began with the NSE Newsletter. NSEN has recommended This Magazine Is About Schools. Big Rock Candy

Mountain, Teacher Drop-out Center, EdCentric, Teacher

8No . 22 (October 16, 1969), p. 1. 31

Paper, Red Pencil, and some other publications. Each of these publications was checked. This Magazine Is About

Schools reprints articles from NSEN. Big Rock Candy

Mountain recommends NSEN, This Magazine, Teacher Drop­ out Center, Teacher Paper, Red Pencil, and some other publications, including Vocations for Social Change,

Summerhill Society Bulletin, and No More Teachers Dirty

Looks. Vocations for Social Change recommends Outside the Net, which recommends all eleven of the periodicals mentioned here. The interrelationships continue in this fashion and are made clear in Table 1.

Three things need to be said about the table.

First, the table is based on recommendations. Most of these are straightforward recommendations or listing as sources of information on the free schools movement. An article reprinted from another publication with credit given was taken to be a sort of recommendation and was used in two instances.

Secondly, consideration was not limited to the actual sequentially numbered periodicals of each publishing organization. EdCentric magazine is published by the

Center for Educational Reform; subscribers are sent other periodic papers including an excellent ''Annotated Bibli­ ography on Educational Change." Those publications are all considered under the EdCentric heading. The Summerhill 32

Society sends a back issue bibliography and a list of

"sources," all of which were used. The bulk mailing of

Teacher Drop-out Center for a new member is not numbered or dated, but includes recommendations of books and magazines. Big Rock Candy Mountain is a publication of

the Portola Institute, which also published Whole Earth

Catalogue. The periodicals are extremely similar in lay­ out and content relevant to education. For simplicity's sake they are considered here as one publishing organiza­

tion. The listings, then, are representative of the movement publishing organizations and are titled by the name of the main publication of that organization.

Thirdly, the cut-off point must be explained. The least recommended are the two that are recommended five times each. They are a bit more active horizontally, where they account for twelve recommendations. No pub­ lications have four recommendations, and those that.have three, Free School Press, Teachers and Writers Collabora­ tive Newsletter, Media and Methods, and Radicals in the

Profession, are not active horizontally. In other words, they are resources recommended by the free school move­ ment, but they are not interactively involved. This seemed a good enough reason to draw the cut-off line at four recommendations and identify the eleven periodicals with five or more as the central movement publications. 33

Inspection of the chart shows that another cut-off point could be suggested at seven recommendations with active cross references. Four periodicals would then be the central group: NSE Newsletter, This Magazine is About

Schools, Big Rock Candy Mountain, and Teacher Drop-out

Center. The meaning of the chart and definition of the movement would not be different, but would more easily be stated. Each of the other seven is recommended by at least one of the basic four.

According to the methodology stated in Chapter I the free schools movement can be defined at this point as an informal network of schools interrelating through

New Schools Exchange Newsletter, This Magazine Is About

Schools, Big Rock Candy Mountain, Teacher Drop-out Center,

Vocations for Social Change, Summerhill Society Bulletin,

No More Teachers' Dirty Looks, Teacher Paper, Red Pencil,

EdCentric, and Outside the Net, and inspired and informed by a definable group of writers.

Descriptions of the Periodicals

To begin to give meaning to this definition it is necessary to describe the eleven periodicals. They fall into three groupings: exchanges, commentaries, and access to resources. NSE Newsletter, EdCentric, Summerhill

Society Bulletin, Teacher Drop-out Center, and Vocations 34

TABLE 1

Mutual Recommendations of the Eleven Publications of the Free Schools Movement

Publications Recommended

(d 2 M• ■ o. Recommended by ro o,< M U U w a s 5 a W W H 1 J 5 (u S5 X cn U Q U W M H u to X K w w s w to u H X H CQ H>cnS2Hawo New Schools Exchange x x x x x x x x x x

This Magazine Is About Schools x x

Big Rock Candy Mt. x x x x x x

Teacher Drop-out Center x x x xx x x x

Vocations for Social Change xxxx xx xx

Summerhill Soc. Bulletin x x x x x x x

No More Teachers* Dirty Looks

Teacher Paper xxxxxx x xx

Red Pencil x . x x

EdCentric xxxx xxxx x

Outside the Net x xxx xxx xxx 35 for Social Change are exchanges. This Magazine, No More

Teachers* Dirty Looks, Outside the Net, Teacher Paper, and

Red Pencil are commentaries. They characteristically carry longer and more serious articles than the exchanges. Big

Rock Candy Mountain is unique as a periodical catalogue offering access to resources for education. The recent tendency of Big Rock and most of the exchanges, however, is to publish more articles.

This section will describe each of these eleven pub­ lications and, in drawing some conclusions., expand the description of the free school movement. The periodicals will be treated in the order used on Table 1.

The New Schools Exchange Newsletter

The New? Schools Exchange Newsletter was recommended by all publications on the list except No More Teachers*

Dirty Looks, which does not include recommendations in any available issue. It is recommended in Rasberry-Greenway

Exercises, the bibliographies of John Holt and Ronald

Gross, and in materials or letters from nine schools.

It identifies itself as Mthe only central resource and clearinghouse for all people involved in alternatives in education." By summer of 1971 this was changing. In introducing a list of regional clearinghouses, the News­ letter states: "Once upon a time NSEN was the only place 36 around doing the work we did. But during the past months regional exchanges and centers of interest have been established in every part of the country."9 A history of NSE is essential for understanding the free schools movement.

The New Schools Exchange grev; from a conference for directors and teachers of small experimental schools, which was held at Peninsula School in Menlo Park, California, in

March, 1969. The two hundred people at the conference, amid the good feelings alive at such a gathering, decided to keep in contact through a newsletter. Harvey Haber says that his wife Cass wanted to do the publication, so it was agreed that everyone would send five dollars a month to the Habers to keep it going. The newsletter started on one donation and made it along with help from the kids of Santa

Barbara Free School.10 The very first issues were three pages of mimeograph, not available now because the stencils were thrown away.

By No. 4, May 19, 1969, the subscription rate had gone down to one dollar a month. No. 9 is from the "new and permanent location" and has an announcement from Univer­ sity of Wisconsin and a description of a school in Maine, the first preserved evidence of the Newsletter becoming

9 No . 61, p. 22.

lO NSE Newsletter, No. 4, p. 2; 3ig Rock Candy Mountain, April, 1971, p. 16. 37 national. The printed New Schools Exchange logo beings in

No. 14; the Newsletter, still mimeographed, goes to four pages the next week. It was around this time that Haber went north to solicit financial backing.11 In December,

1969, the Newsletter switched to a printed magazine format. At the same time the Newsletter ceased to come out weekly and was no longer dated. Until the dating was resumed April, 1971, it came out irregularly, averaging one issue every sixteen days. As of June, 1971, the news­ letter is twenty-four pages twice monthly.

The Newsletter began as a simple clearinghouse.

Letters from various free schools were reprinted, usually edited to about one hundred words. Approximately a third were requests for suggestions, a third announcements, and a third ideas. The idea letters in early issues discussed the relevance of the new schools to black students (Haber has since decided it is irrelevant to black students ) and the tension between order and freedom. As the first summer came on, the newsletter carried more announcements by schools seeking students or teachers. There was little editorial comment in the eairly issues and few long entries. By No. 19 the editors had begun to include some

11Big Rock Candy Mountain, April, 1971, p« 17. 12 Ibid. 38 longer excerpts; in this issue they themselves wrote a two-page course proposal for public schools and colleges*

A five-page letter from Robert Greenway is No. 26. The

29th issue, in announcing the coming magazine format, intro­ duces almost apologetically a policy of more editorial content, as a response to readers' requests in a question- 13 naxre. By this time, also, Haber began to see the scope of the Exchange.to be wider than the Newsletter. On April 3,

4, and 5, 1970, the Exchange sponsored the Conference on

Alternatives at Zaca Lake, California, which turned out to be a sort of Woodstock of the free schools movement.

About two thousand people came to an area prepared for five hundred. George Dennison and John Holt held informal discussions with hundreds of people; a media group had everyone playing with video tape; a baby was born. Alto- 14 gether a terrific enthusiasm was generated. Haber says IS that a lot of schools "spun off" from that conference. The Exchange has not attempted another conference since; but they often publicize other conferences. Exchange

13 No. 29, p. 3.

*^NSE pamphlet on the conference (untitled). Also Larry Magid, "California Dreamin'" EdCentric. April, 1970, pp. 6-7.

~^Big Rock Candy Mountain, April, 1971, p. 17. 39 writers frequently speak at conferences and offer consulting services to schools*

The Exchange also puts out a highly unreliable

Directory of Innovative Schools and an equally error-filled

Supplement to the Directory of Innovative Schools.

The Newsletter is the first of seven proposes of the New Schools Exchange listed by Haber for the Rasberry-

Greenway Bxercises, but by the time of the Big Rock Candy

Mountain interview he was using the word ’’Exchange11 when obviously speaking of only the Newsletter The staff of the Newsletter is a bit elusive. It is not till No. 60 that it is definitely stated in the

Newsletter that Harvey Haber is founder, director, and managing editor; and this statement occurs in the context of setting the responsibility for the dubiously fair pan- 17 ning of George von Hilsheimer and his Green Valley School.

The Newsletter has no listing of editors-or staff.

Peter Marin’s articles are the only regularly by-lined.

The Christmas, 1970, issue of the Newsletter lists ’’those who have had most to do with its inception and continuation” as Harvey Haber, Peter Marin, Cass Haber, Joyce Nicolait,

16 Ibid.

17Ibid., p. 12. 40

Tim Affleck, Mike Rossman, Frank Goad, Pauline Holt, and 1 ft Robert Greenway. °

The format has changed little from the first printed issue, No. 29, to No. 62. There are (1) some short descriptions of new free schools, (2) letters, (3) articles,

(4) a page of "Good Things," (5) a list of "Places Seeking

People" and a much longer list of "People Seeking Places."

The descriptions of free schools have become less of a prominent feature of the Newsletter as time has gone on. This is probably because they became less interesting.

At first there was a sort of breezy enthusiasm connected with people saying happy things about a newborn school.

Over the months the exchange writers developed a sophis­ ticated attitude toward the school descriptions. Peter

Marin writes of reading through the brochures and mail that come daily to NSE. He says that sometimes the descriptions ring hollowly. "This is not to say," he writes, "that the vision is hollow, but merely that the desire and the vision are translated into wo-rds that have already begun to sound false— if only because one has heard them so many times, and seen them belied so many times by what is going on 19 behind them." In the Big Rock interview editor Haber

IQ No. 51, p. 2. 19 No. 30, p. 2. 41 speaks of loosing patience with some of the schools he visits. He says also that it is getting harder to talk about the movement: "You are constantly growing and you're expanding and refining all your feelings concerning the words that surround that movement while the movement is accumulating new people." The problem comes, he says, in dealing with people who are just learning the rituals and the rhetoric.20

These sorts of ideas do more than explain the decrease in school listings in the Newsletter. They sug­ gest reasons behind the switch taking place in the role of the Newsletter. Now that the movement is popular and the writers familiar with its traditions, the periodicals begin to serve an authenticizing function. Put negatively, the publications became "the free school accreditation com­ mittee, " to use the words of George von Hilsheiraer, res- 21 ponding to the criticism of his school by NSEN. The

Exchange is in a particularly rough bind. It publishes a

Directory of Free Schools and is often criticized for listing unfree schools. Now and then a letter is published like the one from a man who had left Ohio to take a job in

Texas, obtained through a notice in NSEN. The school

20 Big Rock, April, 1971, p. 16.

21 No. 60, p. 10. 42 turned out to be a very authoritarian one in which the writer, out quite a bit of time, trouble, and money, could not function.22 The Exchange is asked to be careful about what it recommends, and the writers become more suspicious about the rhetoric of the schools sending in information.

Consequently, the Exchange must get serious about screening or get away from listings of schools. The problem is a real one for NSE now and suggests a serious problem for the whole movement as popularity leads to profitability and co-option.

As school descriptions have taken a less prominent role in NSEN, letters have held their own. They are now grouped around a theme or included in the development of a Peter Marin article. A typical letter exchange was begun with a letter from a Bryan Dunlap. He wrote that free schools were offering a way for a few to avoid the problems of technological society and were compounding society’s problem of compartmentalization. He states:

Rather than start another counter-culture, the school I envision would analyze what really surrounds us: the systems of human and mechan­ ical engineering that organize our world; the scientific beliefs, along with their technologi­ cal products, which have changed its face; the humane values that persist through material change.2^

22N o . 54, p. 11.

23 No. 42, p. 2. 43

This letter inspired two printed letters. The first offers a quick introduction to the thinking of

R. Buckmeister Fuller, especially his World Game. The second agrees with Dunlap also. The couple, writing from

Hawaii, say that they have detected in the new schools movement Ma rather widespread attitude of anti-technology."

They suggest that the free schools might simply be offer­ ing an alternative way of preparing children for a World which no longer exists. 2 4

The Dunlap letter and the letters it provoked are a typical instance and good example of the role of letters in the Newsletter. Here the NSEN serves most clearly as an exchange for free school people.

A recent tendency has been weaving letters into the text of an article. Peter Marin has done this most effectively;' his articles become a sort of contemplation of the letters.25 Another recent tendency is for the letters to become longer and more like articles. John

Holt frequently sends long letters.2^ Often it is impossible to distinguish articles from letters.

2 4 No. 45, p. 5.

25 E.G , No. 50, pp. 2-3; No. 51, pp. 4-5; No. 53, pp. 2-5; No. 59, pp. 2-3. o A E.G., No. 56, p. 16; No. 58, p. 9; No. 60, p. 20. 44

While letters became longer, articles became more prominent. With No. 48 Peter Marin began his column, which was to run for several weeks, but has become 27 apparently a regular feature by summer of 1971. Michael Rossman and Tim Affleck are the other regular by-lined contributors to NSEN. Rossman wrote a beautiful ’’Declaration on the Birth of the Child Lorca," 28 in which he coined the phrase ”We will grow our own.” He has also written the first two parts of what he des­ cribes as a major work on the free schools movement. The parts published so far are projections on the growth of the movement. In these articles he writes dogmatically and predicts 30,000 free schools by 1975 on the basis of the logistic curve, "the law of growth which governs all organisms in a limited environment." 29 He states that

"only the growth of collective consciousness and commit­ ment can keep the free schools movement, school by school, and as a whole, from being blunted, moving off into dead 30 ends, or being reabsorbed into the dominant system." In the later article he seems to identify this consciousness

28 No. 47, pp. 2-3.

2Q NO. 52, p. 8.

30.. No. 51, p. 9. 45

with an understanding of radical shifts in experience and perception. "The gamut we must deal with," he writes, 31 "runs from sex to politics."

Tim Affleck is the former co-director, with Allen

Graubard, of the Community School in Santa Barbara.

During 1971 he is visiting free schools throughout the

country, doing a study with Graubard and publishing the

results in NSEN. His first article was. a seven-page expose

style article on the works and schools of George von

Hilsheiraer, which prompted nine pages of letters pro and

con. In this later issue, Affleck is called upon to defend the fact that he spent only a few hours at the

school.32 Peter Marin writes that the article is "a nice change for NSE."33 Whether Affleck continues this sort of thing in the 1971-1972 school year might have quite a bit to do with the future role in the movement of NSE.

A fourth fairly regular feature of NSEN is the Good

Things column. It is hard to characterize the entries since they are so diverse; but within Good Things, usually

surrounded by announcements of workshops and recommenda­ tions of pamphlets, are mentions of curricular materials put together by free schools, ecological and other sorts

31No . 52, p. 9. 32 No. 57, pp. 3-10 and No. 60, pp. 9-18.

3 3 No. 57, p. 2. of instructional packets put out by publishers, and addresses of people or organizations that have some not so well known contributions to the instructional materials field. No. 37, for example, tells of the availability of tapes on children's literature and a 176-page mimeographed

"Syllabus of Survival" being offered by Adventure Trails

Survival School. The rest of NSEN is taken up with lists of "People

Seeking Places" and "Places Seeking People." For a while there were distinct columns for "people" seeking places and

"kids" seeking places. By No. 50 this distinction dis­ appeared; but by No. 59, most of the kids had disappeared also. Five entries that issue are by students seeking schools to enroll in; thirty-two are by people looking for work.

The educational purposes and curricular principles of the schools represented by letter in NSEN will be treated in the section on schools. Here the concern is mainly with the specific people associated with NSEN and to some extent the letters they chose to print. From these sources two educational purposes seem to dominate: learners should be autonomous and education must have broad societal aims. 47

The first of these purposes is best stated by a quote from Len Krimmerman in Peter Marin's column:

A good case can be made for there being a prime value, a clear meaning, in the new schools movement: autonomy. The child, learner, teacher, adult, parent, local community: they are granted access to options, parts of them­ selves, responsibilities, decision-making, which previously the system denied them.35

The idea is brought home in a particular example in NSEN.

The Newsletter refuses to recommend a school to the mother of a fourteen-year-old boy. Such a decision is to be made by the learner himselfThe idea shows up through­ out the Exchange. Most alternative schools are formed as an.alternative to compulsory public schooling and have to face the implications in day-to-day activities of being a free school. As a purpose, this stance can be stated that education should effect free interaction of persons. Peter Marin states:

What free schools are, at. best and bottom, hallowed spaces; spaces set aside where we can become real (and being real, free) and so redeem and embrace in others the selves and energies which are otherwise frozen and destroyed.3' In writing about the teaching of Tim Affleck, before he became a staff member of NSE, George Dennison gives an example of such teaching in action. He describes Tim's

35No . 53, p. 2. 36 N o • 36| pt 5*

37No . 53, p. 3. 48 work in theater with the children of Roxbury and states:

"Tim had no idea of teaching them anything--he was their resource in the problem of putting on their own plays. NSEN has been toying with the ideas of Ivan Illich.

Most of No. 59 is concerned with Illich. If education is to be free interaction, then how are the roles of teacher and learner explained? Marin, who had been dealing with the struggles of free school teachers to define their own lives, quotes Illich: "Free schools tend to charge children, whose unfettered spirit is taken as the model of tomorrow’s unrepressed paradise, with the additional OQ job of liberating their teachers." John Holt, in the same issue, suggests that those who want to teach in free schools ask themselves what they would have to offer it were really the children who were free to decide whether they wanted the services of any adults. He goes on:

"I suspect that on those occasions when they want to be around adults, they want to be around adults who are busy leading their adult lives...." He concludes: "I find it harder and harder to see how a school can be much good

38No . 40, p. 2.

49 "Review of This Book Is About Schools," The New York Times, quoted in NSEN, No. 59," p. 2. 49 for kids if it's only for kids."40

The second educational purpose is not far removed.

It is best put forth by Michael Rassman. He sees the public school system as an arm of the state that cripples the individual to prepare him for its army, its bureau­ cracies, its systems of consumption and exploitation.

His refusal to send his child to a public school or a usual private one then "...is a full political act: grounded in theory, chosen as a strategy, implemented with 41 all the skills of our consciousness." Two issues later

Peter Marin picks up .the theme from another side. Writing during the Spring, 1970, campus uprising, he speaks of the growing government repression and says that it is no longer possible to be politically isolated and that work in new schools is the first step into a responsibility,

"a new kind of confrontation with the culture and one- selfJ' Everything about a free school represents a world view alien to the dominant culture. The free schools move­ ment, in Marin's view, must be a sort of resistance, work­ ing "...to keep alive what is human in the face of what is not."42

40No . 59, p. 7. Other references to the thought of Illich: No. 27, p. 1; No. 33, p. 4; No. 36, pp. 2-4; No. 39, p. 4; No. 50, p. 3; No. 54, p. 2; No. 56, p. 5; No. 58, p . lO.

4 1 No . 47, pp. 2-3.

42No . 49, p. 7. 50

There opposition to this political view. John

Holt, writing much earlier about the NSE conference, says that the free schools should not see themselves as

"training centers for some kind of New Life Style." He sees it as "...vital that we not define ourselves so narrowly that nobody can be for free education who is not also for a whole raft of other things.Judson Jerome writes opposing the use of children as "political foot­ balls," but agrees that "when the straight world catches on to the depth with which we are, indeed, monkeying with the socialization process, that world is likely to become 44 fiercely repressive." Jerome sees a deep problem in the question of social change, as do Marin and Rossman.

It would be unfair to characterize NSEN as taking a position in favor of radical politicalization of free schools, but enough is said in the pages of the Newsletter to conclude that one of the educational purposes common in the NSEN is that education must be involved with broad societal aims.

The New Schools Exchange is not concerned with curriculum. The bibliography issue refers to Montessori and the Open Classroom and everything else, including the

43 N o . 42, p . 2.

44 No. 53, p. 5. 51 traditional disciplines. Good Things recommends environ­ mental materials, but also books by Marshall McLuhan and a guide for conscientious objectors. School listings usually mention curricular matters, but the mentions in the other sections of the Newsletter are too few and diverse for generalizations. The principle that must be formulated, then, is that curriculum and instructional matters are not strongly related to a school being a free school.

This Magazine Is About Schools

This Magazine Is About Schools was recommended by eight of the central publications, by Holt, Gross, and

Rasberry-Greenway Exercises, and by six of the schools.

This Magazine has been coming out of Toronto since

April, 1966. It was founded there and still run by Bob

Davis. Davis had been a high school teacher and was involved with a group of friends who were dissatisfied with the various social agencies they were working for, some of whom were planning to do political organizing to change the institutions affecting children, and some of whom, influenced by A. S. Neill’s Summerhill, were thinking of starting free schools. According to co-editor, Satu Repo,

Davis started the magazine to be a forum for both groups.

This Magazine has a more developed style and identity 52 than the other free school publications, not totally attributable to its three to five-year head start. The magazine has hardly changed over the years. The most out­ standing characteristic of This Magazine is treated in

Herb Kohl's introduction to This Book Is About Schools, a 1970 compilation of the best of This Magazine. Kohl writes of having a review of a Robert Coles book turned down by This Magazine because it added nothing to Coles's account of his experience. Nothing is academic in This

Magazine; every article is in the first person, letters are printed as received, letterhead and signature included, margins are not justified, layout and graphics are straight­ forward and informal. Even with its magazine size and one hundred and fifty page bulk, This Magazine comes across as AC a personal from friends in Canada.

A common theme in This Magazine is the struggle to be an honest person. George Martell's review of

Coming of Age in America is titled "High School: No Place to Find Out Who You Are" and cast in the setting of

Martell's experiences with the institutions of his youth. In "Getting to Rochdale" Dennis Lee tells of his struggle

45 "Introduction," to This Book is About Schools, Satu Repo, ed. (New York: Pantheon", 1970), "ppY v-ix. 46 This Book, pp. 94-114. to make sense of his life in the academic world.47 Edna Manitowabi and Wilfred Pelletier write deeply personal articles of the experience of being an Indian in North

America.4® In "The Child I Was" Gail Ashby.writes of her earliest sexual experiences and relates them to her school experience and then to free schools with a sensi­ tivity that gives a new insight into what free schools mean to the adults who inhabit them.4^ . But no article is more personal than editor Bob Davis’s weaving of his life around a recommendation of the Warrendale and

Children in Crisis films.^0 The writer in This Magazine does not present his ideas, he opens up his life and shares his experiences, his doubts, and his discoveries.

