Introduction

Neil deeply explored the causes of children's psychological disorders and abnormal behaviors by psychoanalysis. In Neil's view, this is only because the problem teachers and parents don't understand children's subconscious needs, lack of understanding of children's psychological motives, and then carry out self-righteous stupid education on them, creating their so-called problem children and leading to the failure of children's education.

Alexander? Sue Solander. Alexander Sutherland Neil (1883 ~ 1973) is a famous liberal educator in Britain. His main works are: Summer Mountain School, On Summer Mountain, A Teacher's Diary, Free Children, etc.

Game first

It is a matter of course that children like games in their childhood. Adults turn a blind eye to games because they have long lost the ability to play games. Out of fear and worry about children's test scores, they constantly obstruct and oppose children's games. It is a sin of modern civilization to educate children to be brought up early and deprive them of games.

Freedom and Children: Respect for Children's Freedom

Neil constantly stressed: respect children's freedom. He believes that human nature is good and past lives is innocent. Naturally, he can give children real freedom, instead of suppressing and restricting their development, and let them realize their goodness freely.

Unfree education completely ignores children's inner feelings, which are the source of vitality. It only develops the mind, suppresses the feelings, makes the originally energetic life dull and dulls the children, but on the contrary, if the feelings are developed freely, the brain will naturally develop.

He believes that one of the great tragedies of human beings is that personality can be controlled and trained like a puppy, and then grow into a submissive and inferior person. Nowadays, many parents' education methods are undoubtedly training a puppy: keep the baby clean, don't eat too much, must obey the arrangement of adults, and can only eat milk when adults think it is suitable and convenient. Children who are forced to keep clean and eat strictly are potential problem children. In the concept of adults, as long as children are quiet and clever, they can save a lot of trouble and have a better life.

Children are bound by stubborn thoughts from birth. In their young lives, they always have to face a series of "no": no noise, no trouble, no lies and so on. There are also maxims of respecting the elderly, teachers and the ancients. In front of them, you are not allowed to ask questions, just obey. As we all know, it is immoral for children to respect those who are not worthy of respect and to respect and love a god they fear. People who usually do this always feel that life is full of all kinds of hardships. If children are not strictly trained, they will not take care of themselves. People who hold this view don't realize that they have a wrong assumption from the beginning: children can't develop without training, and they can't become talents in the future if they don't form good habits when they are young.

Neil and his students

Freedom has one of its greatest enemies, and that is fear. The happiest family is that parents never force their children to accept their own ideas, never preach unnecessarily to their children, but are absolutely honest with them. There is no fear here. Parents and children are friends and partners. There is only love between them. In other families, fear is always more than love. Pretending to be dignified and demanding respect make love insignificant, while forced respect always implies fear. Children who grow up under the oppression of this authority are not respected and affirmed, and almost become cowardly, hypocritical and full of hatred.

True freedom means doing what you want and not interfering with others. Therefore, a free man can completely control himself, without authority or coercion.

Respect is the premise of truly free education.

Freedom is not indulgence, the premise is to respect others and never infringe or hinder others. Neil emphasizes freedom only to remind adults and educators not to always think and decide what children should do from their own perspective. Children's perspective is completely different from that of adults.

Neil believes that love is neither a possession nor a doting, but a kind of love that stands with children, makes them feel love and agrees with their behavior. This kind of love and praise must be accompanied by trust in children.

A qualified parent must first be an independent person, clearly know who he is, and not be easily influenced by others or the outside world to change himself. This is actually not easy. Many parents are not only influenced by their parents' values, but also exert this influence on their children in the end. As a result, the boy became a copy of his father and the girl became a copy of his mother. Imposing compulsive ideas on children can easily lead to children's incomprehension, which will turn into hatred after accumulation, first to parents and then to society.

The main way to treat problem children is to recognize, trust and understand him.

