After Summerhill - What Happened to the Pupils of Britain's Most Radical School? (Paperback)

Summerhill is notable for the fact that it does not require any of its pupils to attend lessons. Furthermore, the school is run by a council of pupils, teachers and houseparents where questions of discipline are decided democratically. What, one may ask, is the likely outcome of sending a child to such a school? In After Summerhill, Hussein Lucas investigates these and other questions in a series of extended interviews with people who were educated at Summerhill throughout its history. The former pupils who emerged from this radical experiment talk about how they coped after they left the idyllic environment of Summerhill and went on to face the harsh realities of the world at large, and how their experience of the school affected their lives subsequently. After Summerhill is also in part an oral history of the school told by those who were there: a vivid and illuminating picture of what it was like to be a member of this remarkable educational community.