More than being about free schools, This Magazine is a statement about the lives in free schools. In the Foreword to This Book Is About Schools, editor Satu Repo writes of the free schools: "Uppermost in people's minds is a wish to be free to pursue their own interests and at the same time have an opportunity to relate meaningfully to others."^ This is a good description of what happens in

47Ibid, pp. 354-80. 48 Manitowabi, "An Ojiba Girl in the City," This Magazine 4:4 (Fall, 1970, pp. 8-27; Pelletier, "Childhood in an Indian Village," This Book, pp. 18-31.

^9Ibi,d., pp. 3-17.

‘ ^"Before Browndale," ibid., pp. 227-39*

51—P. xxix. 54

a free school and a good description of what This Magazine

is about.

The This Magazine editors are actively involved in free schools. Bob Davis is one of the founders of Ever- dale. Gail Ashby taught at both Everdale and Superschool.

George Martell and Satu Repo are members of Point Blank 52 School. But the magazine would not be changed if all

of them dropped out of school work, or even if they all retired to some desert island, not because the magazine is theoretical— it is anything but theoretical— but

because This Magazine is not really about schools, it is about persons trying to be honest, trying to live a good

life. Satu Repo writes:

Much of the intent of our authors has been to clarify their own and their contemporaries’ experiences: both as members of particular communities or as people who have grown up inside the socializing institutions of North America. They are looking for ways to survive as individuals and at the same time to stay relevant as members of s o c i e t y . 53

A statement of educational purpose characteristic of This Magazine would be that education must provide a community in which a person can explore and integrate the meaning of his experience and that education should work toward a social revolution.

52Ibid., p . xii.

•53 Ibid., p. xv. 54 Davis calls This Magazine a radical magazine. From Edgar Z. Freidenberg's social critiques to Weather­ man Eric Mann's "The Shield of Non-Violence Is Gone,"

This Magazine is concerned with bringing about a more humane social o r d e r . In Winter, 1971, a letter to the editor reads: "Latterly there has been less and less about the aims of education— social revolution if you like--and more and more about political and violent revolution."56

This Magazine at the least sees social revolution as a purpose of education, whether in the more violent style of Bob Davis or the more reformist style of George Martell.

Satu Repo, in the same set of letters in which Davis and

Martell state these positions writes: "We in This Magazine have been an ideological front for the cultural revolution and particularly such manifestations of it as free school, 57 free universities and communes." Cultural revolution is a purpose of free schools and of This Magazine.

This Magazine supports no particular curriculum mode. Maria Montessori is represented in the first issue

54Vol. 4, No. 4 (Fall, 1970), 121.

^^Mann, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Winter, 1971), pp. 7-33. Freidenberg, "What-the Schools Do," This Book, pp. 391-404. Also "Principal's Authority," This Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 42-60. 56 in a dialogue with A. S. Neill. Charles Rathbone, a fore­ most American proponent of the British Infant School, has an article in This Magazine about his feelings at an open classroom training session for teachers held near

Leicestershire. Anthony Barton, in his "soft school" 58 articles suggests variations on the open classroom idea.

In general, curriculum is not a great concern in This

Magazine. If the needs of the student and the meanings of his life are respected, what happens in a school will follow naturally.

Big Rock Candy Mountain

Big Rock Candy Mountain was recommended by seven of the central movement publications, by Holt, Gross, Center for Educational Reform, Rasberry-Greenway Exercises, and two of the schools.

BRCM is a publication of the Portola Institute, a non-profit organization in Menlo Park, California, best known for Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalogue. The institute, a small, private corporation establishing "to encourage, organize, and conduct educational projects" has begun the Whole Earth Truck Store, the Scripps Off-

58 "Hard-Soft School," This Book, pp. 183-94; "Soft Boxes in Hard Schools," ibid., pp. 195-208; "Rapid. Transit," This Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 133-54. 57

Campus Project Center, The Tree School, and the Ortega

Park Teachers Laboratory, Portola regularly prunes

itself; by Spring, 1971, it was down to Media Access

Center, Music Resources Program, and Big Rock Candy 59 Mountain. BRCM was originally subtitled "Resources for Our

Education.” It is a periodic collection of descriptions,

excerpts, and evaluations of books and other publications,

building plans and materials, artifacts, and machines.

The table of contents of the first issue lists five

sections: process learning, educational environments,

classroom materials, home learning, and self-discovery.

BRCM offers access to educational materials that few

people would know exist: a periodical that suggests

radical uses for video tape,**® for example, or The Pup­ petry Journal,61 h°w to make zones,62 where to get a sex education puzzle. But not just anything esoteric is

included. It is stated in BRCM that Portola's programs

59 Big Rock Candy Mountain, Summer, 1970, p. 56. Also April, 1971, p. 39.

60 Winter , 1970, p. 53

61Ibid., p . 52.

62 Ibid., p. 27.

63Ibid., p. 59. 58 are aimed at "making education more holistic, more ft/t humanistic, and more responsive to social values." The entries are carefully chosen to make this sort of sense.

With the April, 1971, issue BRCM changed its sub­ title to "Education and Consciousness." Editor Samuel

Yanes, in "Retrospective," cites the grand finish of Whole

Earth Catalogue, the ending of the Elementary Science

Study program, This Magazine’s publication of its past articles, and NSE's contemplating of a new format: "It's retrospective time— time to review past lives and either prepare .'The Best of _____ .' edition, change phil­ osophical direction, or expire." The decision is for

BRCM to separate itself from other points of view: "we pay tribute to the organizations written up in this section, but this 'look back' should be considered a departure from much of the thinking they represent. BRCM moves in the direction of eastern thought.

There follow long and beautiful passages from The Dance of Shiva and The Way and the Mountain. Yanes writes:

I can feel the social indignation of TMIAS and in the writings of Ivan Illich, but pro­ testations at a social level, in the long run, only serve the status quo, for they do not allow for vertical diversity, which requires the support and guidance of the social order,

6 4 April, 1971, p. 39

65Ibid., p. 11. 59

which, in return, is supported and maintained by the diversity of everyone performing a function best suited to his nature.

He closes with a quote from Bagavad Gita: "The last end of every maker, as such, is himself."66 This direction

.is a development, not a change, for BRCM. It, as well as Whole Earth Catalogue, has always been concerned with man’s relation with nature, nature in the sense of earth and nature in the sense of inner spirit. The tools and resources chosen were always geared to helping man be at one with the earth and be at one with himself. The first item in the first BRCM was Krishnamurti’s Education and the Significance of Life. The reviewer, defines Krishna- murti's "right education" as "an education which helps us experience integration of all life’s complexities."

Speaking of teachers, the reviewer writes, "We criticize the environment, we must be aware that we are the environ­ ment. ’Existence is relationship,’ and all the problems

f \ * 7 we have are because we and not they have created them."

BRCM was never reactive; critique of public schools has never played a significant part of its concept of education. A muckraking issue was promised, but on delivery it turned out to be a section that opened with an

66Ibid., p. 12.

Summer, 1970, p . 2. 60 apology. Muckraking, the introduction says, would be a

"gratituous amplification of bad vibes"; it was gust beyond what the BRCM writers could do.**® What they can do is keep out a discerning eye on what can be done. BRCM has been a leader in introducing materials to free school people; and noiv, with its education and consciousness theme, it may well lead the movement into a deeper realization of what non-compulsory, non-competitive education can mean. With its reviews of

Eastern writers, books on yoga, recommendations of

Wilhelm Reich, BRCM has always seen that the conversion of the teacher to an integrated human life is the basis of the new education. As This Magazine presents teachers striving to understand the meaning of their experiences,

BRCM shows people who have found a deeper meaning to life, and are striving most relaxedly to apply that vision in all of life.

The educational purpose characteristic of BRCM is found in the words of Krishnamurti: "To understand life we must understand ourselves, and that is both the begin- 6 Q ning and the end of education." The social dimensions of education are not a separate issue in BRCM; this is

^February, 1971, p. 19.

^Summer, 1970, p. 2. 61 characteristic of Eastern thought, in which social harmony is seen as the natural result of harmony in individuals.

The revolution is not in movements, but in persons.

The curricular contribution of BRCM to the free schools is considerable. The magazine, when seen together with the Whole Earth Catalogue, embodies a potential cur­ ricular mode. The concept of curricular mode will be treated in that section of Chapter IV. .Here it is important to see that the approach of BRCM and the Whole Earth Cata­ logue to the materials and resources and tools they describe could be a curricular mode which some free schools could adopt. It is a curriculum of learning the tools with which a person can survive in and be at one with the world.

It is a sort of survival education, as characterized by

Outward Bound, and it is a sort of ecology education.

The student learns about nature and how it works and he learns about tools and how he can use them. It is at the same time a back-to-nature movement and a movement to get technology in the hands of the people. It is held together and given depth by the concept of personal integration of personal experience.

Teacher Drop-out Center

Teacher Drop-out Center was started in October,

1.969, by two graduate students at University of Massachu­ setts, Len Solo and Stan Barondes. It started, they say, 62

'•with an idea...and some feelings about other teacher/ human beings having trouble with rigid, dull, and bureaucratic institutions." The Drop-out Center was formed, originally with University support, as "the only nationwide clearinghouse for information which would help teachers with much humanity to share with kids find jobs in free-er more innovative schools."

In September, 1970, for fifteen dollars the Sub­ scriber was promised a constantly up-dated list of schools, descriptions of schools seeking Teacher Drop-out people, and bulletins on current job openings. These were delivered as a large packet on joining and a mimeo­ graphed mailing of sometimes up to thirty pages about every three weeks. The reader also received sample copies of EdCentric, Outside the Net, The Summerhill

Bulletin, and some reprinted articles.

The school list has fifteen pages of schools, ranging from free schools to "more humane" conventional schools. Many free universities are listed. There follows a list of 139 schools with modular or flexible scheduling. The next section describes sixty-seven schools by their "philosophy," and type of teacher wanted.

The mailings consist mainly of job openings. As the education job market moved more into the panic com­ plexion that it took on in Spring, 1971, the listings became less discriminatory. The list was extended to 63 public schools of the most conventional setting. Each mailing is in letter form. There are usually some friendly comments, some ideas, the recommendation of a book, magazine, or other resource. News is sometimes given of interesting projects and upcoming conferences on educational alternatives. It reads like a letter from friends and serves to keep even those not looking for a job aware of current trends in the free schools movement•

Although TDOC lists schools that are by no means free schools, the Center is solidly within the movement.

Its concept of a clearinghouse for teachers who want to drop out of the regular system is potentially powerful.

In every school there are some teachers who want a more open educational setting. In any one school they are a minority, but within a given city, and especially within the country, they are a huge group. TDOC, with almost no national publicity, and a fairly high membership price, has been able to show that the number of teachers inter­ ested in free school work is much greater than the number of free school teaching positions. TDOC suggests starting one's own school; most free schools are run and staffed by the founders. But besides the large number of school founders now active in free schools, there is a powerful number of free school oriented teachers that TDOC has just begun to identify. This group and the consequences of the work of TDOC could very well bring 64 about a great change in the nature of the free schools movement. When TDOC is seen in the same scenario with the Red Pencil radical teachers group in Boston and the

Bay Area Radical Teachers Organizing Collective, a teachers* rebellion can be imagined for the future, not of the union sort, analogous perhaps to early black attempts at integration rights, but a rebellion aimed at the right to be treated humanely and to work in a context of respect and pride, analogous to the thrust of black power groups. More and more teachers may be seeing that the repression of students and the defending of a system that no one respects are most brutalizing to those persons who must do the repressing and defending. Possibly teachers will bring about a revolt in the public schools.

At the very least TDOC should facilitate the regrouping of teachers that will bring about alternative schools, even within the public systems.

Educational purposes and curricular principles are not treated in TDOC mailings. Any implicit educa­ tional purposes are too implicit to be fairly character­ ized. The lack of curricular concern, however, is again noteworthy. The jobs listed either ignore curriculum altogether ("We need some good people") or speak of teaching roles in terms of the traditional disciplines

("We need a reading teacher and a math teacher"), A few 65

lately have asked for familiarity with the British Infant

Schools.

Vocations for Social Change

Vocations for Social Change was recommended by six of the movement publications and by Holt.

VSC is published bi-monthly by a group of people who live in two houses on the side of a wooded hill in

Canyon, California. As individuals they are searching for alternatives to "manipulation, consumerism, sexual chauvinism" and the various kinds of repression. As a group they "collect and disseminate information on how . basic institutional change can and has come about and how people have begun to lead revolutionary lives." 70

The magazine defines itself as "a clearinghouse for information and ideas pertaining to institutional change in the U.S." Schools are not the major concern. Free

Schools are seen as one of the institutional changes under consideration, teaching one of the vocations for social change. The role of the magazine is somewhat analogous to Whole Earth Catalogue. As the catalogue provided access to tools, VSC provides access to organiza­ tions and individual persons. Its role in the free

70 Vocations for Social Change, January-February, 1971, p. 2. 6 6 schools movement is not large. It is concerned with putting people in contact with others; in the free schools movement this can usually be done by referring them to the specialized or local free school organizations.

VSC also reprints a few articles on education and sends them along to an inquirer, presumably to deepen his interest and maximize chances of his getting in contact with the suggested organization.

VSC also provides access to radical organizations of all kinds. VSC lists a systems analysis man, an accountant, a filmmaker, a group of ecology experts, and many others, all willing to help radical groups for free.

It lists resources in fields such as health, law, media, and research. Like Big Rock Candy Mountain and Whole

Barth Catalogue, VCS provides free schools with resources.

Like TDOC it helps people get into the free schools movement.

One need not go past the title to get to the concept of educational purpose characteristic of VSC. Teaching can be an effective way to work toward social change.

A section of the magazine's statement of purpose is worth quoting at length:

Our basic institutions shape and channel every, child's development until, as an adult, the individual perpetuates and supports the devisive, oppressive impact of these basic institutions on world society by both action and attitude. Thus we see the problem as 67

being greater than the formal structure of society alone, and more than just individual limitations. The cycle must be broken at both points by both individual and collective action.71

VSC comes through with curricular resources to support its clearly stated educational purpose. Its listing of organizations and persons suggests involvement with committed persons as an educational method.

The Summerhill Society Bulletin

The Summerhill Society Bulletin is recommended by six of the periodicals, by Holt, Gross, CER, and three schools.

SSB has been in publication for ten years. Despite its seven year head start on the movement there is no evidence that the Summerhill Society or its bulletin has been a significant influence on the birth or develop­ ment of the free schools movement of the late sixties and early seventies.

The Bulletin is the least radical publication in the movement; it does not delve into radical politics and seldom into any criticism of society. It is repre­ sentative of the liberal establishment which has kept it alive for so many years•

71Ibid. 68

The Bulletin publishes a list of resources for free schools and a list of free schools. These lists are two of the best in the movement. The good side of

Summerhill Society's carefulness is its accuracy. An issue of the Bulletin is devoted to a lengthy review of

George Dennison's The Lives of Children,72 another to an interview with A. S. Neill.73 The October, 1969, Bulletin is an excellent annotated bibliography, utilized in this study.

In the fall of 1970 the Bulletin office staff revolted, claiming that Summerhillian principles were not used by the Board of Directors. A Summerhill Collective was formed which put out two issues of The Summerhill

Bulletin, as opposed to The Summerhill Society Bulletin.

The future or even the present of either publication is 74 unsure at the time of this study. The educational purpose characteristic of the

Summerhill Society Bulletin is to allow the child the free­ dom to grow according to the natural processes of his development. Recent issues of the Bulletin have not been

72December, 1969•

73 January-February, 1971.

74 Vocations for Social Change, January-February, 1971, p. 26. 69 concerned with any curricular matters.

No More Teachers1 Dirty Looks

No More Teachers* Dirty Looks is recommended by seven of the movement publications. It is one of three publications often recommended in the free schools move­ ment which do not concern themselves with setting up or servicing alternate schools. Along with Red Pencil and

Teacher Paper t Dirty Looks represents what might better be called a free-the-schools movement. These three publica­ tions speak for and with the teachers who share with alternative school people the critique of society and the public schools, but have committed themselves to working for radical change within those schools.

Dirty Looks is the publication of eleven people who call themselves the Bay Area Radical Teachers’ Organizing

Collective. The group was started in San Francisco in the summer of 1969 by two women who were trying to inte­ grate their occupation, teaching, with the convictions they had from New Left politics.^ After working out a basic position, the group took to publishing a newspaper. < '• * Meetings since then have been devoted to discussions of the politics underlying the articles members write for

No More Teachers’ Dirty Looks, Vol. Two, No. 2, p. 4. 70

Dirty Looks, BARTOC members are concerned "not with all new ideas in education, but with new ideas in the context of building a socialist movement in this country."^6

Consequently, the change being worked at by BARTOC members is not the educational change of the education journals: "We believe that the oppression of public schools is institutionally grounded, in respect both to the schools' own internal arrangements and to their 77 relations to the larger capitalist society." The schools, in this critique, are quite successful at their real roles in ah oppressive society. They "perpetuate class and race divisions" and "help mold certain social attitudes useful to the perpetuation of society's going 78 power arrangements." The radical public school teacher shares with the alternative school teacher a realization of the oppres­ siveness of the schools: "But unlike many of those libertarian teachers, we see our place as being inside those schools where children are most oppressed— the public schools." The role of the radical teacher there is to counteract the institution by bringing to his consciousness

76Vol. 2, No. 1, p. 3.

77Vol. 2, No. 2, p. 2.

78Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 3. 71 and his students' the oppressive ways of the school and the larger society, and "by deliberately experimenting with ways of teaching and classroom organization that will 70 be personally refreshing and intellectually revealing." As a socialist movement, BARTOC is committed to free public education and opposed to the use of this supposedly democratic institution for initiation into the hierarchical structure of the corporate state. The role of the radical teacher, then, is to get into the public system and fight it from within, largely by freeing the students from the acquiescent role they learn to play.

At first BARTOC was opposed to alternative schools as places that were ignoring and hence perpetuating the oppressive role of the public schools. With the first issue of Volume II, however, two teachers from alternative schools joined BARTOC and brought with them the realiza­ tion that such schools can become merely alternative embodiments of the same attitudes so in need of changing in the public schools.80 Their critiques of free school education adds another dimension to the role of Dirty

Looks in the free schools movement. Dirty Looks is the only publication in the movement to work out of a well-

79Ibid.. p. 4.

80Vol• 2, No. 1, pp. 7-8. 72 defined political consciousness. Its unique contribution is its ongoing socialist critique of public and alter­ native education.

The inclusion of Dirty Looks in the list of publi­ cations defining the free schools movement suggests a more complex description of the movement. If the title for this study had been "radical school reform" and the

starting point had been Ronald Gross’s bibliography•on radical school reform, the same movement would have been defined. Within the movement are people running radically different schools and people working in public schools with a consciousness radically different from that of the dominant powers. BARTOC is the opposite of Teacher Drop­ out Center. Responding to a similar view of the schools, some teachers drop out and some get more deeply involved, but all can fit their actions into the framework of the free schools movement. But the movement is still best characterized as a free school movement; its main thrust is autonomy for students and teachers and such autonomy is a long way off in the public schools, even for the hardest working member of BARTOC or Red Pencil. These groups represent a relatively small group who, by trying to implement the radical thought characteristic of the free schools movement in the public schools, are directly challenging the existence of a public supported system of unfree schools in a country that prides itself on its 73 democracy. This is the segment of the movement taking upon itself the very long-range goal of bringing about a society that itself is a free school.

The educational purpose characteristic of No More

Teachers* Dirty Looks is to bring about the social con­ sciousness that will effect a socialist revolution. In curricular matters Dirty Looks suggests a radical con­ sciousness infused into a traditional discipline oriented curriculum. .Lesson plans are frequently published, on such topics as the draft or women's history, that take for granted a teacher-centered method in a class organized along subject lines. The difference is the radical nature of the subject matter.

Teacher Paper

The Teacher Paper is recommended by five of the periodicals, CER, and the Storefront Learning Center in

Boston.

Teacher Paper is published and edited by Fred and

Robin Staab, public school teachers in Portland, Oregon.

Fred teaches at Jefferson High School and Robin is an elementary teacher currently on leave xvith two young children.

Teacher Paper has a warm, informal air about it*

All the writers are classroom teachers; the few well-known 74 writers who do contribute (James Herndon, Mariam

Wasserman, and Steven Daniels) are teachers and write of classroom experiences. One imagines the teachers of No

More Teachers* Dirty Looks as an almost grim-faced, hard working and hard-thinking group; one imagines Teacher

Paper teachers laughing in a good-natured way at the crazy things that happen at school and inviting a few students over for supper. It is this sort of quality that gives the magazine its strength and appeal. The writers, even when most critical of the schools, tend to write with a sensitive understanding of the world of public schools.

A common.reaction of teachers to a Teacher Paper article is "That's exactly the way it is." The most well-known production of Teacher Paper is the Guerilla Manual, published as a centerfold in the December, 1969, issue.

It suggests 162 tactics for "underground teachers," including "Have your English classes correct all office memos and return them" and "Make a tape of the racist remarks in the faculty lounge and turn it over to the local Black Panthers." Although the ostensible purpose of the Manual is to suggest activities that will disrupt the inhumane habits of the school, the effect of it is a loving laugh at the eccentricities of schools.

Three of the items in the Guerilla Manual suggest starting a new school, but seldom in Teacher Paper is there direct treatment of alternative education. A few 75

articles may be by free school teachers, but it is impos­

sible to tell: the point of the articles always deals

with something applicable and interesting to any teacher in any sort of school, even the article about Herb Kohl's 81 free school* Teacher Paper is most definitely with the circle of magazines here defined; besides recommending and being recommended, it is part of an informal reprint ring;

Teacher Paper has reprinted articles from No More Teachers'

Dirty Looks and some Teacher Paper articles have appeared Q 2 later in New Schools Exchange Newsletter.* Teacher Paper would seem to fit into the movement in two ways* First, it shares the view of some segments of the movement that the freeing of the heart of each person is the important thing about the movement. Ignazio

Silione is quoted by the editors:

To oppose Fascism, we need neither heavy armaments nor bureaucratic apparatuses. What we need above all is a different way of. look­ ing at life and human beings. My dear friends, without this different way of looking at life and human beings, we shall ourselves become Fascists*8 3

81James Herndon, "What Herb Is Doing," Teacher paper, February, 1971, pp. 8-10.

82 Ibid., pp. 5-7. Also NSEN No. 62, p. 3. 83 Teacher Paper, April, 1971, p. 28, 76

The change of heart implied by most Teacher Paper articles is a more and more sensitive humanity--the love of persons and the ability to see through the machinations of the bureaucracy. This typical sentence appears in an editor­ ial: "But individually, teachers can search for ways to nullify the madness of the system."®^

Secondly, Teacher paper provides a common ground for teachers in public and free schools in two ways: by providing a mouthpiece for the free teachers in the public schools, and by introducing to public school teachers, in a context meaningful to them, the ideas common in the free schools movement.