The child's destructive behavior is a long-standing vent. Only with hatred can there be a desire for destruction. Let the children vent through laissez-faire. Once they vent, the hatred will naturally disappear. After being recognized and accepted, children will no longer feel that this destructive behavior has caused the anger of adults. When this psychological recovery period is over, they will be consciously and rationally responsible for their actions.

No matter what kind of society we are in, human beings have an instinctive desire to be praised.

Love can produce love, and hate can only produce hate. If children can't get love, they will seek hatred and get the attention of others in hatred and destruction, thus reflecting their own value.

Of course, this does not mean that freedom is complete indulgence. Freedom does not mean that children can do whatever they want, let alone ignore common sense. Any thought is dangerous if it is not connected with common sense. For example, the cabinets for storing toxic substances in the laboratory must be locked, and all indoor heating stoves are equipped with fences. It is forbidden for children under the age of1/kloc-0 to ride alone in the street, to climb the roof and play with ladders, and to play with deadly weapons such as air guns. These rules are made by children themselves.

Freedom in two ways

There are two kinds of freedom: social freedom and individual freedom.

Freedom in the social sense means that the whole society can enjoy freedom, but basically no one can have freedom in the social sense, because everyone must respect the freedom of others while exercising their own freedom rights. As an equal right, individual freedom is something that everyone can and should enjoy.

Parents must make some concessions if they want their children to move freely according to their nature. Parents with normal mental health can often reach an equal agreement or identity with their children, while parents with unhealthy mental health will have two extremes, either violently treating their children or indulging them blindly.

Children's laissez-faire behavior can be stopped by self-regulation and self-discipline. Self-regulation means that children decide their own behavior according to their own wishes. It is not only an adaptive organism regulation activity, but also a psychological mechanism of self-protection. In order to protect themselves, children constantly adjust their behavior to adapt to the surrounding environment, or choose or create the environment they want by transforming the environment through behavior. Self-discipline is a binding force that is responsible for one's own actions when considering the rights and happiness of others. For example, the ability to resist temptation and the desire to hurt others in order to satisfy selfish desires. It can help you understand others, and you can coordinate different opinions of others, so that you can at least accept and tolerate different opinions of others, which is conducive to cultivating the spirit of cooperation with social interests.

But we can't rely entirely on children's self-regulation and self-discipline. Even if children can do this, they can't completely eliminate their out-of-range laissez-faire behavior. Schools must be self-governing. Free schools must implement a high degree of autonomy, but attention should be paid to avoiding students' autonomy in incompetence.

summerhill school

Free Morality: Opposing Taboo

Impatient parents always train their children too early before they are ready, which is harmful to them. For example, letting children learn to walk when their limbs are not strong enough will lead to O-legs; When the musculoskeletal development is incomplete, excessive physical exercise will lead to bone deformation and muscle strain.

Similarly, so is moral cultivation. Making children abide by many moral standards that he can't understand will not only make them unacceptable, but also make them become a long-term depressed mental illness. There is no need to force or educate children to behave, they can learn to distinguish good from bad by themselves. As long as parents set an example and be honest and moral, children will certainly follow the same path.

Freedom and the responsibility of educators: equal participation of teachers and students

From a psychological point of view, children have both the desire to be understood and the desire to understand the outside world. Children get help through communication with the outside world, so as to seize opportunities and adapt to the environment. This is the way they grow and live. Compared with those children with immature minds, teachers' opinions can often influence their decisions to a certain extent, as long as they are willing.

In addition to behavioral therapy, there is also psychotherapy. This kind of conversation does not involve any rational and intellectual activities, but a conversation with students about feelings and emotions in a completely free environment.

Faced with students' choices of various opportunities, teachers can argue with them at will, put forward their own suggestions and convince them that as long as the teacher-student relationship is equal, this argument is just and safe. But teachers can never make decisions and choices instead of students. Even if the students make such a request, the teacher should refuse. Because this will lead to students' dependence, to some extent, it is a kind of disguised control, which is not conducive to the cultivation of students' self-awareness, and ultimately leads to students' inability to make decisions and control themselves. The process of teaching should always be the process of equal participation of teachers and students.