The educational purpose characteristic of Teacher

Paper is that education should aim at enriching the lives of students, helping them to be more sensitive and more alive to human values. Curricular matters are not important in Teacher Paper. Most articles take for granted the disciplinary curriculum; some are aimed at making room within it for topics close to the students’ lives and for instructional methods that allow a teacher to communicate his humanity.

84 , . _ Ibid., p. 4 77

Red Pencil

Red Pencil is recommended by five of the movement' publications.

Red Pencil, a publication of a group of Boston public school teachers, is the third of the eleven publi­ cations to deal almost exclusively with public schools.

It is remarkable that as the only free school publication in the Boston area, where free schools abound, it has kept its concern so strongly with the public schools. Red

Pencil is not opposed to free schools.

Red Pencil does not have the political consistency of No More Teachers1 Dirty Looks or the good humor of

Teacher Paper; its strong point is its practical involve­ ment in the affairs of its community and its inclusion of good articles from otherwise untouched sources. Some of its best critiques of the schools, MFree the Newton

2800" and "Tracking in a Newton Skool," for example, are oc written by students. Articles are reprinted from Women and George (a student underground newspaper).86 The last page of the quarterly Red Pencil is the Red Pencil Bulletin,

B5 "Free the Newton 2800," Red Pencil, Vol. 2, No. 3, p. 12; Steve Hein, "Tracking in a Newton Skool," Vol, 2, No. 2, p. 4. 86 From Women: Kathleen Barry, "A View from the Doll Corner," Red Pencr.1 . 1969-1970 reprint issue, p. 2; from George: "Free the Newton 2800," op. cit. 78 which also comes out separately once a month. The Bulletin is largely a thorough series of notes on events in the

Boston area. Some national items are mentioned— especially books and free school periodicals.

Roughly a quarter of Red Pencil deals with exposing or analyzing events in Boston, such as the student strike and the firing of teachers. The Red Pencil stand on these sorts of issues is always the result of a community decision--the staff works collectively on most articles— and is always thoughtful and penetrating. Another quarter deals with national issues in education, Paul Lauter’s article on tracking or an article on Sesame Street, for 87 example. About half of the articles deal with lessons and curriculum, a completely novel approach to student 88 film-making, for example, and a Vietnam lesson plan. Red Pencil provides for free school an example of what can be done by a radical teacher even under the con­ straining conditions of the public schools. The articles bring out in many ways that the real revolution must take place in the life of the individual teacher. An article on the meaning of education states: ’’What students actually learn from teachers is not a lifeless body of

87"What Is Tracking?" Vol. 2, No. 2, p. 2. Frank Garfunkel, "Sesame Street: An Educational Dead," reprint issue, p. 3. 88 Suzanne Davenport, "Teaching Film to City Kids," Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 3-14. 79 information, but rather the nature of the teacher*s life itself.” Another article questions the implications in terms of the studenis' freedom of the many routine things the teacher does.®9

The freedom of children is a common theme. Phyllis

Ewen criticizes the Leicestershire schools for giving children superficial freedom as a more effective way of 90 disciplining them. The basic problem with the schools, in the Red Pencil view, is that they try to lead the child out of the spontaneity and joy of childhood to the adult world of "drudgery, self-denial, and death." In the words of staff writer Ellen Schwartz: "Children ARE the revolu­ tion: watch them, learn from them, take risks, and join 91 them."

The writers of Red Pencil are acutely aware of the socializing function of the schools; their characteristic educational purpose is to enable the child to develop according to his positive traits in order to strengthen him against oppression by the schools and society at large.

Red Pencil, like No More Teachers1 Dirty Looks and

Teacher Paper, takes for granted the disciplinary curricu­ lum of the public schools and tries to work out human

89Reprint issue, p. 1.

90Ibid.. p. 4.

'91Ibid.. p. 1. teaching within it* The basic curricular principle is that it is the teacher that counts. Ellen Schwartz writes that there are no magic panaceas to the problems of education: ”. . . not Leicestershire infant schools, or

Cuisenaire rods, or Afro-American studies programs. As long as the revolutionary teacher himself does not know what he ought to be teaching the students, no pre-packaged 92 program will do the trick for him.”

EdCentric

EdCentric is recommended by six of the movement publications, Gross, and Rasberry-Greenway Exercises.

EdCentric is the basic publication of the Center for Educational Reform. The Center was founded in 1968

”to stimulate radical educational change throughout the 93 United. States.” The Center works out of the National

Student Offices in Washington, D.C. and runs many projects, all of them aspects of its central task of being a clearinghouse for information about radical projects and alternatives. One of the useful things about EdCentric is that it gives news about other Center projects, includ­ ing the Center publications, the Education Liberation

Front traveling bus, and the Source Catalogue. The Center

92Ibid.

93 From the Center's self-descriptive pamphlet. 81 is a radical organization, working for change in society as a whole; educational change is seen as one important aspect of the radical change that must take place on all levels of society.

EdCentric is the first of the publications in this list that is equally concerned with higher education. The free university movement is a large movement, eleven hundred universities strong according to Michael 94 Rossman, and has a literature of its own. On the level of publications there is not a great amount of interaction between the free schools movement and the free university movement. A few free universities are directly connected with free schools, in Ann Arbor and Antioch, for example.

The number of free university members who become free school teachers is unknown. The Beacon Hill Free School in Boston is both a free school and a free university.

New Schools Exchange lists free universities, and Teacher

Drop-out Center writes of job developments and programs in universities free and otherwise. But EdCentric is the only publication that provides a real exchange of infor­ mation among all student levels of the autonomy movement.

EdCentric articles usually combine news-and analy­ sis. There have been reports on education in North

0 4 NSE, No. 52, p. 9. 82

Vietnam, the Zaca Lake Conference on Alternatives, radi­ cal athletes, the training of campus cops, and Ivan

Illich's CIDOC. Articles have appeared on evaluation, university innovations, and the worthlessness of a Ph.D.

The "Movement" section contains four to six pages of paragraph sized recommendations of all sorts of things, including radical films, free schools, publications, organizations, and people.

The educational purpose characteristic of EdCentric is social reform. Education should make people aware of social injustices and should work at the reform of all institutions. A changing individual consciousness is seen as a prerequisite for social change, CER publishes instructional packets for free universities; these packets are collections of all sorts of information about a given topic. No distinction is made between teacher and student. The materials listed in the "Movement" section tend to be of the same type--materials of the open classroom type, inviting unstructured investigation by student and teacher together•

Outside the Net

Outside the Net is recommended by six of the move­ ment publications.

Outside the Net is the newest of the eleven pub­ lications on the list. It is the only publication to list 83 on its masthead well-known names of the education estab­ lishment. Maxine Greene and Dwayne Huebner of Teachers

College and Henry M. Levin of Stanford are listed as

"correspondents." An article by Maxine Greene appears in 95 the second issue.

At the time of this study only two issues of Out­

side the Net had been published. The second includes a letter from Stanley Elam asking for the most inexpensive subscription in case the magazine folds. There is not much chance that OTN will fold. It fulfills a unique role in the free schools movement as the movement's link with education's radical intellectuals. OTN is aware of the • movement and aware of its role. In "Some More About Us" the editors acknowledge the pioneering work of This Maga­ zine Is About Schools and the roles of New Schools Exchange and Teacher Drop-out Center. A succinct statement of purpose appears in Issue One:

Outside the Net will analyze the present educational system and thereby hasten its re­ structuring or demise; Outside the Net will describe and further educational alternatives and thereby foster their growth.96

Even the second issue of OTN, though much changed from the first, does not seem to be settled into what the

95"Crisis in Education," Spring, 1971, pp. 13-15. 84 publication hopes to be. A letter of apology comes with it to subscribers. But already some strong articles have appeared in the area of the first goal: "The I.Q. Test and How To Beat It," 97 and "Compulsory School Attend­ ance. "98 The second issue is dominated by book reviews, many geared toward this purpose.

By the second issue OTN had yet to find a vehicle for furthering educational alternatives. A few articles appeared on the topic and many of the standard resources of the movement were listed or given prominent write-ups.

A good portion of the magazine, especially the second issue, is devoted to articles not directly related to education: a review of The Pleasure Seekers, for example, and an article on underground newspapers.

With only two issues it is impossible to character­ ize OTN as to educational purposes or curricular prin­ ciples. The concern for social issues suggests an emerging presentation of social goals for education.

Conclusions

In this chapter the free schools movement has been defined as an informal network of schools interrelating

97 Charles Slack, Spring, 1971, pp. 7-38.

98 Arthur Harris, Jr., Winter, 1970, pp. 8-31. 85 through New Schools Exchange Newsletter, This Magazine Is

About Schools. Big Rock Candy Mountain, Teacher Drop-out

Center, Vocations for Social Change, Summerhi11 Society

Bulletin, NQ More Teachers* Dirty Looks, Teacher Paper,

Red Pencil, EdCentric, and Outside the Net, and inspired and informed by a definable group of writers. It was seen that the definition is not really changed by simplifying the definition to list only New Schools Exchange News­ letter, This Magazine Is About Schools, Teacher Drop-out

Center, and Big Rock Candy Mountain, the four most recom­ mended publications on the list.

It was seen that these periodicals are for the most part radical publications. They speak of the need for a drastic change in society and in men's consciousness.

They see schools in this broad context and are sharply aware of the oppressiveness of the public schools. Some of the teachers whose thought is represented choose to work within that system to free the minds of children; most choose to work outside of that system in schools that are themselves a free society and schools that foster a new consciousness. Some of these free schools people see their role as providing models for public education. Most are concerned with the negative aspects of public education and base much of their work on re­ action to these aspects. 86

The educational purpose characteristic of all the free school publications is concern for the autonomy of the learner. They all see the aim of education to be the free person, ruler of his own life, not held down by oppressive society. They are all concerned with his consciousness— his awareness of the meaning of his life and the meaning of his relations with others. They differ as to how intensely they define this consciousness and how actively they are concerned with the social aspects of this consciousness.

A two-dimensional continuum can illustrate these differences. In Table 2 movement from top to bottom indicates movement from a less to a more intensely defined consciousness. The educational purposes lower on the page are deeper purposes. Movement from right to left on- the page indicates movement from less active to more active social concern. The purpose of Developing Consciousness, for example, envisions an intense interior life which changes one's social life, but does not move one to work actively for social change. Such an educational purpose is more socially oriented and more intensely defined than the purpose of Development of One's Innate characteristics and less socially oriented, though equally intensely defined, as the purpose of Developing Social Consciousness.

Table 2., then, shows the relationships of the educational TABLE 2

Two Dimensional Continuum Showing the Relationships of the Educational Purposes Found in Movement Publications

more f- ACTIVE SOCIAL CONCERN -iless H (0 Social Action Personal w w (EdCentric, Enrichment Vocations (Teacher Paper) for Social DEFINITION OFINTENSITY Change)

3 2 CO O Active Social Development M Awareness of Innate O O G (New Schools Personal Traits CO 2 Exchange, (Summerhill Soc. W Outside the Red Pencil) in Net) in

Integration Developing Social of Experience Consciousness Consciousness (This Magazine (Big Rock (No More Dirty Candy Mt .) Looks) 3 O n o

03 88 purposes found in free school publications. Its basis is the generalizations which were made about the educational purposes of each publication. Since Teacher Drop-out

Center was not characterized as to educational purposes, it is not included in the Table.

The free school publications were shown to have relatively little to say about curricular matters. The most general attitude is that curriculum is not important.

One learns autonomy, gets a free education, from relating to free people. The role of the teacher is not to inte­ grate his materials, but to integrate his person.

In any given school there is still the problem of what to do; the problem will be treated in Chapter IV.

It is important to note here that the publications of the free schools movement have, for the most part, refused to be greatly of service in this line. They have been more concerned with the development of basic atti­ tudes that, hopefully, can make any teacher a free teacher.

The outstanding exception is Big Rock Candy

Mountain, which, along with its sister publication Whole

Earth Catalogue, has been concerned with getting resources and manageable technology into the hands of the people.

Big Rock Candy Mountain embodies a curricular mode that could be the learning style of a school• 89

New Schools Exchange Newsletter, Vocations for

Social Change, No More Teachers' Dirty Looks, Red Pencil, and EdCentric present lists of resources helpful to teachers in any mode of curriculum. CHAPTER III

THE WRITERS OF THE MOVEMENT

The purpose of Chapter III is to identify the writers of the movement and to describe briefly the con­ tribution of each to the movement.

The method for identifying the writers of the free school movement is basically the same as that used for identifying the key publications. Under each author's name recommendations of his books and articles by movement periodicals, other writers, and sampled schools were listed. The lists were totalled by sources, resulting in a numerical indication of the centrality of each writer to the movement. The recommendations of each author will be listed in the bibliography.

From this quantitative ranking of writers, six categories were created for the purposes of this chapter:

(1 ) the five major writers, (2 ) other important writers,

(3) important works, (4) the psychologists, (5) the fore­ fathers, and (6 ) additional free school bibliography.

The first five categories will be treated in this chapter; the writers of Category Six will be included in the

Bibliography. 90 91

The Five Msjor Writers

The five major writers of the free school movement are A. S. Neill, John Holt, Herbert Kohl, George Dennison, and Paul Goodman.

A. S. Neill

If any one person is responsible for the free schools movement, it is A. S. Neill. Summerhi11 is his straightforward description of how he has lived with children for fifty years at his small school in Suffolk.

Since the publication of the book in America in 1960,* Neill has grown to the stature of a folk hero; a short­ lived rock group even sported the name "Summerhi11." The most common factor in self-descriptions of free schools, next to disgust with the public schools, is a reference to Neill or his school as their inspiration.

Neill wrote sixteen books before Summerhi11, none of them published in the United States.2 His Talking of

Summerhi11, though recommended by four sources, has not Q been published in this country. Part of it was published here in 1966 as Freedom Not License!, a question and

*(New York: Hart Publishing Co,)

2 Summerhi11 Society Bulletin, October, 1969, pp. 16-19. 3 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1967) 92 answer book which adds little to the statement of 4 Summerhi11. Letters from Neill have been published in

New Schools Exchange Newsletter and Summerhi11 Society

Bulletin.^

Herb Snitzer, a former teacher at Summerhi11 and founder and director of Lewis-Wadhams School in New York, wrote Living at Summerhill, a largely photographic essay about the school that is popular in the movement. It is recommended by seven sources. Snitzer has a new book on free schools, Ihe Rights of Children, to be published by

McMillan in February, 1972.?

Two sources recommended Neill and Summerhill, a book of photographs.8 A former Summerhill student, Joshua

Popenoe, has written a short account of student life at

Summerhill and filled out the book with his own photo- 9 graphs.

4 (New York: Hart Publishing Co.)

5 E.G., NSBN, No. 44, p. 2.; and Summerhill Society Bulletin, November-December, 1970, p. 2.

(New York: Macmillan Company, 1967).

•J Personal correspondence.

g John Walmsley (Baltimore: Penguin Books, Inc., 1969). 9 Inside Summerhill (New York: Hart Publishina Co.. 1970). 93

Summerhill; For and Against^ is a collection of

essays by a wide range of writers. It was recommended by

six sources, though none of the essays are remarkable

enough to have elicited comment or quotation in any

movement literature.

Neill says that he began Summerhill with one main

idea: Mto make the school fit the child--instead of

making the child fit the school."’*'* He. was a student of psychology and soon came to think of himself as more a

psychologist than an educator. 1 2 His psychology is

grounded in a knowledge of Freud and Reich, but dominated,

as Bruno Bettelheim has pointed out, by a sharp personal

n q understanding of children.

The basis of Neill’s thought is his faith in

children. As he puts it, "We must be on the side of the 14 child." Even his conviction that happiness is the

purpose of life comes across as something he learned from

the children. He sees no educational purpose that is

*°(New York: Hart Publishing Co., 1970). 11 Summerhill, p . 4.

1 2 Ibid., p. xxiii.

1 ^ •^Summerhill: For and Against, p. 100.

14 Summerhill, p. 117. 94 worth interfering with the child’s development. He sees

the child growing through developmental stages that must

be completed in a way that only the inner workings of the

child can determine. Neill's private lessons, his

active role in the child's development, are aimed especi­ ally at getting an older child back into his natural

condition: "If a child is all tied up inside, he cannot

adapt himself to being free.”^^ The academic program

receives very little of Neill's attention; it is optional

for the children, though almost all go to morning

classes. The subjects are ordered according to the

traditional disciplines, but the fact that the children

congregate mostly in the art, wood and metal, and science rooms suggests a working arrangement very much like that of

the more recent British Infant Schools. The important trait of education at Summerhill, however, is the primacy of the child pursuing his natural, internally motivated development. Since everything else in the

school is subservient to this process, in a very real way the curriculum of the school could be said to be psychological development.

A. S. Neill has refused to start or be part of any organized movement; he has asked that other schools not

15Ibid., p. 35. 95 use the Summerhi11 name and he does not pass judgment on other schools or teachers in any way that would make them official free schools. He distrusts organization and be­ lieves that a good teacher does not have time to comment T A on the work of another teacher. These attitudes have probably had much to do with the complexion of the free schools movement. Neill as prototype has kept the movement from organizing and has shown that a free school should and can remain free from organizational checks and balances.

John Holt

Writers with seven or more recommendations are listed as "major11 or "important" in this study. John

Holt, for his many books, articles, and letters, accounts for over a hundred recommendations and references• He also publishes one of the most important free school bibliographies and gives away reprints of articles by most major free school writers. ^ Letters from him appear in almost every issue of New Schools Exchange Newsletter and he is a frequent contributor to nearly every free school publication. He lectures frequently throughout the country on education. He does not consider himself a

1 6 NSEN, No. 44, p. 2.

17 Available from him at 308 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02116. 96 spokesman for the free schools movement, he says he speaks for himself.1 8 But judging from the literature of the movement, one must conclude that Holt is its major voice.

Holt's How Children Fail remains the most engrossing criticism of American education today. Silberman's more recent book sees the problem on the level of institu­ tions; How Children Fail speaks in terms of individual children and is based on the sorts of observations that teachers and parents can replicate themselves. Perhaps this is why Holt's book has inspired so many schools.

While reading How Children Fai1 the reader finds himself footnoting the book with his own experience; no $300,000 study is necessary. 19 How Children Learn is a book about children; Holt observes young children learning and analyzes what he sees.2 0

The Underachieving School is a collection of essays, letters and speeches representing a wide range of criticism 21 of many aspects of the educational system.

18Kommunications on Alternatives, No. 1 (May, 1971), p. 9.

19 (New York: Pitman, Dell Publishing, 1964).

2 0 (New York: Pitman, Dell Publishing, 1967).

21 (New York: Pitmar* Delta Publishing, 1969). 97

What Do I Do On Monday? is concerned with concrete matters of effective education in action. It is a hand- 22 book of the American open classroom curricular mode. Since the writing of this book, Holt has spent a great deal of time in Cuernavaca, Mexico, ivith Ivan

Illich. The heady atmosphere of CIDOC moved Holt to what appears now to be a logical extension of his previous work. In How Children Fail he showed how the rituals of schooling prohibited learning; now he has moved to a rejection of the whole concept of schooling. What is most truly "nutty" about schools, he says, is "the idea that learning should or can take place in an institution that doesn't produce anything but learning." He goes on, in this NSE article, to say that there is something inauth­ entic about adults engaging in some activity for the education of- children that they would not do were it not for the children: "Any game or puzzle, or activity that is not worth the time and attention of adults will soon be seen by the children as not worth their time 23 either." In a later article he states: "I suspect that on those occasions when they do want to be around adults, they want to be around adults who sure busy leading their adult lives. " 2 4

2 2 (New York: Dutton Publishers, 1970). 23 No. 36, p. 2. 24 No. 59, p. 7. 98

Throughout the development of his thought, Holt has

consistently held to two principles. The first of these

is that children are persons worthy of respect and

serious consideration. The second is what he calls "the

wholeness of learning."

The first principle is what makes Holt a unique

critic in the field of education. He is not, like Conant

and Silberman, a critic of education; he is a critic,

especially in How children Fail, of the way adults deal

with children. Holt sees each child as unique and im­

portant; he could never create a category for a certain

percentage of the children, as Conant has done, and does

riot make generalizations about schools, as Silberman.

His generalizations are about children and adults. Al­

though acutely aware of the institutional press of

schooling, Holt deals with it as it manifests itself in

the relations of adults and children. Conant's critiques

lead to government programs, Silberman*s to institutional

reorganization, Holt’s to the reader treating a child as

an equal.

The second principle is called "the wholeness of

learning." By this Holt means that we learn best when we decide for ourselves what we want to learn, and when and

how, and above all we learn best "when we feel the whole­ ness and openness of the world around us, and our own 25 freedom and power and competence in it . 11 How Children

Learn is a series of examples illustrating this principle;

What Do I Do On Monday? deals with how teachers can help create these conditions for learning. "Wholeness of learning" is both a philosophical position and a curricular principle. It demands a free school and an open class­ room, if any classroom at all. The curriculum is in the child. He is interested in learning some part of the world; the teacher has only to support his confidence in his own competence to learn. For the child not yet made afraid of learning and not yet doubtful about the whole­ ness of reality through "education," the teacher need do nothing. In How Children Learn Holt interacts with the young learners, but as an equal exploring, quite honestly, the same phenomena being explored by the child.

John Holt's work, while lacking the depth of George

Dennison or Paul Goodman or the experience of A. S. Neill, is foremost in making a case for free schools and in showing what they can do. John Holt is probably the main day-to-day influence in the movement.

Herbert Kohl

Herbert Kohl is now director of Other Ways, a free school in Berkeley. In 1962, with a degree in philosophy

25 What Do I Do On Monday?, p. 95. 100 from Harvard and a year’s teacher training at Columbia, he began in Harlem his first year of teaching. One of the results was 36 Children, the only of the inner-city experi­ ence books of the mid-sixties that is largely a story of success.2 8 In 1969 New York Review of Books published

Kohl's The Open Classroom, a book of observations and advice for teachers.2 7 His Teaching the Unteachable is an essay on the teaching of writing, some of which appeared later in 36 Children. The appendix includes an account of the Huntting Conference of teachers and writers at which the Teachers and Writers Collaborative was founded, with

Kohl as first director.2 8 He recently edited, with - 29 Victor Cruz, a book of children's writing titled Stuffy

The Open Classroom is recommended by sixteen of the sources, 36 Children by fourteen, and Teaching the Un­ teachable by five.

Of the five major writers, only Kohl and A. S.

Neill are currently running free schools. Kohl's readers met him at the beginning of his teaching experience in

36 Children and have seen him develop to The Open Class­ room. The title of a Teacher Paper article, "What Herb

2 6 (New York: New American Library, 1968). 27 Distributed by Vintage Books.

2 8 (New York: New York Review Books, 1967). 29 (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1970). 101

Is Doing," suggests his relationship to the movement.

More than any of the other major writers, he is a com­ patriot, sharing the life and experiences of most free school teachers. His writing is full of suggestions for teaching, and nothing that he suggests demands any extra­ ordinary talent or training. Herb Kohl is real and immediate.

The central theme of 36 Children is Kohl's respect for these Harlem children. Kohl appreciates their ability to understand and cope with their environment. With no explicit reference to A. S. Neill, he presents a powerful argument in support of Neill's concept of child develop­ ment- Once an atmosphere of freedom has been created in his classroom, the children begin to exhibit their true selves and begin to function and learn with a natural efficiency. •

The Open Classroom deals with how to create an open environment in which children can function. Kohl does not define the open classroom, but characterizes it well when he states: "In an open classroom the teacher must be as much himself as the pupils are themselves."

This distinguishes it from authoritarian and permissive classrooms; in either the teacher plays a role and thereby

30 James Herndon, February, 1971, pp. 8-10. limits the possible behaviors of the children.,,3‘*' "Only when a teacher emerges as another person in the class­ room can a free environment based upon respect and trust evolve. " 3 2 The role of the teacher, then, is much the same as that seen by A. S. Neill. Except for Kohl's more explicit concern for social change, Kohl's defini­ tion of the role of the school could have been written by

Neill:

School at its best can be a place where young people can come to know themselves, their strengths and weaknesses, and get themselves ready to change a society which makes so little sense.33

Herb Kohl's concept of the open classroom, includ­ ing the model in 36 Children, is very closely related to the open classroom of the British Infant Schools. He makes no reference to these schools and appears to have come independently to similar ways of thinking and working.

They differ mainly in that Kohl is more concerned with the relationships in the classroom and dedicates a lot of his thought to freeing up the children who have already been stifled by the one-way classroom* Kohl also is not as concerned with controlling the materials of the envir­ onment as the Leicestershire people. 103

Herb Kohl is strictly an indigenous phenomenon; he, better than any of the other major writers, is a voice from the ranks of the movement. His message, at bottom, is be yourself, allow the kids to be themselves, and things will work out.

George Dennison 34 - George Dennison's The Lives of Children is recom­ mended by twenty sources, making him the most popular one book author in the movement. He was the most well received speaker at the Zaca Lake Conference on Alterna­ tives and wrote a letter to NSE that was reprinted in

This Magazine and generated a lot of discussion.^

The Lives of Children is a book very similar to

Summerhi11. Dennison tells of his working with children at the First Street School, a very small free school in the predominantly Puerto Rican lower east side of New

York. John Holt said of the book: "Virtually every page of it contains more truth than can be found in most writ­ ings on educational psychology.. . . It is an American book; the children are typical of the so-called "disad­ vantaged" of our educational literature; the school is a

34 (New York: Vintage Books, 1969).

3 5 Thi,s Magazine. Vol. 4, No. 4 (Fall, 1970), pp. 115-137. 36 New York Review of Books, October 9, 1969. Reprint available from John Holt, p. 1, 104 day school, struggling for existence; and Dennison, with­ out A. S. Neill's background in Freud and Reich, does his psychology in a framework of Goodman, Holt, Kohl, and Piaget, He mentions on the first page of the book inspiration from the same books that this study has found mentioned by current American free schools. He follows these references with "The question now is what to do."3^

What follows is a practical description of a good free school in action.

Early in the book Dennison summarizes his three main points:

(1 ) that the proper concern of a primary school is not education in a narrow sense, and still less preparation for later life,-but the present lives of children— a point made repeatedly by John. Dewey, and very poorly under­ stood by many of his followers, (2 ) that when the conventional routines of a school are abolished. • . , what arises is neither a vacuum nor chaos, but rather a new order. • . • (3) that running a primary school--provided it be small— is an extremely simple thing, • • ,3 8

The first point is nearly identical with the main point of A. S. Neill, but in the context of the First

Street School the children must work out their lives in a tough and threatening environment and they go home each

37,P. 3.

38 Pp. 8-10, 105

evening to an environment most suspicious of any but the

most punitive educational measures* Part of untieing

these children is helping them progress in school skills*

The order that Dennison sees taking shape in the

lives of children, as regards his second point, is the

type of naturally ordered learning that John.Holt has described and the type of social and moral order des­

cribed by Paul Goodman* Dennison makes reference to the works of Holt and is familiar, largely through Feather-

stone, with the Leicestershire open classroom. Although he is more concerned with the psychological development of children than with any academic accomplishments,

Dennison is more concerned with reading, for example, than

Neill*

Dennison has criticized free schools that say they aim at self-discovery: "When someone says, * I want to know who I am,' what he really means is that he hasn't found the activities, the friends, and the loyalities that he can give himself to*" A free school, he says, 39 should facilitate "the going out, not the turning in." Dennison’s third point is that free primary schools can work* In fact, his book is the most thorough and convincing statement, that free primary schools can work in contemporary America* He has doubts about the feasibility

39NSEN, N o . 49, p. 9. 106 of schooling at all for teenagers; he is in favor of an urban apprenticeship education for them: "You need the excitement and bigness of real life to bring out real 40 things in adolescents."

Paul Goodman

Paul Goodman has called himself "an old friend and

Dutch uncle of the free schools."4'*’ He certainly has been good to the movement. In 1960 his Growing Up Absurd established the need for a radically different education 42 of American youth. In 1964 his Compulsory Miseducation perceptively analyzed the basic problems of education on all levels and at the same time introduced a wide audience to A. S. Neill and the beginnings of the new progressive movement in America.4 3 The movement he writes of was the beginning of the free schools movement that came into full blossom in 1967; his book certainly had a hand in bringing that movement about. He has felt an obligation to help out those projects based on his ideas, even when his ideas have been misunderstood; he has, therefore, been

4 0 Ibid., p. 8 .

4 1 NSEN, No. 40, p. 3.

4 2 (New York, Vintage BOoks).

43 (New York, Vintage Books)• 107 an active speaker and letter writer in the current free schools movement.4 4 His 1970 The New Reformation brings up to date the ’’Present Moment of Progressive Education” chapter of Compulsory Miseducation, putting the free schools movement in a critical perspective that only

Goodman’s experience and wisdom could afford.4^ When released in paper and spread widely among free school people, The New Reformation could have a deepening effect on the movement.4 6 Goodman is particularly concerned with the free schools' failure to abandon outmoded con­ cepts of teaching and learning while abandoning valuable intellectual traditions.

Of Goodman's twenty-six books, Compulsory Misedu­ cation and Growing Up Absurd were the most recommended, each by eight sources. The New Reformation received only four recommendations, certainly because it is too new to 47 * be on most lists. The Community of Scholars is iccom- 48 mended by four sources, the novel Empire Cxty by two.

44 The New Reformation (New York: Random House, 1970), pp. 117-118.

45 Pp. 65-121.

46 Allen Graubard, "Two Reviews," NSEN, No. 39, p. 4.

4 7 (New York: Vintage, 19

48 (New York: Collier, 1962). 108

Three sources simply recommended ’’Goodman's writings."

A total of fifteen sources recommended at least one book or article by Goodman.

Goodman's major recent concern about free schools has been the education of adolescents:

I do not need to repeat what is wrong with the time-wasting and spirit-breaking official high schools. But so-called free high schools rob the young in another way by legitimizing and fixating the youth culture, which is not viable, and by deepening the generation gap.

He proposes that the money spent for teenagers' education be given to them to spend in any way "as long as they are engaged in any worthwhile activity that will help them get into the world." He says this must not be done in a school environment: "unly the city and its on-going functions has sufficient scope to be an educational 49 environment." This is not a new idea; it can be found, less directly stated, in both Growing Up Absurd and

Compulsory Miseducation. In People or Personnel he shows that an urban apprenticeship program would not be diffi- 50 cult or expensive to operate. Goodman says that after a few suburban high schools have been burned down, junior high school students begin to play truant in droves, and taxpayers have cut off almost all education funds, some

4 9 NSEN, No. 40, p. 3.

.2 0 (New York: Vintage, 1968), pp. 201-203. 109 other people will begin to say what he has been saying for some time.^l Meanwhile some free schools have been founded as compromises between schooling and Goodman’s proposal of apprenticeships. Philadelphia's Parkway

Project is most prominent among them. The Apprenticeship

Service Project in California is setting up a legal frame­ work in which true apprenticeships for adolescents can be organized.

Other Important Writers

Robert Greenway and Salli Rasberry

The Rasberry Exercises: How to Start Your Own 52 School (And Make a Book), often called the Rasberry-

Greenway Exercises,, was recommended by thirteen sources.

In content, form and style, it, better than any other publication, exhudes the spirit of the West Coast free schools movement.

Robert Greenway wrote a letter to fellow parents of

Redwood School in Sonoma County, California, that was quoted in Issue 25 of New Schools Exchange Newsletter.

The great demand for copies encouraged NSE to reprint it as Issue 26 and encouraged Greenway and Salli Daniels to

51 The New Reformation, p. 6 8 .

52 (Freestone, California: Freestone Publishing, 1970). 110 put together more ideas about free schools. With help from NSE they began collecting information, and Salli apprenticed herself to Big Rock Candy Mountain to learn layout and production.5 3 The printer says that they came to him "radiant, expectant, and prepared to be afraid," like "newlyweds to a book." They kept the book com­ pletely under their control; despite its popularity it is still available only from them. 5 5 The book is warm and informal. The writing is beautifully straightforward; quotes and pictures and illustrations are included with an order that never seems rigid. The book includes the philosophical and social underpinnings of free schools, mostly through quotes, a great amount of curricular ideas and things free schools can do, descriptions of schools, and a lot of concrete directions about tax forms, state laws, and such.

The present study is about the free schools move­ ment; it stands outside, looks in largely through the printed page, and tries to describe in an orderly way;

Rasberry-Greenway Exercises is the free schools movement telling about itself— from inside and with spontaneity.

5 3 Ibid., p. 123.

5 4 Ibid., p. 124.

55 At Freestone Publishing, 440 Bohemian Highway, Freestone (Sebastopol), California 95472. Ill

It is the most comprehensive and characteristic publica­ tion of the free schools movement.

Edgar Z. Friedenberg .

Friedenberg's Vanishing Adolescent5*^ is recom- mended by eight sources; his Coming of Aoe in .America by nine; The Dignity of Youth5 8 by six. His articles for

This Magazine are often mentioned; "Our Contemtuous Hair­ dressers"5^ has been reprinted by New England Free Press and distributed widely by Teacher Drop-out Center.

Friedenberg is a sociologist. His contribution to the movement has been his analyses of the destructive powers of the public schools. He calls himself a conser­ vative and speaks effectively of the need for a radical change in education if we are to preserve our traditional values of individual rights and independence.

Ivan Illich 60 Illich's Celebration of Awareness was recom- 61 mended by seven sources. His DeSchooling Society was

56(New York: Dell Publishing, 1962). 57 (New York: Random House-Vintage, 1965). 58, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965). 5° The New England Free Press, 791 Tremont Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02118. 60, (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1970).

(New York: Harper and Row, 1971). 112 recommended by four sources prior to publication. CER has

been making reprints of his articles available. His

ideas and his school, CIDOC, have been featured in many 62 free school publications. Illich is opposed to free schools, but for reasons

that free schools must respect. His work in education

shows that schooling in any form is inextricably linked

to the major social ills of the world. Illich says that

free schools function only to slow down the death of 63 schooling and the birth of a new order of education. Illich deeply bothers free school people. His review of This Book Is About Schools in the New York Times

could even be called an attack. Issue 59 of NSE contains four pieces on Illich's thinking; the long delay before

Issue 60 must have had some subscribers wondering if the

staff had thought it over and closed up. Some members of

Tree School in Menlo Park, California, have formed "Kids

in the World” to set up a network based on Illich’s ideas; 64 they are being supported by Portola Institute.

^2 E.G. Toby Moffett, ’’Leaving the Guru Behind,” EdCentric, Vol. Ill, No. 3 (April, 1971), 3-7. And Shepherd Bliss, "Ivan Illich and the Center for Intercul- tural Documentation," Outside the Net, No. 2 (Spring, 1971), pp. 16-17.

63NSEN No . 59, p. 3. And "The Alternative to Schooling," Saturday Review, June 19, 1971, pp. 44-59.

.64NSEN, No, 59, p. 8. 113

It was toward the end of this study that Illich*s

DeSchooling Society was published. That same week an article appeared in Saturday Review that Illich considers his final statement on education. 6 5 It is yet to be seen whether the free schools movement will deschool and begin to work toward the educational networks he proposes.

More likely his ideas will be used to bolster non- compulsory education and the urban apprenticeships programs.

Jonathan Kozol

Jonathan Kozol*s Death at an Early Age was recom­ mended by ten sources. The book exposes the oppressive nature of the public schools; part of its relevance to the free schools movement is that it shows that new programs and specialists in public schools serve only to compound the problems and make the public schools more lethal.6 6 Kozol is currently working a free school in Boston that he helped found. At the Bronx Konference on Alter­ natives he was a featured guest and was given hero status for pouring his book profits into the free school.

A C Saturday Review, June 19, 1971, p. 44.

66(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1968).

67 Kommunications on Alternatives, No. 1 (May, 1971), pp. 14-15. 114

Charles Rathbone

Charles Rathbone is assistant professor of educa­ tion at Oberlin College. His Open Education; Selected Readings 68 was recommended by four sources and other articles of his by four sources. Rathbone is a proponent of the British Infant Schools' open education mode. In his article in This Magazine Is About Schools, he is able to speak of the effects on his own consciousness of retraining for open education. 69 His is a sure voice-- he knows about and wants to spread a particular way of running a school— and at the same time it is the warm personal voice of a man with a free school tvay of think-'

■? v* «-*

Rathbone wrote with Roland Barth an article titled

MFocus: The Open Schooln which has been recommended by

Big Rock Candy Mountain and distributed widely by The

Center Forum. The article gives a brief explanation of 70 the "open school" and a long annotated bibliography.

Joseph Featherstone

Joseph Featherstone is a contributing editor of

New Republic. Since 1967 he has been largely responsible

68(New York: Citation Press, 1970). 69 "Lesson from Loughborough," Vol. 3, Issue 1 (Winter, 1969), 119-128.

70Center Forum. Vol. 3, No. 7 (July, 1969), 1-5. 115 for popularizing British open education in this country.

New Republic reprinted three of his 1967 articles as "The 7T Primary School Revolution in Britain!1; this reprint was recommended by eleven sources. Charles Rathbone recommends that someone unfamiliar with the British 72 Infant Schools start with the Featherstone reprint. The articles describe open classrooms in Leicestershire and frame their educational significance within the • 7 3 present crisis in American education.

Svlvia Ashton-Warner

74 Sylvia Ashton-Warner*s Teacher was recommended by eleven sources. Three sources recommend her Spinster,7^* a novel made of the ideas of. Teacher, Bell Call.76 a novel 77 about alternatives in child rearing, and Myself.

^Available from Pitman Publishers.

72 Center Forum, loc. cit., p . 2• 73 These and other articles on education by Feather- stone are now released as Schools Where Children Learn (New York: Liveright, 1971).

74 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963).

75(New York: Bantam, 1959).

7^(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964).

77 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964). 116

Teacher is the story of Miss Ashton-Warner's twenty-four years of teaching Maori childrenin New

Zealand. The book is an explanation of her Creative

Teaching Scheme, a method usually called "organic teach­ ing" in the free scnools literature; her teaching is based on what is alive to the children--what is an organic part of their lives. Her ways of teaching language skills axe followed in many free schools.

She has recently come to America and is teaching at

Aspen Community Schools, Aspen, Colorado, under her real 78 name, Mrs. K. H. Henderson.

James Herndon 79 • James Herndon's The Way It Spozed To Be is recom­ mended by seven sources. His How to Survive in Your Native

Land, ® 0 published toward the end of this study, already has three recommendations. Herndon also writes frequently for Teacher paper.

Herndon's The Way It Spozed To 3e is a humorous book about his growing understanding of children in an inner-city school. He illustrates beautifully the con-

7 8 NSEN, No. 54, p. 6 .

79 (New York: Bantam Books, 1968).

80(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970).

81 E.g. February, 1971 issue and April, 1971 issue. 117

stricting role of student expectations. Eventually he

works out a version of the open classroom that makes

sense given the personalities of the chiJLdren .and him­

self. His new book, How To Survive in Your Native Land,

might eventually become a classic in the free schools

literature. It is a humorous book, in a sort of James

Thurber vein, telling of the escapades of him, his friend

Frank, and the children of a public elementary school as

they try to make some sense out of their days together.

Herndon is loose, wise and fun-loving. The book is full

of new insights. He discovers some powerful truths about

being honest with children; the kids sense the meaningless­

ness of his trying to do what they want. The class comes

alive when hedecides to do what he wanted to do--make a

movie about The Hawk.

Herndon, especially in his new book, lives a kind

of honest authenticity that gives meaning to being "free."

Ronald Gross

Ronald Gross is editor-in-chief of the Academy for

Educational Development. With his wife Beatrice he edited Q p Radical School Reform, recommended by five sources, 83 and with Paul Osterman he edited High School, published

®^(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970).

83 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971). 118 during this study and recommended by two sources#

Gross has contributed articles to NSEN^ 4 and EdCentric^^ and has edited other books.

Both of the highly recommended books are made up largely of articles by the writers of the free schools movement. Radical School Reform reprints sections of well known books by Holt, Goodman, and Herndon. Part

Three is descriptions of free schools and free teachers in action, including Dennison, Kohl, and Ashton-Warner•

There is finally a bibligraphy of radical school reform, used as one of the sources in this study. This anthology is a sampler, adding nothing to free schools literature, but making some of it more accessible to a wider audience.

High School is a better book. About two-thirds of it consists of material not available elsewhere. It in­ cludes a section mostly of student writings titled ’'What

It's Like" and descriptions of seven innovative and free high schools under the title "Jumping the Track." The book includes previously unavailable recent writings by

Herb Kohl and Jonathan Kozol. Gross's bibliography on

84 , No. 56, p. 5.

8 5 November-December, 1970, p. 11. 86 The Teacher and the Taught (New York: Dell Publish ing, 1963) and Tiie Revolution in the Schools (Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964). 119 radical school reform is updated and a list of sources of information added. The book fails to deal with the

Goodman and Illich proposals to eliminate formal (and formally informal) education for adolescents nor with the more radical high schools that are carrying the urban apprenticeship mode beyond that of the Parkway

Project. It is, however, a good collection of informa­ tion about the American high school at .its best and worst.

Peter Marin

Peter Marin's article "The Open Truth and the Fiery

Vehemence of Youth" is a free school classic. It appears

This Book Is About Schools, High School, and Change, and is excerpted in NSEN, Rasbery-Greenway Exercises, 87 and This Magazine. It is recommended by seven sources.

Marin is a fellow of the Center for the Study of

Democratic Institutions, for which he originally wrote the essay. He is the former director of Pacific High

School. Much of his thinking is treated in the section on New Schools Exchange, for which he is a regular writer.

"The Open Truth. . ." is less about adolescents than about Marin's self-conscious attempt to record some of the contradictory feelings he has about them. Marin is

87 This Book« pp. 133-163. High School, pp. 23-50; Rick Kean, ed., .Change (Washington: Center for Educa­ tional Reform, 1970), pp. 14-42. 120 appreciated most by those who read his work as poetic prose, and not appreciated by those who read it as poor poetry.

Jerry Farber's "The Student as Nigger" has been passed around among students everywhere since it appeared in the Los Angeles Free Press in 1967. It is included in a paperback of essays and stories published in 1969 as QQ The Student as Nigger. The paperback is recommended by seven sources.

The essays and stories in Farber's book constitute a criticism of the official school system. Farber says in the introduction that he originally saw the student as the slave of teacher and administrators; "Now I real­ ize more clearly than before that students are society's slaves and that the teachers are no more than overseers. " 8 9

His essay "The Student and Society" is one of the most clear and succinct treatments of the "hidden curriculum" of Illich's thought.9 0 "What we do learn very well,"

Farber shows, "• • • is to accept choices that have been made for us."9*

88(New York: Contact Books).

89P. 16. 90 Personal correspondence from Jordan Bishop, faculty member of CIDOC, Cuernavaca. 91 Student as Nigger, p. 20. 121

A. S. Neill, perhaps aware of all the legal hassles over reproduction of Farber's nasty language, 92 - calls it "an arresting book.” Farber’s treatment of student-teacher-society relationships has meaning not only as a critique of schooling, but as a challenge to any teacher1s concept of himself as teacher.

Richard M» Jones

Richard M. Jone's Fantasy and Feeling in Education was recommended by six sources. Robert Greenway, who reviewed the book for Big Rock Candy Mountain, calls the book "a psychologist's book by a man whose spirit and soul and free-loving nature are almost lost in the formal rhetoric. . . . The book comes from the Endicott Conference and the origins of "Man--A Course of Study." Jones is arguing, against Bruner, that the control of feeling is a limitation of logic rather than a necessary aspect; The book is on the importance of fantasy and feeling in educa­ tion and how emotion might be handled without being 94 intellectualized•

02 Summerhill Society Bulletin, November-December, 1970, p. 2.

93 3ig Rock Candy Mountain, Summer, 1970, p. 4,

94 (New York: Harper and Row, 1968). 122

Elwyn Richardson

Richardson's In the Early World is recommended by

six sources. Richardson recounts his experience teaching at the Oruaiti school in New England. His basic prin­ ciple is that children recognize themselves through the products that they make. His teaching, therefore, inte­ grates creative efforts throughout the curriculum. The book is practical and is fully illustrated with student art work and writing.9 5

Other Recommended Works

Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner

Postman and Weingartner's Teaching as a Subversive

Activity9^ was recommended by ten sources; the Soft 97 Revolution by two. Postman is a professorcf education at New York University, Weingartner at Queens College,

Postman is the more prominent of the two; he has written 98 for Outside the Net and does much lecturing. His speech at the Bronx Konference on Alternatives, with his claim that people who left the publid school system were

95 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1964). 96 (New York: Delacorte press, 1969).

9^(New York: Delacorte Press, 1971).

98No. 1, Winter, 1971. 123

"copping out," helped the many people sharply against him go to get organized.

The "soft revolution" is not a radical concept. In both books Postman and Weingartner detail the horrors of the school system and analyze them in clever, though superficial ways. Quotes from Dewey, McLuhan, and the

New York Times are brought together on a point; ideas are pulled in from a wide knowledge of the liberal intellectual tradition. But the proposed changes, the revolution, is most definitely soft. The writers suggest that "changes" as "Limit each teacher to three declarative sentences per class, and fifteen interrogatives" and "Require all teachers to take a test prepared by students on what the students know."^0® These suggestions, like both of the books, are entertaining and would be fun to try, in the context of a.traditional school. Postman and Weingartner are the only recommended writers who try to solve the problem of dehumanization by slightly rearranging the processes by which people are dehumanized; they are efficiency experts rather than revolutionaries.

Perhaps Teaching as a Subversive Activity is recommended by free schools sources because it is an

^Kommunications on Alternatives, No. 1 (May, 1971), p . — . ------

^ ^ Teaching as a Subversive Activity, pp. 138-139. 124 easy to read, entertaining, good-natured criticism of public school thinking.

Education and Ecstasy

George Leonard's Education and Ecstasy was recom­ mended by sixteen sources, ten of them schools. Leonard is a writer for Look magazine; this book is his only work in education. It puts in a popular simple presentation a criticism of the public schools and some ideas as to the way schools could change if they would only heed the recent advances in technology and psychology. Education and Ecstasy is a book that a free school teacher might give to a parent who is thinking about removing his child from public school.

Crisis in the Classroom

102 - Charles Silberman's Crisis in the Classroom is recommended by eleven free school sources, an amazing number for a book which so lightly dismisses people such as John Holt, George Dennison, and Paul Goodman. Teacher

Paper calls it "The $300,000 Misunderstanding": "Somehow he seems to think that a society of free men can be built

101(New York: Delacorte Press, 1968).

102 (New York: Random House, 1970). 125 on so ordering society that teachers control the learning process.M,.103

Those free schools that recommend Crisis in the

Classroom probably do so because it shows the public education system exposed in detail by one of its own and on its own ground.

The Psychologists

Five psychologists are popular in free schools literature. The works of Carl Rogers are recommended by twelve sources, Abraham Maslow by nine, Jean Piaget by seven, Eric Fromme by six, and Frederick Peris by five.

The most popular Rogers book is On Recoming a

Person^^^ recommended by eight sources. His latest book,

Freedom to Learn,^"* is recommended by four schools. 106 Three sources recommend Person to Person. The nine recommendations for Maslow are all for Toward a Psychol- 107 ogy of Being. The most frequently recommended books

103 R. J. Burkhardt, Jr., April, 1971, p. 23.

104 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1961).

1 0 5 (Columbus, Merrill Publishing, 1970).

106 . (Lafayette, California: Real People Press, 1967).

107 (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1968). 126

108 109 by Fromm are Man Against Himself,. The Sane Society,

The Art of Loving.-*-^ and Escape from F r e e d o m . These three men are the most prominent founders of Third Force psychology. They have developed and explained humanistic psychology, a psychology not based on a concept of man as evil or fragmented, but on a concept of man as a growing self-actualizing total being. They laid the psychological foundations for free schools and their works continue to give direction to those schools.

Jean Piaget's Plays, Dreams, and Imitation in 112 Childhood was recommended by five sources, The Origins 113 of Intelligence in Children by three. Seven other of

Piaget's books were recommended by two sources.'1"'1'4 Piaget is appreciated for the insights he gives into the psychology of children. Plays, Dreams, and Imitation shows some of the limiting effects of Western culture on the

^ 8 (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1947)

109 (New York: Avon Books, 1955).

110(New York: Harper and Row, 1956).

■^^(New York: Avon Books, 1941). n ? J"L,i(New York: W. W. Norton, 1962).

113(New York: W. W. Norton, 1963).

^^See listing in Bibliography. 127 growth of the child and implies educational goals for free school teachers who do not want the child to be imprisoned by the logical method, so often taken in our culture to be all of reality.

Frederick Perls's Gestalt Therapy, written with

Ralph Hefferline and Paul Goodman, was recommended by three sources; it is a series of exercises in perception followed by the organization of these exercises into the n c < framework of Gestalt Psychology. Gestalt Therapy

Verbatim, recommended by four sources, is a simple explana 116 tion of Gestalt Therapy. Janet Lederman's Anger and the Rocking Chair, a transcript of Gestalt Therapy in action in a classroom, was recommended by two sources.^^ Gestalt Therapy deals with the now and how— being here in the present and being concerned with what is going on. It has had a great influence on most young minds; for many people it has become a way of dealing with all of life.

The educational implications are strong and practical toward making a classroom truly open, as Miss Lederman*s book shows.

115 (New York: Dell Publishing, 1951).

(Layfayette, California: Real People Press, 1969). 117 (New York: McGraw-Hill Company, 1969)„ 128

The Forefathers

The four ancestors of the free schools movement most often acknowledged by the movement are Jean

Jacques Rousseau, Homer Lane, Maria Montessori, and

John Dewey. 118 Rousseau's Emile laid down the basic tenets of free education. It is recommended by five sources.

Homer Lane was born in Massachusetts in 1875, attended Sloyd Training College in Boston and stayed in

Boston working at developing educational programs. He was probably in contact with John Dewey in those years.

He continued to develop his concepts of free, education as superintendent of playgrounds in Detroit and practiced them as director first of the Ford Republic in Detroit and later the Little Commonwealth in Dorset, England, both homes for delinquent youth. After the Little Common­ wealth closed because of unproven accusations against

Lane, he lived in London, lectured and did psychoanaly­ sis.1 1 9 One of his patients was A. S. Neill, who, in the introduction to Talks to Parents and Teachers, states:

"It was from Lane that I obtained the idea of self- government at Summerhill. He showed me the necessity of

118 (New York: Dutton, 1932). 119 Aneta W. Sperber, "Homer Who?" Outside the Net, No. 2 (Spring, 1971), pp. 32-32. 129 looking deep for the causes of misbehavior."■i 2 0 Homer

Lane did not write* His Talks to Parents and Teachers was put together by his students.3-21 E* T. Bazeley 122 wrote Homer Lane and the Little Commonwealth. Both are recommended by four sources.

Maria Montessori began her free schools in Italy early in this century. She saw that physical and mental passivity in school were harmful to children. She developed materials, such as her sandpaper alphabet, from which the child, free in the planned environment, could learn. Maria Montessori is recognized by some free school people as an originator of the movement; others point out that children under her method are not intel­ lectually free. In Europe the Montessori Method has a dogmatic flavor to it. In America a two-year training program is necessary for certification and some of these official Montessori teachers have connected themselves with the free schools movement. Some free teachers have read Montessori books and use some of her materials*

Books by Montessori are recommended by six sources.

1 90 (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), p. 8 .

1 2 1 Sperber, p. 31.

122 (New York: Schocken Books, 1969). 130

John Dewey is the father of the American free schools movement. Some free school people would not say that; they do not want to associate themselves with all the distortions of Dewey's thought that have become part of educational jargon. Seven of the sources used in this study recommended books by Dewey. Schools of 123 Tomorrow is recommended by four sources; it is the simplest statement of Dewey's thought, and his descrip­ tions of the free schools of 1915 are important to give perspective to today's movement. Recommended four times was The School and Society, Dewey's first educational classic, the lectures he gave to the parents of his l? 4 laboratory school in Chicago. T Four sources recommend

Experience and Education, Dewey's critical examination of the excesses committed in the name of progressive education.^-2 5 Three sources recommend The Child and the

Curriculum, his study of the tension between the needs of 1 PA the child and the traditions of society. His major work on the philosophy of education, Democracy and

123 (New York: Dutton, 1915).

124 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1915).

125 (New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1938).

X26 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1963). 131

127 Education, was recommended by three sources. Dewey’s

statements about the purposes of education, especially in Schools of Tomorrow, and Democracy and Education are good statements about the purposes of the free schools movement today. His analyses of the problems of progressive education in Experience and Education and

The Child and the Curriculum are largely applicable to free schools today. The current movement has taken Dewey's thought to more radical applications than he had imagined, perhaps, but it is the same movement he started.

Summary and Conclusions

This chapter has treated the major and important writers and works of the free schools movement and the psychologists and forefathers who have laid the founda­ tion of the movement.

The major and important works fit into four groups: critics of the schools, social critics, books about inspired teachers, and indigenous free schools literature.

The first of these groupings, criticism of the schools, consists of the writings of John Holt, Jonathan

Kozol, the anthologies, of Ronald Gross, Teaching as a Sub­ versive Activity, Education and Ecstasy, and Crisis in

(New York: Macmillan, 1916). 132

the Classroom. These books analyze the public schools in

such a way as to suggest that reform from within is fruit­

less or at the least very long-range and difficult. These

books make a case of the need for free schools.

The second grouping, social criticism, contains

the works of Paul Goodman, Edgar Z. Friedenberg, Ivan

Illich, Jerry Farber, and Peter Marin, These books bring

into perspective the dehumanizing effects of modern

society. They show that man has created a society so powerful that it exists for its own progress, crushing

each person in the process. They see this society

using "education" to rob the young of any sense of control

of their own destinies. These social critics are, in a

real way, the philosophers for the free schools movement.

The third grouping consists of books about

inspired teachers: Herb Kohl, James Herndon, Sylvia

Ashton-Warner, and the accounts provided by Charles

Rathbone and Joseph Featherstone. These books relate in

two ways to the free schools movement: as an inspiration and as a model of what can be done with freedom.

The fourth grouping consists of the books that can be said to be the free schools literature in the strictest

sense of the term, A. S. Neill’s Summerhill, George

Dennison’s The Lives of Children, and Rasberry-Greenway

Exercises. 133

This chapter adds to the definition of the free

schools movement by giving meaning to the phrase

"inspired and informed by a definable group of writers."

These writers were seen to give the movement an historical

perspective far beyond 1967, a social perspective far

beyond discontent with a local public school, and a

psychological perspective rooted deeply in the work of the

great humanist psychologists of this century.

The free schools movement can now be defined as an

informal network of schools interrelating through the

eleven identified publications and inspired and informed

by A. S. Neill, John Holt, Herb Kohl, George Dennison,

Paul Goodman, Robert Greenway and Salli Rasberry, Edgar

Z. Friedenberg, Ivan Illich, Jonathan Kozol, Charles

Rathbone, Joseph Feather stone, Sylvia Ashton-W&rner , •

James Herndon, Ronald Gross, Peter Marin, Jerry Farber,

Richard M. Jones, Elwyn Richardson, Carl Rogers, Abraham

Maslow, Jean Piaget, Erich Fromm, Frederick Peris,

Jean Jacques Rousseau, Homer Lane, Maria Montessori, and

John Dewey.

A simplified version could just include the five raaj'or writers. Combined with the simplified definition from Chapter II it would read: The free schools move­ ment is an informal network of schools interrelating

through New Schools Exchange, This Magazine Is About- 134

Schools, Big Rock Candy Mountain, and Teacher Drop-out

Center, and inspired and informed by A. S. Neill, John

Holt, Herb Kohl, George Dennison, and Paul Goodman. CHAPTER IV

THE SCHOOLS OF THE FREE SCHOOLS MOVEMENT

Introduction

Chapter IV is an analysis of the descriptive lit­ erature prepared by the free schools themselves. In all cases the concern here will be with what the schools say about themselves. The major source is the self- descriptions that each school prepares for prospective students and their parents and for promulgation to iden­ tify the school. These are often reprinted in movement publications, especially New Schools Exchange. A large number of these were obtained directly from the schools as a result of the mailing done for this study. A few schools are described in books, most notably Summerhill and the now defunct First Street School.

From these sources this chapter will deal with three topics. First some idea of the range of free schools will be presented. Secondly, the free school will be defined by stating and describing the basic prin­ ciples found in their literature. Thirdly, the three curricular modes of the free schools will be defined and illustrated.

135 136

The Range of Free Schools

There may be quite a bit of questioning and serious concern for purpose and curriculum in a school that would not get reflected in a school’s description of itself*

Even taking this into consideration, the outstanding trait of free school descriptions is a breezy joy. The approach of Shire School is somewhat typical: nYou can't really write what Shire is— you have to see it, get involved with the kids, be part of it for a while, know its hopes

and problems. ” 1 A section of the Community Free School

of Seattle’s self-description reads almost like a parody

of free school descriptions: ’’learning, freedom, garden,

cow, noise, chickens, anarchy, loving, healthy, happy,

living. • • sun. Love within and without.” The Com­

munity School of Bellingham, Washington, in a poetic&lly

structured description says: ’’Th e community school is

the composite breath of the free community.” Most des­

criptions are a bit more sober; but spirits are always

high, which may say more about what goes on in the schools

than even a detailed account. In every case physical and

affective concerns rank at least as high, if not higher,

than academic. Ananda School says that it is a school

^■Quotes from schools' descriptive literature will not be footnoted, even though some have been reprinted in NSEN. 137

"where the curriculum is based on physical, mental and spiritual balance." It is typical of the new schools to work at achieving such a balance. Most, however, do not make such a statement. They speak rather of an environ­ ment or life style, not conceiving the possibility of dividing a person into physical, mental, and spiritual, much less psychomotor, cognitive, and affective.

In The Child and the Curriculum John Dewey set up a contrast between the child-centered school and the curri­ culum-oriented school. In doing so he wrote that "it is the danger of the new education that it regard the child’s present powers and interests as something finally signifi­ cant in Themselves. " 2 He suggests to the child-centered school "environing conditions" to start and guide thought.2 The free schools seem to operate in such a context. Some failing: "Now I go to Solebury School," a student writes

NSE. "It's very loose and permissive, but not in a loving way. I get the feeling teachers are just neglecting the kids here. " 4 Others in varying degrees provide learn­ ing environments ranging from the intellectually controlled

2 P. 15.

3 Pp. 18 and 25. 4 ' NSEN, No. 56, p. 11. 138

Montessori environments to the apprenticeship schools that use the city— the most uncontrolled environment.

Hudson School, in Hudson, Ohio, is a Montessori school.

The New School in Cincinnati grew from a Montessori school and now speaks of "a carefully prepared environment.”

The Orange County (California) Free School offers a curriculum that evolves in response to the children's interests, providing for the child ”a wealth of resources and equipment.” The Educational Circus of Brooklyn

Heights provides nursery school equipment which includes multi-media apparatuses and video equipment. Portland's

Metropolitan Learning Center has a curriculum of different rooms— science, language arts, music, along with daily field trips. At the Bar 717 Ranch School in Hayfork,

California, the program of the school centers around the on-going process of running the ranch. One issue of NSEN features side by side a school that sees the natural sur­ roundings of the ranch as the real world from which school subjects arise and one which expects the same of 5 the city. Many schools for teenagers, such as the

Cleveland Urban Learning Center, use the Parkway Project model of the city as curriculum.

Some of the schools require students to create a

5Rancho Mariposa School, Redwood Valley, Cali­ fornia, and Columbus Metropolitan School, No. 48, p. 4. 139 curriculum. The Study-Travel-Community School of Putney,

Vermont, asks its teenage students "to list the areas in which they would like to gain competence as well as fields and resource persons to which they would like to be exposed." The Mind Restaurant of Phoenix states that each of its students, ranging in age from three to eighteen,

"will, as his independence and confidence develops, prescribe his own curriculum."

Two free schools have course lists. The Beacon

Hill Free School in Boston lists Landlord and Tenant Rela­ tions, spinning, recorder-playing, Womenfs History,

Figure Sketching, Conversational Spanish, Ethics, Science, and Contemporary Morality. Leap School in New York's

lower East side has "information sessions" covering trig­ onometry, ghetto law, anthropology, community political education, botany, street medicine, American history,

American Revolution (the first one), Third world class, psychology, Eastern religions, Western religions, creative writing, animal behavior, and freak history.

There is not really a great distance from "learning, freedom, garden, cow. . . " to "freak history." Amost all

the listed free schools have a child-centered curriculum—

they plan to do things organically related to the life of

the students. They differ in how or even whether they

conceptualize the relationships of these things. Probably

they differ even more in how each teacher relates the 140 strivings of each child to that singular expression of the development of the human race which, in Dewey's terms, is the traditional curriculum.^ It is significant that the word "instruction” is almost never used. The one way communication implied is inimical to new school thought. The role of the teacher seems to vary from watching, through setting up learning environments, to guiding student efforts. The source of these ways of working with children seems to be not so much a conscious philosophy as an almost instinctual outgrowth of the sorts of relationships that these adults have with children.

The descriptions are warm, natural, and not at all self- conscious. They tell what is happening and take for granted that what must happen must be something organic to the child's life.

The principles of the Free Schools

It is most difficult to define what it is that makes a school a free school. The list of Teacher Drop-out

Center is called a list of "more or less free and innova­ tive schools." The list of NSE claims to be a "Directory of New Innovative Schools." It is also a list of incor­ rect addresses, defunct schools, public and private schools

^The Child and the Curriculum, p. 31. 141

angry at being called "free," and not-so-free schools

trying to cash in on the movement. The Sumraerhill Society

publishes a list of "Summerhill inspired schools."

Vocations for Social ‘Change lists "alternative schools."

Of course, it is not in keeping with the spirit of free

schools to have any source to police its list that it

becomes an accrediting agency.

The lists, consequently, provide only a starting

point for a definition of a free school. The schools on

the lists speak for and about themselves; from a large

number of self-descriptions certain patterns begin to

emerge. These generalizations must be seen in the context

of the wide range of free schools described above. The

generalizations are also, of necessity, biased toward

those schools which have clearly stated beliefs and aims.

Many schools must write descriptions that speak in the

unfree language of most prospective parents; usually

these descriptions are not as clear as those of the more

established schools. A number of schools are so free and

spontaneous that a linear verbal description is not even

seriously attempted.

The schools that do clearly spell out beliefs and

aims share the convictions of the publications and

writers treated in this study. They tend to say the same

things, but in a more simply direct way. .The common

_ convictions of these schools can be grouped under six 142 principles:

1 ) The basic nature of the human being is good.

"The Akson Free School is based on the conviction that each child is a unique and valuable human." Community

Day School in Manchester, Connecticut, states: "We be­ lieve that the basic nature of the human being, when functioning freely, is constructive and trustworthy. • ."

One of the definitions in the NSEN feature of reader definitions begins: "A free school implies a ''you are essentially God-like Beautiful.’"7 This belief is basic in all free school literature since Rousseau. Neill and

Dennison are most strong on the idea that anything not . beautiful in a child is the product of some unnatural pressure from his parents or environment. It would be impossible to allow freedom to a child if this were not believed. Maria Montessori’s Catholic belief in the fallen nature of man is possibly what kept her from allowing the child intellectual freedom. Some American

Montessori schools find themselves kin to the free school movement because of a belief in the child's thorough goodness. Herb Kohl's 36 Children and Jonathan Kozol's

Death at an Early Age show that the oppression of children in public schools is often based on the belief by teachers

7 Penny Harraa, No. 60, p. 5. 143 or administrators that children are naturally evil and must be "broken," lest they lay waste society. A good case could be made for defining free schools simply as those schools that believe that children are good.

2) Every person has a right to autonomy.

Sudbury School states that the right to think what one pleases "is violated by any and every imposed curri­ culum, new and old." The recent surge of student rights organizations comes from a realization that public schools operate in total disregard of any personal rights of students. Frederick Wiseman’s "High School" is an often mentioned illustration of the public schools* O contempt for a student*s autonomy. This contempt is the main theme of the growing number of high school under­ ground papers^ and has served as the catalyst for many free schools. The very fact of compulsory education is an affront to equal rights before the law for children and adolescents. Ivan Illich has suggested that the legality of compulsory education should be tested in the

^ 10 courts.

g See Pauline ICael, "High School--A Movie Review," This Magazine, Vol. 4 , Issue 1 (Winter, 1970), 2 3 - 2 9 .

9 NSEN, No . 54, pp. 3-4.

10The New York Times, May 3, 1971, p. 35M. 144

Free schools descriptions deal with personal free­ dom in three ways. A few speak of it as a right. The brochure of the Philadelphia Parkway Project states that

•'each student has a right to make decisions about his own education. • • • " Some see it as a moral necessity.

Every part of Sudbury School is informed with the concept that a person is fully respon­ sible for what he does, and that, in turn, he must be free to make decisions that allow him to be held accountable for his actions.

Most free schools deal with personal freedom on the psychological level: it is necessary for true learning to take place. In the words of Glorieta School: "We assume that everyone wants to learn if he is free to pursue his own interests.”

Many schools see that one of the implications of students' rights is that each student should have an equal vote on the running of the school. Many schools are run on the self-government model of Summerhill. Diane

Cabarga has written that she refused to cooperate with the formation of a parents' board for Monmouth Modern Day

School because it would have taken away from the school its self-determination*1 1 In many schools parents have a vote, but on a one-man-one-vote basis with children and staff• Glorieta School writes: "Because living and

1 1 Outside the Net, No. 1 (Winter, 1970), 6-7 145 learning are synonymous, all members of our community, whether permanent or temporary, have a voice in all decision-making."

Tree School has gone a step beyond majority rule:

Tree is a student-run school in the sense that students participate equally with staff members in making decisions within the school. • • We have been working with consensus in making de­ cisions (everyone agrees) and have learned a great deal from this model as opposed to the tra­ ditional 'majority rules’ method.

3) A child will learn naturally if allowed to follow his own interests.

The Open Living School in Denver states: "We believe that learning is an instinctive impulse, a natural appetitite. It involves the exercising of a naiively endowed skill in a naturally continuing process. . • •"

This concept concretizes and extends the basic belief in man’s goodness. It is the working principle most directly contradictory to the traditional pedagogies of the public schools. New Morning in Cincinnati states:

"We take as fundamental that the student is not a passive recepticle to be taught at, but a dynamic, creative process who wants and needs to learn by exploring the world with all his senses." It is a strange cultural phenomenon that most Americans believe that children are adverse to learning; it is in such direct contradiction to the lives of every child who has not yet been exposed 146 to public schools* In the words of The New School in

Cincinnati: "Every child has a natural capacity to make and shape his world."

Free Schools recognize that adverse conditions can ruin the natural drive toward learning. Clonlara School in Ann Arbor states: "A child will learn naturally if only he is allowed to follow the path of his own interests."

The public school’s habit of prescribing the time and sit­ uation for learning is so obviously ridiculous that it is often referred to in free school promotional pamphlets.

Sunrise School of Cleveland states: "Learning does not necessarily occur at prescribed times and places. It is very much a function of the individual’s readiness and state of mind."

4) The best learning is having one's own experience.

The New School in Cincinnati states: "The best learning comes not from learning or reading about another's experiences, but from having one's own experi­ ence." Sudbury School writes that: "Ali learning takes place in real life situations." Community Day School proposes "learning in the very present tense of a life situation." Reader Brian Neilson writes in NSEN: "I pre­ fer the term organic schools. Organic implies a unity: the recognition that learning cannot be distinct from the living of one's life is both the point of coherence 147 of the new, organic schools and the point of departure from 12 authoritarian schools.” This attitude can be traced in the literature in

one way to John Dewey, in another to Frederick Peris,

in another to Paul Goodman. Its centrality in free

schools is probably more a product of the culture of the

teachers that staff the schools. They tend to value per­

sonal honesty and reject the academic modes of thought

that have traditionally put teachers ”above” students.

Consequently their teaching is a mutual involvement in

the lives of children. They are learning with the

children, unlearning the false divisions of their academic

years, and putting together an integrated consciousness

of life:

The scope of the school is all of human activity. (Sudbury)

Interest in learning is more important than particular concepts or facts. Education is not preparation for life; it is life. What we live, we learn. (Atkinson Schools)

We believe in learning from the spontaneous and unplanned, and in making our lives the stuff which learning is made of. (Tree School)

5) A school should provide a free environment.

■ ■ ”The Glorieta School is an attempt to provide a free environment in which people can learn whatever they

1 2 No. 60, p. 5* 148 want to learn.” Free schools exist as oasis of freedom and self-direction in a society that they see as largely oppressive to the development of man's natural goodness.

The belief that education is living is, therefore, set off against a belief that living in the general society, especially its public schools, is not at all educative, but rather debilitating. The free school then becomes an island of sanity and personal freedom. "We are committed to establishing and maintaining an educational environ­ ment in which each child and adult is guaranteed his or her freedom to grow. ..." (Community Day School)

Schools differ as to how carefully they plan the educational aspects of their environment. Sunrise School attempts to be an environment "which is stimulating, yet informal, supportive, and, as far as possible, designed by the student himself." Atkinson School is concerned with setting up a social environment; one of the teachers writes:

By deliberately drawing children and adults from different cultural, economic, and racial backgrounds, and by using the community as our most valuable resource, we hope to provide the kinds of experiences and involvement that foster an understanding of our complex world.

Schools vary also in their relations with the larger community. Some, like Summerhill, and Minnesota Summer- hill Community School in Spray Island, are concerned with the child's psychological development to the extent that 149 the large community is of minimal concern. On the other extreme are the urban apprenticeship schools, such as the

Philadelphia Folk High School and New Morning. But even in these city-oriented situations, the schools, even if they have no building, are seen as a sort of psychological environment. The student's values and ways of perceiving are developed in community with the staff and students of his school.

6 ) The teacher is a fellow learner and a resource.

In the context of the free schools the typical teacher education curriculum of an equal emphasis on philosophy of education, history of education, the work­ ings of a school, teaching methods, and the study of the child, seems ridiculous. Free school people talk and write almost exclusively about the child; they are child- centered not only in their stated philosophy but in the way they go about their business. There is very little concern with the teacher and very little definition of the teacher's role, it seems to be taken for granted that the teacher who understands the student, who is develop­ ing his own awareness, and who is working at making the school a fitting thing for the children has no need of reading about what a teacher should do. When reference is made to the role of the teacher it is usually, as 150 characteristic of the writings of James Herndon and Sylvia

Ashton-Warner, a conclusion to an understanding of the children.

Some school descriptions do deal directly with the role of the teacher, but never is there any exhulted or isolated role. The teacher is not a subject-matter expert and he is not expected to be in control of the school situation. He is first of all a fellow learner and secondly, a facilitator of the students' learning, either by acting as a resource or by preparing the environment.

New Morning in Cincinnati states both roles: "The teacher is. • . a facilitator and co-learner who just happens to have already learned enough to be able to guide the search for wisdom,"

The description of Open Living School states:

"The teacher's interest will be in children and learning rather than subject matter and knowledge." In most free schools the teacher is seen as himself interested in learning--he is as much a student as those paying tuition.

At Glorieta School: "We are all learners and all teachers from time to time here, so there is no student/ faculty distinction," This is true of other free schools to varying extents. Adults have a natural authority.

They .are bigger, more experienced, and, as George Dennison has pointed out, children feel the need for the "protective. 151

i q ambience” which only adults can supply* Consequently, emphasis on the teacher as fellow learner expresses a very real truth about the teacher and, by minimizing the distinction between teacher and students, encourages students to keep the responsibility for their own learn­ ing* New Community proposes to provide a learning situ­ ation that would not alienate the older from the younger with artificial role stereotypes of "students" and

"teachers." It is a common practice in free schools to bring in outside adults as "resources" for the students*

Some of the periodicals list these. In relation to the

"subject matter" specialist, the school staff and students are equally learners.

The second role of teachers in a free school is as facilitator of learning. In some schools this role demands that - the teacher be a resource person. Open

Living School calls his role that of "emphathetic guide."

Tree School states: "The position of staff members at

Tree is to offer as many alternatives as possible to students when they request them." In other schools, especially with younger children, the teacher serves as facilitator by preparing the environment. At Atkinson

School: "The role of the staff should be to help estab­

13 NSEN, No. 40, p. 2. 152 lish an environment in which the students can achieve individual and group goals.”

Santa Fe Community School pulls together the teacher's role in one statements

Our role as teachers is to enrich their environment and to act as guides in their explorations of the world, involving ourselves in the search for knowledge.

The Curricular Modes of Free Schools

Of the definitions of free schools published in

NSEN the one that best captures the spirit of the schools and most accurately spells out common traits reads:

"I think of a free school as learner-directed, loving, community-controlled, inventive, spontaneous, where all peoples live and learn together.” 1 4 It is within this sort of context that the question of curriculum must be approached. "Curriculum” is a bad word in the free schools literature. It means a predetermined set of compulsory learnings to which teachers and learners must submit, in violation of their natural ways of learning and their rights as persons. It is seen as the corporate society's way of policing the minds of its young. To many schools, curriculum is one of the evils left.behind in the public schools, to many it is, along with absurd

14 No. 60, p. 6. 153 bookkeeping requirements, institution-oriented fire codes, and zoning regulations, a way in which the state, county or city can work at forcing all schools into the public mold.

Not only is curriculum a dirty word but, as was pointed out in Chapter II, there is little concern in the publications of the movement for curricular matters.

Those things that make a school a school free are best expressed by the six principles just treated. But free schools do have things going on that can be included in the broad definition of curriculum. Free schools are never based on curricular "models’*} what one finds in free schools could accurately be termed "curricular modes.’1 A curricular mode is the learning style of a school. The word "mode" in music means a set of relation­ ships between notes that makes for a certain mood. A song­ writer seldom starts with a mode and builds his song around it. He works naturally at a melody that makes sense to him and only later recognizes the mode that he instinctively had chosen; A similar situation seems to take place in free schools. A free school, unlike a

Montessori school for example, is not founded to operate in a certain way. It is founded in reaction to the oppression of the public schools or to express the beliefs spelled out above as the six principles of free schools.

As the teachers and students interact and the school 3.54

begins to take concrete shape it falls naturally and often

unconsciously into a curricular mode.

A curricular mode is a school's characteristic

approach to learning. Any number of curricular inodes

are possible. The inquiry approach, for example, could

be adopted schoolwide as a curricular mode. At least six

curricular modes are in wide use now: The disciplinary

mode, common in the public schools, divides reality into

academic disciplines and takes the division of reality

into discrete parts with separate functions as a cultural

norm which must be forced on children, who are naturally

"undisciplined." The elective mode is characteristic of

free universities and is used in a different form in the

Ohio Consortium of .Schools, including Bishop Ready in

Columbus and Chaminade in Dayton. The elective mode’ is

one in which a school makes available to the student

structured learning experiences and gives him the choice

of "taking" the opportunities or not. The Montessori

Method is a curricular mode; learning is approached through

a carefully controlled and manipulated environment.

A fourth curricular mode is the open classroom mode. In

this mode the school provides open ended materials and

environments as stimulants and resources for the learner, who is seen as self-motivated. A fifth rcoae is the

apprenticeship mode; this is similar to the open classroom mode, except that the school does not provide the environ­ 155 ment. A sixth mode is the psychological development mode, characteristic of schools that have as their primary aim the creation of conditions which foster the child’s natural development.

Some of the psychological development schools actually offer a rather traditional listing of courses;

Sumxnerhill is one of these. But it would be obviously inaccurate to describe Summerhill as a school with tradi­ tional curriculum. The important thing is the curricular mode at Summerhill— learning is approached as a part of the child’s natural development.

The concept of curricular mode is an accurate way to speak of the goings-on in any school. It avoids the pitfall of calling a minor course alteration a ’’change,”

A school in the disciplinary mode, for example, might change its course offerings, replacing American literature with modern writers and Latin with psychology. It is deceptive to speak of this as curricular change. Nothing in the school is changed; the curricular mode is exactly the same. But if the same school would keep its original course descriptions but make them all electives, a great change would take place in teaching and learning styles.

The ’’curriculum” would not have changed; the more telling thing, the.curricular mode, would now.be the elective mode; teachers would quickly find themselves more student- centered. 156

Free schools in America currently fall into three curricular inodes: the open classroom mode, the appren­ ticeship mode, and the psychological development mode*

The Open Classroom Mode.

The opeli "classroom mode is currently operating in over eight hundred British infant schools, in a growing number of American elementary schools, public, private, and free, and in some high schools and isolated class­ rooms. Open classrom education is characterized by a reliance on the child's natural appetite for learning.

The classroom is open in five ways: open door--children are free to come and go; the organization of each room is open— children move around the room and move the room around; time is openn--the day is one unit; content is open— subject to the interests of the child; and, in another sense of the word, the teacher, is open, open.to 15 the needs and lives of the children. This teacher openness can take many forms; there are many open class­ room schools which do not share the six principles of the free schools.

The schools of Leicestershire County 'in England have been largely responsible for demonstrating and

The five uses of "open" is an adaptation of an idea in Rathbone and Barth, "Focus: The Open School,” loc. cit., p. 1 . 157 publicizing the open classroom mode. Charles Rathbone and

Joseph Featherstone are American writers who have publi­ cized the British open classroom in this country. Herb

Kohl has been the foremost proponent of America's brand of open classroom. In 36 Children he shows how he came to the idea and xn The Open Classroom he suggests to public school teachers how they might op'en up their classes.

James Herndon, in The 'Way It Spozed To Be and How To

Survive in Your Native Land describes his own personal brand of open classroom.

Many free schools operate in the open classroom mode. Both Columbus Metropolitan School and Sunrise

School in Cleveland list many Leicestershire County books on their bibliographies. Atkinson School xn Rochester, and Ekistia School in Osprey, Florida, are open classroom schools that' have not relied on British experience.

The Apprenticeship Mode

Paul Goodman for years has been proposing that the education of adolescents should be in the real world of adults— that apprenticeships should replace the isolating high school. Recently as teenagers have become more vocal in their demands for a "relevant*1 education, more teachers have found that a classroom, no matter how open, is too constrictive for an education that deals with life. In

February, 1969, the Philadelphia public schools put into 158

operation the Parkway Project, a dramatic success that

showed that a school-without-walls can work. These

factors have led to a great interest in the apprenticeship

mode of education and the founding of a few more schools

in the mode.

The apprenticeship mode is closely related to the

open classroom mode. They share the same principles; they

differ in where the open education takes place. If a

child has been educated in his younger years in the open

classroom mode he will find it increasingly natural as

he gets older to take more advantage of the open door.

The New School in Cincinnati, for example, was the prime

force in the founding of New Morning, a high’school.

The older kids needed a place to go as they outgrew the

open classroom and the presence of The New School had

helped some local high school students to realize that

there could be an alternative to the public schools.

Some open classroom schools lean toward the

apprenticeship mode. Columbus Metropolitan School,.for

example, has always seen-the city as its main resource.

Santa Fe Community School is actively involved in the

facilities of the local community. Most of the apprentice­

ship mode schools, on the other hand, have a room or two

for seminars and classes with the school staff. The

Cleveland Urban Learning Community lists three kinds of knowledge and their appropriate settings. Action knowledge 159

is sought in places where the students can participate,

a newspaper office, for example, and a day care center.

Systematic knowledge involves going to professionals for

tutorials and classes; lawyers, accountants, and art

‘school are among those listed. Reflective knowledge,

including math, history, philosophy, and related studxes,

is treated in staff-student seminars.

Some schools, such as New Community in Coburn,

Pennsylvania, seem to balance open classroom and apprentice­

ship so well that it is impossible, without a visit, to

assign them a characteristic mode.

Apprenticeship mode schools vary in the degree of

their commitment to apprenticeship programs. Cleveland

Urban Learning Community and Parkway Project use the

resources of the city, but do not really apprentice

students in the strict sense of the word. The students

of Study-Travel-Community School of Sheffield, Massachu­

setts, live individually or in groups with carpenters,

Indians, or communes that they travel to. One student

went to live in Sweden for a few months. The Apprentice­

ship Service Program in Montara, California, is an

apprenticeship program in the strictest sense of the term.

They help the student find someone in the craft, trade,

or profession in which he is interested. High school

credit and diploma are awarded. 1 6 0

The Philadelphia Folk High School is most unique

in that it is a student-owned cooperative. The students work as apprentices to learn and to support themselves

and the school, which they literally own. They learn, in a most real way, how to run the school and they choose

and hire teachers for their evening classes.

Outward Bound and A1 Lingo's Adventure Trails

Survival School are in the apprenticeship mode. In these

schools the students learn self-reliance and union with

nature by direct involvement in surviving in the wilds.

The students are, in a sense, apprenticed to nature.

There is every reason to believe that the appren­ ticeship mode will grow greatly in the years ahead. The

supply of adult masters is large. George Dennison reports that adults in his area, bored with their work, 1 have been enthusiastic about taking in students. If this mode became widespread it could break down and even destroy the great gulf between generations that is a

trait of our culture. The resulting society of integrated age groups would be a radically different society.

The Psychological Development Mode

The psychological development mode characterizes those schools which have as thexr primary aim the creation

.16 NSEN, No. 49, p. 8. 161

of conditions and experiences which foster the child's

natural development. These schools are well described in

the literature by A. S. Neill's Summer hi 1.1 and George

Dennison's The Lives of Children. Some of the other

schools in this mode are the Akron Free School, Lewis-

Wadharas School in New York, the Minnesota Summerhill

Community School, and-Clonlara School in Ann Arbor.

Most of these schools explicitly pattern themselves

after Summerhill. Like Summerhill they have things going

on in the school which can be classified in another curri­

cular mode, usually open classroom. The distinguishing

trait of this mode is that every curricular matter is put on a very low level of importance. Most of the publica­

tions of the free school movement take for granted that most free schools are in this mode. The responses to this study, though in no way statistically controlled,

showed that about a third of the free schools sampled are.

Summary and Conclusions

In this chapter the self-descriptions of free

schools were analyzed. An idea was given of the range of free schools, the six principles of the free schools were

listed and illustrated, and the three curricular modes of free schools were explained.

It was found that free schools are various, much more so than a reading of the free school publications 162 would lead one to believe. The writers referred to in

Chapter III are more related to the principles and modes of the schools than are the periodicals. The schools are generally more concerned with curricular matters than the periodicals and most of the writers.

The findings of this chapter can be brought to­ gether into a definition of a free school: A free school is a school using the open classroom, apprenticeship, or psychological development curricular modes and based on the beliefs that (1 ) the basic nature of man is good,

(2) every person has a right to autonomy, (3) a child will learn naturally if allowed to follow his own interests,

(4.) the best- learning is having one's own experience,

(5) a school should provide a free environment, and (6 ) a teacher is a fellow learner and a resource. CHAPTER V

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Introduction

Chapter V will be a summary of the study. The attempt will be to pull together the findings of the study into clear conclusions about the free school move­ ment as it has developed in America from 1967 to 1971.

This chapter will consist of a summary history of the free schools movement, a definition of the free schools move­ ment, a definition of a free school, followed by some ideas on the relevance of the study to the mainstream of education, and concluded with suggestions for further studies.

A Summary History of the Free Schools Movement

In the late sixties a new schools movement developed in North America. Death at an Early Age, 36 Children and

The Way It Spozed To Be had dramatized the oppressiveness of America’s public schools. A. S. Neill's Summerhill,

George Dennison's The Lives of Children, and a battery of books and articles by John Holt, especially How Children r" " ) 1 Fail and How Children Learn, had shown that, in a setting

163 radically different from that of the public schools, education can be a worthwhile experience.

In the mid-sixties individuals began to found schools, called free schools, borrowing the phrase and point of view of A. S. Neill. In the late sixties, bolstered by an influx of skilled teachers and writers graduated from the radical student movement, the free schools movement blossomed in America.

In 1967 This Magazine Is About Schools was founded in Toronto by a group of young radicals concerned with the personal experiences of people searching for a mean­ ingful life. In the same year, less radical public school teachers founded Teacher Paper in Portland. In

1968 the National Student Association founded the Center for Educational Reform in Washington and began EdCentric.

In the meantime many individual free schools were started, especially in the Western United States. In March, 1969, a conference was held in Menlo Park, California, of about two hundred free school teachers. From this meeting was born the New Schools Exchange Newsletter. Although founded to keep the California schools in contact, within two months the publication had a national scope. Later that same year two graduate students founded the Teacher Drop­ out Center in Amherst. The summer of 1970 saw the pub­ lishers of the Whole Earth Catalogue begin publishing Big

Rock Candy Mountain, a resource periodical for free schools. 165

In late 1970 Teacher Drop-out Center estimated that there were in America seven hundred free schools, lossely defined. The editors of New Schools Exchange Newsletter estimated five hundred, strictly defined. 1 During the

1970-1971 school year numerous free schools were developed and regional organizations and clearinghouses set up.

A group of prominent writers formed the New Nation Seed

Fund to help finance free schools. A new radical publica­ tion, Outside the Net, was founded in the East, the first free school publication to be supported by prominent professors of education.

During this same year the wide scale success of the open classroom British Infant Schools became well known in America and many free schools began to adopt its curricular mode. The influence of Paul Goodman and Ivan

Illich and the success of Philadelphia’s Parkway Project precipitated the founding of high schools in which apprenticeship was the curricular mode. In these schools- without-walls adolescents were reintegrated into society and began to learn from adults who were about the business of adult life. Many schools continued to be founded on the model of Summerhill and the First Street School; these schools took the child's natural development as their curricular mode.

^No. 52, p. 8. 166

Widespread student uprisings in the junior high

and high school levels during the spring of 1971, together with the popularity of Charles Silberman's Crisis in the

Classroom convinced more people that the public school

system was counterproductive. A drastic cut-back of public education funds occurred across the nation. By the summer of 1971 the parochial system was in its dying

stages, the public system stood in dishonor and poverty, and the free schools movement was soaring.

Definition of the Free Schools Movement

This study has attempted a methodological definition of the free schools movement. It was decided that the major way in which .the many free schools throughout the

country constituted a movement was through their communica­ tion through a mutual set of publications and their reli­ ance on a mutual literature. Starting with the New Schools

Exchange Newsletter, recommendations of periodicals and writers were counted and cross-referenced. Recommendations of periodicals and writers were solicited from a number of free schools. It was found that eleven periodicals participate in a circle of mutual recommendations. Two of these, New Schools Exchange Newsletter and the Summerhill

Society Bulletin, are exclusively concerned with free

schools. This Magazine Is About Schools, Big Rock Candy Mountain, Teacher Drop-out Center, Vocations for Social

Change, EdCentric, and Outside the Net deal with the development of social consciousness and a network of persons and resources essential for free education.

No More Teachers’ Dirty Looks, Teacher Paper, and Red

Pencil are periodicals for and by radical public school teachers working to free up those schools.

A number of writers were identified as central to the movement.. Thirty of them were considered in Chapter

III. All the writers recommended more than once are in­ cluded in the bibliography. Five writers, A. S. Neill,

John Holt, Herb Kohl, George Dennison, and Paul Goodman, were recommended by nearly every source and thereby identified as the major writers of the movement.

The cross-reference system led to a definition of the free schools movement as an informal network of schools interrelating through the eleven identified pub­

lications and inspired and informed by the literature in the bibliography of this study. A simplified and concrete definition reads: the free schools movement is an infor­ mal network of schools interrelating through New Schools

Exchange Newsletter, This Magazine Is About Schools, Big

Rock Candy Mountain, and Teacher Drop-out Center, and inspired and informed by the writings of A. S. Neill,

John Holt, Herbert Kohl, George Dennison, and Paul Goodman. 168

Definition of a Free School

Examination of the self-descriptive literature of a number of free schools resulted in the formulation of six principles or beliefs on which free schools base their existence and operation. These principles are also found in the periodicals and the literature of the move­ ment. A free school is a school based on these beliefs:

1 ) The basic nature of the human being is good.

2) Every person has a right to autonomy.

3) A child will learn naturally if allowed to follow

his own interests.

4) The best learning is having one's own experience.

5) A school should provide a free environment.

6 ) A teacher is a fellow learner and a resource.

Many free schools and most of the free school's periodicals speak of curriculum as an artificial imposition of predetermined thoughts on teachers and learners. Free schools did .differ, however, in the way they tended to think about learning environments. The term ‘'curricular mode" was used to describe a school's characteristic approach to learning. There are infinite possibilities for curricular modes; any number of modes could be con­ ducive to the six principles. The learning styles found in free schools suggested categorization into three modes: the open classroom mode, in which the school provides open- 169 ended materials and environments as stimulants and resources for the student; the apprenticeship mode, similar to the open classroom except that the primary learning environment is adults going about the business of their adult lives; and the psychological development mode, characteristic of a school that aims at the creation of conditions and experiences which foster the child’s natural development.

A free school, then, is a school based on the six principles and utilizing one of the three curricular modes.

The Relation- of the Movement to the Mainstream of Education

Phi Delta Kappan’s article on the free school lit- ature stated that perhaps free schools will have something to offer the public .school system,, The writer under­ estimated the scope of the movement and the power of its numbers and ideas, and misunderstood its meaning,. The free schools movement offers nothing to the public schools; it stands in opposition to them0 It offers to students and parents a way out-«a humane school to go" to0

And it offers to everyone a living demonstration that education does not have to be as it is in the public schools,. 170

The free schools provide an alternative to the public schools which is a real alternative. Private and parochial schools in America have differed very little from the public schools0 Private schools have

sometimes offered less middle class morality; parochial

schools have offered a stricter version of the Protestant ethico With the exception of a few private progressive schools and the Montessori schools, alternative ways of educating have not been available.

The great sociai ch&nge of our times, a result of

* • the revolt of blacks and students, is a tolerance of pluralism. American society for a long time saw itself as a "melting pot" in which diverse elements soon became homogenous. Ethnic and cultural pecularities were matters for shame, as the films of the fifties so well dramatized. But when black power replaced integration a trend toward respect for differences began which has yet to peako The well organized society of Orwell1s 1984 is farther and farther away0 The only economically and politically viable sociai plans are those which respect different factions in our society.

It is within this atmosphere that the free schools movement has grown« In the days when educational research was in vogue (they have not entirely ended), changes in education were thought to be worthwhile changes if they 171

could be applied in every school. The main objection to free schools by public school people is still that free

schools will not suit all the people all the time. We

have thought, because public schools were the great mixers of the melting pot, that any form of Schooling must be universal to be worthwhile. Any educational

innovation had to be “proven1* enough and publically

acceptable enough to be made universally compulsory. Any educational change was seen as a temporary experiment which had to prove something to everyone. It was in such

an atmosphere that strange myths about the true nature of

children abounded, myths that were true of children only as they acted and reacted within the confines of the monolithic American school system. These myths are • encountered everyday by someone who speaks of open educa­ tion to parents and public school people. Most Americans seem to believe that all children will rape, pillage, and murder, and learn nothing in the bargain, if not attended by a certified teacher from nine to three on non-summer weekdays.

The existence of happy, productive free schools says more to American education than any number of educational experiments and psychological studies. It says that control is not the only-way to deal with children. It says that there are other ways that children can learn0 It shows that these ways are more enjoyable 172

for children and teachers, and not in conflict with huiuan

natureo The free school, as Neill has said, is a demon­

stration that freedom works0

The free schools movement, then, though by no means.;

existing as a service to public schools, affects the main­

stream of American education in two ways* First, it

brings within the realm of education the new American

pluralism, disrupting the protected monopoly of the

public schools by its mere existence as an alternative*

Secondly, as an alternative embodying radically different

concepts of learning and child behavior, it serves as a demonstration, especially to parents, that the strife

and conflict of public schools is not part of learning,

that children, even after the age of five, love to learn

and can learn successfully,,

Suggestions for-Further Study

This study has been broad and theoretical* It

suggests two types of further studies: concrete studies

and studies that relate the free schools more clearly to

the historical and intellectual conditions which have

brought them abouto

The concrete studies could deal with the free

schools in their capacity as demonstration schools0

Especially the matter of curriculum should be studied.

Surveys could be made of what individual free schools do 173

in the course of a day<> Common trends could be detected,

demonstrating new possibilities to other schools and

showing, in an experiential way, what a concrete child-

centered curriculum might be0

The role of the teacher in a free school could be

studied, suggesting a less institutionally oriented

model of teacher behavior and implying new modes for

teacher education* The role of students in free schools

could be studied for a more realistic appraisal than we

have been able to achieve in our laboratories and public

schools of how children learn and behave and of what

really interests the children of today* The adrainistra*-

tion and organizational aspects of free schools could

be studied, perhaps suggesting a way out of the adminis­

trative nightmare that education has become0

Individual case studies of how free schools have

begun and developed could contribute in all of these ways

and also facilitate the founding of more alternative

schools*

A second group of studies on the free schools movement could relate the movement to its historical and

intellectual roots. This study has suggested historical roots back to Rousseauo Perhaps the roots go farther*

The relationship of the free schools to the thought of

John Dewey and to the American progressive movement could be studiedo The social roots of the movement in the 174 developments of the sixties could be explored*

Lastly, an historical study could be done of the experience of apprenticeship education across the cen­ turies and across culture; such a study might be a major factor in the strong and wholesome growth of this current development o BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE FREE SCHOOLS MOVEMENT

NOTE: Bibliographies are normally ordered for access by author; this bibliography is based on recommendations and is ordered accordingly® The first listed book is the book most recommended in a survey of free school publica­ tions and in letters and bibliographies received from a number of free schools® The listing continues by number of recommendations within broad categories® The publica­ tion, author, or schools recommending each book are listed after each entry, using the following abbreviations:

NSE - New Schools Exchange Newsletter TMIAS - This Magazine Is About Schools BRCM - Big Rock candy Mountain TDOC - Teacher Drop-out Center VSC - Vocations for Social Change SSB - Summerhill Society Bulletin TP - Teacher Paper RP - Red Pencil EdC - EdCentric OTN - Outside the Net Holt - The bibliography available from John Holt RGD - Rasberry-Creenway Exercises Gross - The bibliography of radical school reform included in High School and Radical School Reform CER - Center for Educational Reform bibliography

Major Writers

Neill, A* So Summerhillo New York: Hart Publishing, I960. (NSE, BRCM, TDOC, SSB, TP, Holt, RGE, Gross, Columbus Metropolitan School, Lewis-Wadhams School, Santa Fe Community School, Minnesota Summerhill Com­ munity School, Atkinson, Sunrise, Akron Free School, Coop Learning Center, Tree Schooi, New Directions Com­ munity School, Clonlara)

______o Freedom Not License® New York: Hart Pub- iishing, 19660 (SE, TMIAS, SSB, CER, Coop Learning Center, New Directions Community School)*

176 177

* Talking of Summerhill* London: Victor Gollanez, 1967. (NSE, SSB, Holt, Gross). Contains much of Freedom--Not L i c e n s e and other material. o The Last Man Alive. New York: Hart Pub- fishing, 1969. First published in 1938. (NSE, SSB) A violent bedtime story that Neill told at Summerhill, complete with comments by students.

• The Free Child. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1953. '(NSE, SSB) Neill on various issues, such as the future of free schools and Wilhelm Reicho

Holt, John. H o w children Fail0 New York: Pitman, 1964. Dell paper'Backl (NSE, SSB, BRCM, TDOC, Holt, CER, Gross', TP, Columbus Metropolitan School, Children's School, Hudson School, Santa Fe Community School, Akron Free School, Atkinson School, Open Living School, Sunrise School, New Community School, Co-op Learning Center, New Directions)

o How Children Learn. New York: Pitman, 1967* (NSE, SSB, BRCM, TP. Holt, CER, Gross, Columbus Metro­ politan School, Hudson, Santa Fe Community, Atkinson, Open Living, Sunrise, New Community, Co-op Learning Center, New Directions, Pinehinge)

. The Underachieving School<> New York: Pitman, 1969* Delta Paperback. (NSE, SSB, EdC, CER, Holt, Gross, Children's School, Hudson, Co-op Learning Center, New Directions)

o What Do I Do on Monday? New York: E. P. Dutton, 1970. (NSE, BRCM, CER, Holt, Gross, Children's School, Santa Fe Community School)

Kohl, Herbert. 36 Children. New York: New American Library, 19670 S'ignet Paperback. (NSE, SSB, BRCM, TP, TMIAS, Holt, Gross, CER, Children's School, Santa Fe Community School, Open Living School, Sunrise School)

______. The Ooen Classroom: A Practical Guide to a New Way of Teaching. New York: New York Review Books, 1969. Vintage Paperback. (NSE, BRCM, TP, CER, Holt, Gross, Columbus Metropolitan School, Children's, Hudson, Santa Fe Community, Open Living, Sunrise, Co­ op Learning Center, Akron Free School, New Directions) 178

e Teaching the^'Unteachableo” New York: A New York Review Book, 1967o (NSE, TP, Holt, Gross)# The story of an experiment in children's writing partly reproduced in 36 Children#

Dennison, George. The Lives of Children: The Story of the First Street School# New York: Random House, 1969# Vintage paperback. {NSE, SSB, TDOC, TP, CER, Holt, Gross, Columbus Metropolitan School, Hudson, Santa Fe, Children's, Atkinson, Sunrise, Akron, New Community, Co-op, New Directions, Pinehenge)•

Goodman, Paul# Growing Uo Absurd# Nev.’ York: Random House, 1960o Vantage Paperback* (NSE, SSB, TP, Holt, CER, Gross, Co-op Learning Center, New Directions)

______# Compulsory Mis-education0 New York: Horizon Press, 1964 0 Vintage Paperbacko (NSE, SSB, TP, CER, Holt, Gross, Co-op Learning Center, New Directions)•

______# The New Reformation: Notes of a Neolithie Conservative# New York: Random House, 19*70. (NSE,. Holt, CER, Gross)• The middle third is a critique of free schools and education#

______# The Community of Scholars. New York: Random House, 1962o Vintage Paperback0 (NSE, SSB, CER, Co­ op Learning Center)0

______# Empire City# New York: Macmillan, 19640 Macmillan Paperback# (SSB, NSE)o A novel including ideas on free schoolSo

» People or Personnel. Washington: Institute for Policy Studies, 1965# vintage Paperback,, Contains practical proposals for the education of adolescents.

Rasberry, Salli, and Greenway, Roberto The Rasberry Exercises: How to Start Your Own School (and Make a Book). California: Freestone Publishing, 1970# (NSE, BRCM, TDOC, SSB, TP? EdC, CER, Gross, Sunrise School, Columbus Metropolitan School)# Available by writing to Freestone Publishing, 440 Bohemian Highway, Freestone, California 95472#

Friedenberg, Edgar z# The Vanishing Adolescent. Boston: Beacon Press, 19590 ""Dell Paperback. (SSB, Holt, CER, Gross, New Community, Co-op Learning Center)# 179

o Coming of Aae in America: Growth and Acouiescenceo New York": Random House, 19654. Vintage Paperback. "(SSB, TP, Ilolt, CER, Gross, New Community, Co-op Learning Center).

o Dignity of Youth and Other Atavisms0 Boston: Beacon"Press, 1965. Beacon Paperbacko (SSB, TP, CER, Gross, New Directions Community School)o

Illich, Ivan0 Deschooling Societyo New York: Harper and Row, 1971. (Gross, Sunrise School)o

______. Celebration of Awareness: A Call for Insti­ tutional Revolution. New York: Doubicaay and Co0, 1970o (NSE, BRCM,*“EdC, Holt, CER, Gross, Sunrise School)o

Kozol, Jonathan. Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Necro Children in the Boston Public GchoolsT New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1967. Bantam Paperback. (NSE, TP, Hoit, CER, Gross, Columbus Metropolitan School, Akron Free School, Children’s School)0

Rathbone, Charles. Open Education: Selected Readings. New York: Citation press Paperback, 1970o (NSE, Holt, CER, Gross)o

______and Roland Barth. "Focus: The Open Schoolo: The Cen ter For urn, Vol. 3, No. 7 (July, 1969), l-8 o 7nSE , BRCM) • Short article and long annotated bibliography. (Available from Center for Urban Education, 105 Madison Avenue, New York City).

______. Bibliography of British Primary Education . Readings. Oberlin, Ohio: Oberlin College^ (Holt).

Feather stone, Joseph. Schools Where Children Learn0 New York: Liver ight,- 1971. "The best description so far of the flexible and noncoercive British primary schools and how and why they work so effectively"--John Holto Includes the New Republic articles..

______o The Primary School Revolution in Britain. New York: A Pitman-New Republic Reprint",. 1967. (NSE, BRCM, SSB, Holt, Columbus Metropolitan School, Hudson Montessori School, Santa Fe Community School, Atkinson School, Open Living School, Sunrise School). 180

Ashton-Warnsr, Sylvia. Teacher. New York: Simon and Schuster, 19630 Bantam Paperbacko (NSE, TMIAS, BRCM, SSB, RGE, CER, Gross, Santa Fe Community School, Open Living School, Co-op Learning Center)

•____. Spinster.~ New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959. Bantam Paperback. (NSE, SSB) A novel based on Teacher0

o Bell Call® New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965® (NSE, SSB). A novel on child-rearing.

Herndon, Jameso The Way It Sgozed To Be0 New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963® Bantam Paperback. (NSE, TMIAS, SSB, TP, Holt, CER, Gross)0 Herndon's struggles in a Watts school and develop­ ment of an open classroom style.

_ . How To Survive in Your Native Land. New York: Simon and Schuster", 1971. (NSE, Gross). A humorous and insightful book on teaching®

Gross, Ronald, and Osterman, Paul, eds0 High School. New York: Simon and Schuster, 19710 (NSE, New^Com- munity)• Articles and accounts of the worst and best of the American high schools.

______and Gross, Beatrice, eds. Radical School Reform. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970^ (NSE, CER, Gross, New Community, Co-op Learning Center). Excerpts from the books of the free schools movement®

Marin, Petero "The Open Truth and the Fiery Vehemence of Youth," The Center Magazine, January, 1969. Also in This Book Xs About Schools, Satu Repo, ed., and High School, Ronald Gross and Paul Osterman, eds. (NSE, TMIAS, TDOC, Holt, RGE, Gross, New Community)®

Farber, Jerry® The Student as Nigger® New York: Contact Books, 1969. Pocket Books Paperbacko (TMIAS, SSB, OTN, CER). Essays on the strident and society.

Jones, R. M. Fantasy and Feeling in Education. New York: New York University Press, 1968. Harper Colophon Paperback. (NSE, BRCM, TP, RGE, CER, Open Living School) The problem of dealing with emotion in school. 181

Richardson, Elwyn S* In the Early World, New York: Pantheon Books, 1969* (NSE, BRCM, TP, Holt, Gross, Columbus Metropolitan School)« Creative works of the children integrate curriculum®

Repo, Satu, ed. This Book Is About Schools, New York: Pantheon, 1970® (n se» BRCM, OTN, CER, Santa Fe Com­ munity School)o A collection of the best articles from This Magazine Is About Schoolso

Reimer, Everetto An Essay on Alternatives in Education® New York: Doubleday, 1971® (NSE, BRCM*, Gross, Santa Fe Community School)*

Freire, Paulo* The Pedagogy of the Oppressed* New York: Herder and Herder, 197CL, (NSE, RP, CER, Gross)* A pedagogy based on giving the disadvantaged the tools necessary to see and overcoine their oppression*

Leonard, George* Education and Ecstasy* New York: Delacorte Press, 1963* Delta Paperback. (NSE, SSB, Holt, CER, Gross, Children *s School, Santa Fe Com­ munity School, Atkinson School, Open Living School, Sunrise School, Akron Free School, Co-op Learning Center, New Directions Community School)* An introduction to “The New Education" written by a Look editoro

Rogers, Carl. Freedom to Learn* Columbus: Merrill and Sons, 197:1. (NSE, Children's School, Open Living School, Co-op Learning Center, New Directions Com­ munity School)o

O'Gorman, Ned. The Storefront* New York: Harper and Row, 1970* (NSE, Holt, CER, Gross, Children’s School)o

Curriculum and Teaching

Vermont Department of Education* Vermont Designs for Education* Montpelier, Vermont: Vermont Department of Education, 1969* (NSE, Gross, Sunrise School)o A plan strikingly similar to many free schools« 182

Borton, Terry* Reach, Touch, Teach* New York: McGraw- Hill, 1970. Paperback. (NSE, BRCM, RGE, CER). Learning must be personalizea--linked to the lives, problems and feelings of students.

Gordon, Julia Weber0 My Country School Diary. New York: Dell Publishing, 1946. Delta Paperbade. (NSE, BRCM, Holt, Santa Fe Community School). An account of excellent teaching and utilization of community resources. Miss Gordon taught in a poor, one-room school in the 30's.

Macrorie, Kenneth. Up Taught. New York: Hayden Book Co., 1970. (NSE, BRCM, Holt, Gross). A personal and compassionate book about teaching by a man who has taught college English for thirty years.

Koch, Kenneth. Wlsh.es, Lies and Dreams: Teaching Chil­ dren to Write Poetrvo Nev; York: Chelsea House Pub­ lishers, 1970. (NSE, TP, Holt, Gross, Columbus Metropolitan School).

Fader, Daniel, and Elton B. McNeil. Hooked on Books: Program and Proof0 New York: Berkeley Paperback, 1968. (NSE, Holt, CER, Pinehenge School). An effective reading program based on students* immediate interests.

Biggs, E. E. and MacLean, J. R. Freedom to Learn: An Active Learning Approach to Mathematicso Menlo Park: Addison-Wesley, 1969. (BRCM, RGE, Atkinson School).

Gattegno, Caleb. Towards a Visual Culture: Educating Through Television. New York: Outerbridge and Dienstfrey, 1969. Avon Paperback. (NSE, BRCM, Holt, Gross).

______o What We Owe Children: The Subordination of Teaching to Learning. New York: Outerbridge and Dienstfrey, 1970. (NSE, BRCM, Holt, Gross).

Hawkins, Frances. The Logic of Action, from a Teacher*s Notebook. Boulder: University of Colorado, N.D* (NSE, Holt, Sunrise School). Notes on teaching gathered from Miss Hawkins’s ex­ perience with young deaf children*

Hentoff, Nat. Our Children Are Dying. New York: Viking Press, Inc., 1967. Compass Paperback. (NSE, Holt, CER, Gross). An account of a successful principal in a Harlem public school. 1 8 3

Marshall, Sybil* An Experiment in Education* New York: Cambridge University Press, 19660 Cambridge Paper­ back* (NSE, BRCM, Columbus Metropolitan School, Hudson Montessori School) 0 The symphonic method of teaching curriculum inte­ grated through arto

______* Adventure in Creative Educationo London: Pergamon Press, 19680 ("Columbus Metropolitan School and Hudson School)* Account of a successful teacher training workshop*

Brov/n, Mary and Precious, Norman* The Integrated pay in the Primary School* New York: Agathon Press, 1968* (NSE, BRCM, Columbus Metropolitan School, Hudson Montessori School)*

Plowden, Lady Bridget et al* Children and Their Primary Schools: A Report of the Central Advisory Council for Education* London: Her 'Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1966* (NSE, BRCM, Sunrise School)* The comprehensive report on the rationale and practices of the British Primary Schools*

Hull, William P* Leicestershire Revisited* Newton, Mass*: Early Childhood Education, Study, 1969J (BRCM, Columbus Metropolitan School, Hudson Montessori School)* Critique of the British Infant Schools*

Yeomans, Edward. Education for Initiative and' Responsi­ bility. Boston: National Association of Independent Schools, February, .1968* (Columbus Metropolitan School, Hudson Montessori School)* On the open classroom, especially the Leicestershire model*

______* The Well-springs of Teaching* Boston: National Association of Independent Schools, February, 19690. ^ (Columbus Metropolitan School, Hudson Metessori School*) * A teacher’s workshop in open classroom*

Blackie, John* Inside the Primary School0 London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 11)67• Available in this country from: Sales Section, British Information Services, 845 Third Avenue, New York, New York 10022. (BRCM, Sunrise School).

Cook, Ann, and Herbert Mack. The Excitement- of Learning* Queens College: Institute for Community Studies, 1969* (NSE, Holt) On the open classroom. 184

Rogers, Vincent R. The English Primary School, New York: Macmillan, 1970o Macmxllan Paperback. (NSE, Sunrise School).

Montessori, Maria. The Montessori Methodo New York: Pageant Press, 1968. First published in 1912. (NSE, SSB, Coiumbus Metropolitan School). The Montessori book that should be read first.

•______. Spontaneous Activity in Education--»the Advanced Montessori Method. New York: Schocken Books, 1965. Published in"English in 1917. (NSE, SSB). The second Montessori book.

______• Dr. Montessorifs Own Handbook. New York: Schocken Books Paperback, 1965. First published in 1914.a (NSE, SSB).

_____ o The Absorbent Mindo New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967 <> Originally published in 1949. Delta Paperback. (NSE, SSB).

Hainstock, Elizabeth G. Teaching Montessori in the Home0 New York: Random House, 1968. (RGE).

Glines, Don. Implementing Different and Better Schools. Mankato, Minnesota: Campus Publishing ("Box 1005)', nod0 (NSE, RGE). How to implement progressive education in large public schools todayo

Hawkins, David. I-Thou-It. Newton, Mass: Early Childhood Education S t u d y 1967. (RGE, Columbus Metropolitan School). A rationale for manipulative classroom materials.

Rosenthal, Robert, and Jacobson, Lenore. Pygmalion in the Classroom. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 19630 (NSE, Holt, Gross). The force of teacher expectations.

Chukovsky, Kornei. From Two to Five. Trans0 and ed. by Miriam Morton. Berkeley: University of California Press (Hardcover or Paperback), 1963. (NSE, SSB). First published in the Soviet Union in 1925. Shows that children learn naturally through fantasy. 185

Makarenko, A. S o A Collective Family: A Handbook for Russian Parents, Originally published as A Rook for Parent's* Trans0 by Robert Daglish. New York: Anchor Books, 1967 o (NSE, SSB, BRGM)• The classic book in Soviet child-rearing.

Bowen, James. Soviet Education: Anton Makarenko and the Years of the Experiment. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1*962. A study of Soviet education between the two world wars.

Bronfenbrenner, Urie, and Condry, John. Two Worlds of Childhood: US? and USSR. Ner.v York: Russell Sage, 1970. Basic Books Paperback. (NSE, TMIAS, BRCM, TP).

Mitchell, Morris R 0 World Education: Revolutionary Concept. New York: Pageant Press, 19680 {NSE, SSB). A curriculum for a world understanding that will "outgrow all tribalism and embrace all humanity."

Decker, Sunny. An Empty Spoon. New York: Harper and Row, 1969. (NSE, TP). Harper Paperback. The experience of a young woman teaching in a city high school.

Kelley, Earl C. Workshop Way of Learning. New York: Harper and Row, 1951. (NSE, SSB). A report on a successful workshop.

Read, Herbert. Education through Arto New York: Pantheon Books, 1958*. First published in 1945. (NSE, SSB, Gross).

Read, Herbert. The Redemption of the Robot: My En­ counter with Education through Art. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969. Simon and Schuster Paperback. (NSE, SSB).

Lowenfeld, Viktor. Creative and Mental Growth: A Text­ book on Art Education. New York: Macmillan, 1957® (NSE, SSB). A comprehensive book about the development of creativity.

Moffett, James. A Student-centered Language Arts Curri­ culum, Grades K-13. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1968. IBROCOSR). 186

Moffett, Jameso Teaching the Universe of Discouse0 New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1968. (BRCM, CER )'* Teacher * s handbook for A Stuclent-centered Language Arts Curriculum, shows the necessity for an integrated curriculum.

Stein, Maurice and Miller, Larry. Blueprint for Counter Educa.tion: Curriculum. Handbook« Wall Decoration, Shooting~ Script. New" York: Doubieday, 1970. NSE, Gross, ancl CER) o

Free Schools in Action

Snitzer, Herb. Living at Summerhill. New York: Collier Books, 1967o (NSE, SSB, RGE, Lewis-Wadhams School, Co-op Learning Center, New Directions Community School). Pictures and text by a former Summerhill teacher, now director of Lewis-Wadhams Free School.

Hart, Harold, ed. Summerhill: For and Against. New York: Hart Publishing, 1970. (NSE, CER, TP, Holt, New Directions School). Essays by Holt, Bettelheim, Fromm and others.

Walmsley, John. Neill and Summerhill: A Man and His Work. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969. (NSE, CER). A photographic study0

Popenoe, Joseph. Inside Summerhill. New York: Hart Publishing, 1970. Insights, photographic and written, of a sixteen- year-old student from Summerhill.

Snitzer, Herbert. The Rights of Children. New York: Macmillan Co., 1972. Forthcoming book by the former Summerhill teacher who has run Lewis-Wadhams Free School for eight years0

New Directions Community School. How To Start a Free School. New Directions Community School, 445 Tenth Street, Richmond Ca. 94801. (NSE, BRCM, TDOC, CER, Gross, Sunrise School).

Bull, Richard E* Summer hi11 U » S.A « Baltimore: Penguin Paperback, 1970. (SSB, Lewis-Wadhams School, Santa Fe Community School). Pictures and quotes from American free schools. 187

Tolstoy, Leo Nikolaevich. Tolstoy on Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. Phoenix Paperback. (SSB, CER, Gross, Clonlara School). Tolstoy’s account of the free school he founded in 1861.

Lane, Homer. Talks to Parents and Teachers. London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1928. Schocken Paper­ back. (NSE, SSB, OTN). Notes from the man who inspired Ao S. Neill.

Bazeley, E 0 To Homer Lane and the Little Commonwealth. London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1928. Schocken Paperback. (NSE, SSB, OTN, Lewis-Wadhams School)o An account of the home for delinquents governed by the children themselves.

Wills, W. David* Homer Lane: A Biography. London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd0, 1964. "(NSE, SSB, OTN)o

Pratt, Caroline. I Learn from Children. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1948. Corner sto’ne Paperback. (NSE, SSB). The story of Miss Pratt’s City and Country School in Manhattan in the early part of this century.

Dewey, John and Dewey, Evelyn. Schools of Tomorrow. New York: E. Po Dutton and Company, 19*150 Dutton Paperback. (NSE, SSB). A simple explanation of progressive education and descriptions of the free schools of 1915.

Jones, Howard. Reluctant Rebels: Re-education and Group Process in a Residential Community. New York: Association Press, 1960. (NSE, SSB). A study of humane and effective ways of educating children in correctional schools.

Burn, Michaelo Mr. Lvward*s Answer. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1956. (NSE, SSB). An account of Finchden Manor, a free school for delinquents.

Holmes, Gerard. The Idiot Teacher. London: Faber and Faber, 1952. (NSE, SSB). An account of E. F. O ’Neill's efforts to run a free school in the government system. 188

Wills, W. David* The Barns Experiment* London: Allen and Unwin, 1945* (NSE, SSB)* A disciple of Homer Lane modified his teachings into •'shared responsibility* M

Wills, W* David, Throw Away Thy Rod* New York: Inter­ national Documents Service, 1967. (NSE, SSB)*

Simpson, J. H. An Adventure in Education* London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1917* (NSE, SSB) 0 An account of an experiment in school self-government inspired by Homer Lane 0

Simpson, J* H* Sane Schoolinq* London: Faber and Faber, 1946. (NSE, SSB)*

Speil, Oskaro Discipline Without Punishment* London: Faber and Faber, n 0do (NSE, SSB),

Hemming, James» Tea.ch Them to Live* London : Longmans, Green and Co., 1957. (NSE, SSB, Gross). A summary of the Eight Year Study of progressive American secondary schools.

Bhacrman, Steve and Joel Denker, No Particular Place to Go. Making of a Free School. New York: Simon ana ’Schuster* Due to be published in June, 1972. Steve Bhaerman is a member of New Community, Coburn, Pa 0

Psychological Foundations

Rogers, Carl. On Becoming a Person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., "1961. (NSE~, SSB, Holt, Gross, Sunrise School, Akron Free School, New Directions Community School, New Community).

Rogers, Carl* Person to Person: The Problem of Being Human. Lafayette, California: Real People Press, 1967. Pocket Books Paperback. (NSE, SSB, New Directions Community School).

Maslow, Abraham. Toward a Psychology of Being. New York: Van Nostrand-Reinhold, 1968* Van Nostrand Paperback. (NSE, BRCM, SSB, Holt, RGE, CER, Gross, Sunrise School New Directions Community School). 189

Maslow, Abraham. "Some Educational Implications of the Humanistic Psychologies, Harvard Educational Review, Fall, 1968. (Holt).

Fromm, Ericho Man for Himself. New York: Holt, Rine­ hart and Winston, 1947. Fawcett Paperback. (SSB, Holt, New Directions Community School).

o The Sane Societv0 New York: Harper and Row, 1955. Fawcett Paperback. (Holt, New Directions Community School).

The Art of Loving. New York: Harper and Row, 1956. Bantam Paperback* (NSE, TMIAS, SSB, Holt)

Escape from Freedom. New York: Harper and Row, 1941. Avon Paperbacko (NSE, Holt).

Piaget, Jean« Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood. New York: W<, W® Norton, 1962. (BRCM, SSB, RGE, CER, Santa Fe Community School).

. The Origins of Intelligence in Children. . New York: Wo W. Norton, 1963. (NSE, SSB, Santa Fe Community School).

. The Lanauaqe and Thouoht of the Child. New York: Meridion-World Publishing, 1955. (NSE, SS3) .

o The Childfs Conception of Number. New York: W. W. Norton, 1 9 5 2 . (SS3, Santa Fe Community Schoolo

. Judgment and Reasoning in the Child. New York: Littlefield, 1947. (SSB, Santa Fe Community School)•

-• The Child's Conception of Physical Causality. New York: Littlefield, 1930. (SSB, Santa Fe Com­ munity School).

Flavellj John. The Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget. (RGE) “ A comprehensive summary of Piaget's work)

Peris, Frederick S. Gestalt Therapy Verbatim. Lafay­ ette, California: Real People Press, 19690 (NSE, BRCM, SSB, oER). A simple explanation of Gestalt therapyo 190

______9 Hefferline, Ralph, and Goodman, Paul. Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality. New York: Dell, 1965o (NSE, BRCM, SSB) Exercises in perception and how the exercises fit into the theoretical framework of Gesta.lt therapy.

____ . Ego, Hunger and Aggression:__ The Begin- ninq of"Gestait Therapy. New York: Random House, 1969. First published in 1947. (NSE, SSB) „

______o In and Out the Garbage Pailo Lafayette, California: Real People Press, 19697 (NSE, BRCM)o Autobiographical--Perls works on Perls 0

Lederman, Janet. Anger and the Rocking Chair0 New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969. (Holt, CER). A. transcription of Gestalt teaching in action0

Axline, Virginia Mae. Play Therapy: The Inner Dynamics of Childhoodo Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co0, 1947. Ballantine Paperback. (NSE, ERCM, SSB, Holt, CER).

_____ . Dibs in Search of Self. New York: Houghton MxirTlin Co., 19670 Ballantine Paperbacko (NSE, SSB, Holt).

Glasser, William. Schools without Failure. New York: Harper and Row, "1969. (NSE, TP, Open Living School, New Directions Community School). A psychiatrist recommends group meetings.

Ginott, Haim G. Between Parent and Child: New Solutions to Old Problems. New York! Macmillan19650 Avon Paperback. (NSE, SSB, New Directions Comnunitjr School).

______• Group Psychotherapy with Children: The Theory and Practice of Play-T'norapy. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961. (NSE, SSB).

Laing, R 0 D o The Divided Self. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1965. Pelican Paperback. (NSE, Holt, CER )0 Laing is a Scottish psychiatrist whose studies of the mentally ill have strong implications that many of the practices of our schools and many of our traditional types of interaction may be causes of mental illness. 191

______• The Politics of Experience. New York: Pantheon Books, 1967* (NSE, Holt, CER)o Ballantine Paperbacko Society educates children to be absurd and thus be normal*

* The Self and Others* New York: Pantheon Books, 1969. (Holt, CER)o

______anci Ester son o Sanity, Madness and the Family* Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1965* Pelican Paper back 0 (Hoit)* Madness is seen as a person’s struggle to live in an unliveable situation0

Moustakas, Clark E* The Authentic Teacher: Sensitivity and Awareness in the Classroom* Cambridge: Howard A* Doyle Publishing, I960* (NSE, SSB, CER)o Psychiatrist Moustakas’s revision of The Teacher and the Child, a guide for dealing with eraotion and fostering mental health0

, ed* Existential Child Therapy: The Child’s Discovery of Himself® New York: Basic Books, 19660 (NSE, SSB, CERji

______* Creativity and Conformity. Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1967. Van"Nostrand Paperback* (NSE, SSB, New Directions Community School)* Ways out of the trap of materialistic society,,

______* psychotherapy with Children: The Living Helationship* New York: Harper and Row, 19590 Ballantine Paperbacko (NSE, SSB)* Verbatim dialogues of sessions with children along with articles by Dr 0 Moustakes show the inner lives of children*

______and Berson, Minnie Perrin* The Young Child in Schoolo Neiv York: Whiteside, 1956o (NSE, SSB)*

Erikson, Erik* Identity: Youth and Crisis* New York: Wo W, Norton, 1968* Norton Paperbacko (NSE, SSB, CER) 0

______• Childhood and Society* New York: W* W* Norton, 1950, Norton Paperback* (NSE, SSB)*

' ______9 ed* Challenge of Youth* New York: Double- day-Anchor Paperback, n*d* (NSE, SSB)* 1 9 2

Reich, Wilhelm* Character Analysis* New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1949 o (NSEj" SSB)* A psychological basis for self-regulation*

Kelley, Earl C* Education and the Nature of Mano New York: Harper and Row, 1952* (NSE, SSB). A summary of what is known about the human organism and the implications for education*

Bowlby, John* Child Care and the Growth of Love0 New York: Penguin0 Pelican Paperback* (NSE, SSB)« A summary of evidence of the effects upon children of lack of personal attention*

Allport, Gordon W* Pattern and Growth in Personality* New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961* (NSE, SSB) *

Philosophical and Social Foundations

Dewey, John0 The School and Society* Chicago: Univer­ sity of Chicago Press, 1915* Phoenix Paperbacks (NSE, SSB, CER, Gross)* Lectures to the parents of Dewey's laboratory schoolo

* Experience and Education* New York: Collier- Macmillan, 1938* Collier Books Paperback* (NSE, SSB, Gross, Columbus Metropolitan School)* A critical examination of the excesses committed in the name of progressive education*

.______* Democracy and Education* New York: Macmillan, 1916*" Free Press Paperback* (NSE, SSB, CER) o Dewey's major work in philosophy of education*

* The Child and the Curriculum* Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1902* Phoenix Paperbacko (NSE, SSB, Gross)* A study of the tensions between the needs of the child and the curriculum*

Lo Moral Principles in Education* New York: Philosophical Library, 1959. First published in 1909o (NSE, SSB).

______> Lectures in the Philosophy of Education: 1399. Edited by Reginald Archambault* New York: I 193

Random House, 1966* (NSE, SSB)• Classnotes on ideas to be treated later in Democracy and Education0

and otherSo Art and Education; A Collection of Essays, Merion, Pa.: The Barnes Foundation Press, i929*

o Philosophy of Education. New York: Little- 5'TeTd Paperback, 1946*" (NSE,"SSB).

Dworkin, Martin S«. ed* Dewey on Education: Selections with ar> Introduction and Notes. New York: Teachers College Paperback, 1959* (NSE, SSB)o

Rousseau, Jean Jacques. EmiXe 0 New York: Everyman's Library, 1932* Teachers College Paperback edited by William Boyd* First published in .1762* (NSE, SSB, CER, Gross, RGE)*

Emerson, Ralph Waldo* Emerson on Education* Edited by Howard M* Jones* New York: Teachers College Paper­ back, 1966* (NSE, SSB, CER, Gross).

Castaneda, Carlos* The Teachings of Don Juan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968* Ballantine Paperback* (NSE, BRCM, CER). The way of learning as told by an Indian wise man*

Kroshnamurti-, Jiddi. Education and the Significance of Life. New York: Harper and Row, 19530 (NSE, BRCM, CER). Writings of an Eastern philosopher.

Whitehead, Alfred North. The Aims of Education and Other Essays* New York: MacMillan, 1929* Free press Paper­ back,” (NSE, SSB), Gross).

Russell, Bertrand* Education and the Good Lifeo New York: L i v e r i g h t 1931^ Lxveright Paperback. (NSE, SSB, Gross)o

* Education and the Social Order. New York: Hui^ivTties Press, 1967. (NSE, SSB, Gross).

Marcuse, Herbert* Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inc,airy into Freud* ” New York: Beacon Press, 1955. vintage Paperback* (NSE, New Directions Community School)* 194

Roszak, Theodore M. The Making of a Counter Culture* New York: Doubleday and Co., 1970* Anchor Paperback* (NSE, CER, New Community School) 0

Lane, Howard. On Educating Human Beings0 Chicago: Follet, 1964* (NSE, SSB, New Directions Community School) • The problem of freedom for children*

______. Small Children, too, Be Free? New York: Anti-Defamation"League of B'Nai B *Rith, 1959* (NSE, SSB)*

Gross, Ronald, ed. The Teacher and the Taught: Education in Theory ana Practice from Plato to James B* Conant* New York: Dell Publisners, 1963* Delta Paperback* (NSE, Gross)0

Goodman, Mitchell* The Movement toward a New America* New York: Alfred Knopf, 1970* (TP, RP, OTN)* A collection of the best of the underground news­ papers, including eighty pages on learning and the schools*

Lauter, Paul, and Howe, Florence. The Conspiracy of the Young. Cleveland: World Publishing Co*, 19T0. JNSE, Gross, RP)o

Student Rights Projecct of the New York Civil Liberties Uniono Student Rights Handbook for New York City* New York Civil Liberties Union, 1970. (NSE, Gross)*

Henry, Jules* Culture Against Man* New York: Random House, 1963* Vintage Paperbacko (NSE, Gross, New Community,

Theobold, Robert* An Alternative Future for America II* Swallow Press, 1970, (EdC, CER). An economic*s professor's insights into the shape of present society and the possibilities for the future*

Schoolboys of Barbiana, Letter to a Teacher» New York: Random House, 1970* (NSE, RP, Holt, CER, Gross)*

Joseph, Stephen M 0, ed. The Me Nobody Knows: Children's Voices.from the Ghetto* New York: Avon Paperback, 1969. (NSE, Holt, CER)*

Cole, Lawrence* Street Kiris0 New York: Grossman Publishers, 1970* (NSE, Holt, Gross)* 195

Lewis, Richard, Miracles; Poems by Children of the English-speakino"~V/orId,' New York: Simon Schuster, 19660 (NSE, Columbus Metropolitan School),

Libarle, Marc, and Tom Seligson, eds. The High School Revolutionarieso New York: Random House, 1970o Vintage Paperback® (NSE, Gross)0 Taped interviews and essays by twenty-one high school students®

Divoky, Diane, ed 0 How Old Will You Be In 1934? Expres­ sions of Student Outrage .from the Mich School Free Press, New York: Avon Paperback, 1969,

Birmingham, John, ed. Our Time Is Now: Notes from the High School Underground® New York: Frederick Ao Praeger, 1970, Bantam Paperback, (CER, Gross)0

The Public Schools

Berg, Ivan, Education and Jobs: The Great Training Robbery, New York: Frederick A, Praeger, 1970, "(NSET^Holt, CER, Gross, also recommended by Ivan Illich),

Silberman, Charles E® Crisis in the Classroom, New York: Random House, 1970o (NSE, TP, Holt, CER, Gross, Children's School, Valley School, Columbus Metropolitan School, Hudson Montessori School, Sunrise School, Co­ op Learning Center, Akron Free School)0

Mayer, Martin® The Schools, New York: Harper and Brothers, 19610 Double-day-Anchor Paperback0 (NSE, SSB, TP, New Directions Community School)o

Postman, Neil and Weingartner, Charles, Teaching as a :Subversive Activity, . Neiv York: Delacorte Press, 1969, (NSE, TP, Holt, CER, Gross, Children's School, Open Living School, Co-op Learning Center), A Critique of attitudes in American education®

' and Weingartner, Charles, The Soft Revolu­ tion:_A_Student Handbook for Turning Schools Around, New York: Delacorte Press, 1971, Delta Paperback, (NSE, Gross), 196

Kelly, Earl C. In. Defense of Youth, Englewood Cliffs, N.Jo: Prentice Hall, 1962* Spectrum Paperback* (NSE, SSB). Shows public schools to be frustrating and unnatural.

Coles, Robert* Children of Crisis. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 1967c Delta Paperback, (NSE, Holt, Gross). A psychiatrist's study of people caught in racial conflicto

______o Teachers and the Children of Poverty. Washington, DoC*: The Potomac Institute, 1970o (NSE, Gross)o A psychiatrist studies the successes and failures of a number of teachers in terms of their effects on poor students.

Lurie, El1en. How to Change the Schools: A Parents' Action Handbook on How to Faght the Svstera0 New York: Random House, 1970’. (NSE, Gross)'. Vintage Paperbacko

LeShan, Eda. Conspiracy against Childhood. New York; Atheneum, 1967, (SSB, New Directions Community School)o Criticism of the computer approach to education, including Montessori.

Oettinger, Anthony G. Run, Computer, Run. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 197^ (NSE,' TP, Gross).

Resnick, Henry. Turning on the System: War in the Philadelphia PublicSchools. New York: Pantheon, 1970. (NSE, CER, Gross).

Wasserman, Miriam. The School Fix, NYC, USA. New York: Outerbridge and Dxenstfrey, 1970, (NSE, Gross). Shows how the concerns of the school system negate the educational process.

Rodgers, David0 110 Livingston Street: Politics and Bureaucracy in"the New York City Schools. New York: Random House, 1968. Vintage Paperback, * (NSE, SSB).

Berube, Maurice and Gittell, Marilyn, Confrontation at Ocean Hxll-Brownsville. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969. (NSE, TMIAS, Gross)0 1 9 7

Urofsky, Melvin, ed* Why Teachers Strike* New York: Doubleday, Anchor Books* 1970* (NSE, Gross)*

Hart, Leslie A* The Classroom Disaster, New York: Teachers College Press, 1969, (NSE, Gross),

Rubinstein, Annette T o Schools Against Children: The Case for Community Controlp New York: Monthly Review Press, 19700 (TMIAS, Gross),

Levin, Henry M*, ed. Community Control of Schools, New York; Brookings, 19767* (TP> Gross),

Fontini, Mario, Gittell, Marilyn, and Magat, Richard, Community Control and the Urban Scho.olo New York; Frederick A, Praeger, 1970, (NSE, Gross)o

Other Recommended Books

Jerome, Judson0 Culture out of Anarchy, New York; Herder and Herder^ 1970^ (NSE, Holt, CER, Gross), The president of Antioch-Columbia, an experimental college, writes on the reconstruction of American higher learning,

Taylor, Harold, Students without Teachers, New York; McGraw-Hill, 1969, Avon'Paperback, (NSE, EdC, CER, Gross),

, How to Change Colleges; Notes on Radical Reform, Net York; Holt, Rinehart and^Winston, Inc,, 1971 (EdC, CER),

__ , The World as Teacher, New York; Doubleday, 1968, Anchor paperback, Gross)0

Woulf, Constance, The Free Learner, El Sobrante, California: Constance Woulf, 4615 Canyon Road, n,d0 (BRCM, Gross),

Weinstein, Gerald and Fantini, Mario D, Toward Humanistic Education, New-York: Frederick A, Praeger, 1970, (NSE, Gross),

Fontini, Mario and Gerald Weinstein, The Dlsadvantaged; Challenge to Education, New York: Harper and Row, 1968. (NSE, Gross), 198

Brown, George I. Human Teaching Is Human Learning. New York: McGraw-Hill, 19700 Viking Paperbacko (NSE, Gross)o

Renfield, Richard. If Teachers Were Free. Washington, D o C . ’: Acropolis Books, 19690 Delta Paperbacko (NSE, SSB)• The problems of freedom in education cast in the setting of two towns0

3aruch, Dorothy VJ0 One Little Boy0 New York: Dell Publishing, 19640 Delta Paperback. (NSE, New Direc­ tions Community School) 0

Baruch, D o W 0 New Wavs in Discipline. New York: McGraw- Hill, 1949. (NSE,' New Directions”~Community School).

______o New Ways in Sex Education: A Guide for Parents and Teachers. New York: McGraw-Hill, 19590 (NSE, New Directions Community School).

Bruner, Jerome S. On K n o w i n g : Essays for the Left Hand. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962, Atheneum Paperbacko (NSE, SSB)0

______• The Process of Education<> Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960o Vintage Paperback. (NSE, SSB, Gross)0

Von Hilsheimer, George. How to Live with Your Special Childo A Handbook for Behavior Changeo Washington: Acropolis Books, 1970. (Holt, CER)o

Spiro, Melford E. Children of the Kibbutzo New York: Shocken Books, 1967. (NSE, SSB). A study of the effects of community child-rearing0

Bettelheim, Bruno. The Children of the Dream. New York: Macmillan, 1969. Avon Paperback. (NSE, SSB)o

______o Love is Not Enough: The Treatment of Emotionally Disturbed Children. New York: Macmillan- Collier, 1968<> Kiton Paperback. (NSE, SSB)»

______o Dialogues with Mothers,, New York: ~ Macmillan-Collier, 1962"l Avon Paperback. (NSE, SSB) o

Gross, Ronald and Murphy, Judith, eds. The Revolution in the Schools. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and" World, Inc., 1964. Harbinger Paperback. (NSE, Gross) 0 1 9 9

Danforth, Ho and Ford Foundations, The School and the Democratic Environmento New York: Columbia Univer­ sity Press, 1970, (NSE, Gross)0

Clark, Kennetho Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power, New York: Harper and Row, 1965, Torchbooks Paperbacko (NSE, Gross)o Wright, Nathan, Jro Wha,t Black Educators Are Saying. New York: Hawthorne Books, 1 9 7 0 o (NSE, Gross)«

Henderson, David, with Barbara Christian and Carol Waltono Black Papers on Black Education0 Berkeley: Other Ways Press, 1963* (NSE, Gross),

Green, Robert L. Racial Crisis in American Education* New York:' Follett Education Corp,, 1 9 6 ^ (NSE, Gross)o

Grier, William H. and Price M. Cobbs0 Black Rageo New York: Basic Books, 1968, Bantam Paperbacko (Holt, Milwaukee Independent School)*

Rugg, Harold and Shumaker, Anno The Child-Centered School: An Appraisal of the New EducatTonT^ New' York: World, 1928o (NSE, SSB)*

Rugg, Harold and Brooks, B. Mariona Teacher in School and Society: An Introduction to Education* New York: Harcourt,.Brace and World, n.d* (NSE, SSB) 0

Kilpatrick, William Heard. Philosophy of Education0 New York: Macmillan, 1951o (NSE, SSB).

. Source Book in the Philosophy of Educationo New York: Macmillan, 1934* (NSE, SSB)o

______o Education and the Social Crisis: A Proposed Program. New York: Liveright, 1 9 3 2 . (NSE, S S B ) o

______o Education for a Changing Civilization. New York: Macmillan, 1930^ (NSE, SSB). Definition of progressive education as experiential and science-rooted.

McLuhan, Marshallo Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGrav; Hill, 19640 Signet Paper­ back* (NSE, Sunrise School)o

______* The Medium is the Massage0 New York: Random House, 1967 0 Bantam Paperbacko (NSE, Gross)0 2 00

The Periodicals of the Movement

The New Schools Exchange Newsletter. 301 East Canon Perdido, Santa Barbara, California 93101, ($10 a year) <,

This Magazine Is About SchoolsQ 56 Esplande St, East, Suite 301, Toronto 315, Ontario ($3050 a year)0

Big Rock Candy Mountain, 1115 Merrill Street, Menlo Park, California 94025 ($8 , 0 0 a year).

Teacher Drop-out Center, Box 521, Amherst, Mass,, 01002 ($17 a year),

Vocations for Social Change, P.O, Box 13, Canyon, • California 94516 ($5 , 0 0 a year) 0

Summerhill Society Bulletin, 339 Lafayette Street, New York, NoY0 1C012 ($10,00 per year) 0

No More Teachers* Dirty Looks, BARTOC, 1445 Stockton Street, San Francisco, Calo 94133 ($2 subscription).

Teacher Paper, 3923 SE Main, Portland, Oregon 97214 ( $ 2 a year)•

The Red Pencil, c/o Phyllis Even, 131 Magazine Street, Cambridge, Mass, 02139 ($3o00 or more contribution),

Ed Centric, Center for Educational Reform, 2115 S o Street, NoW., Washington, D 0 C 0 20003 ($5 a year).

Outside the Net, PoO, Box 184, Lansing, Michigan 48901 ( $ 2 a year) 0

Kommunications on Alternatives, c/o Arrakis, R 0F 0D, #1, Jeffersonville, nTy, 12748 ($5 a year) 0