1999 IDEC Report

By Jerry Mintz

I arrived a week early, before the term was over, so I could visit the school while the students were still there. On the last leg of the journey Mrs. Gull, the taxi driver, drove us from the Saxmundham train station to the school. She said that she and her husband would be glad to testify any time about the wonderful changes they had seen in the students as they drove them periodically to the train and airport. She was quite aware that the school was under attack by the education authorities.

Many of the students and staff had just participated in a march on 10 Downing Street to protest the treatment of the school by OFSTED, the office of inspection. Among other things, the school had been told that its non-compulsory lessons conflicted with the imposition of the national curriculum. A pile of letters was given to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office. The Summerhillians were accompanied by many supporters, including English homeschoolers who realized that if Summerhill were discredited that they would be next.

I met several Summerhill Alumni at the End of Term Celebration. One of them was a soft-spoken Japanese boy who helped us repaint the lines on the tennis court. His name is Yoshiki, and he told me he has just been accepted into the Royal Scottish Academy of Music. At my request he then played a very difficult and beautiful selection from Ravel on the piano. He said he learned music at Summerhill, which arranged private lessons for him. I met another former student who is now running his own photographic studio in Amsterdam, and a third, an American, who has a Japanese restaurant called Saga in a very fancy part of London. At his invitation we ate there on the last day and it was great.

William Smith, an American film maker was at Summerhill making a documentary about the school. We helped him find funding so he could continue his project and release a film giving an accurate picture of Summerhill to help counteract the slanderous accusations made by OFSTED.

After the End of Term party he brought us to the train and we traveled to Albert and Popsy Lamb’s house, in the Cotswolds, near Stroud, one of my favorite places in the world. Albert edited the new Summerhill book, a more recent editing of Neill’s writing, and both he and Popsy were students in the school.

Returning to Summerhill for the IDEC on the evening of the 22nd, I met some of the first attendees. Many of them were AERO-related, and some were surprises. One of those was David French, who had first e mailed AERO from Poland and wants to start a democratic school there. Another was Christos Voulis, who originally contacted us from Greece and wants to start a school there. He expressed his great thanks for the support we had given him and even showed us an AERO article which had been translated into Greek and put into his journal. Also, Helen Hughes an AERO member from Windsor House School, a public alternative in Vancouver, Canada, joined us

Tokyo Shure arrived from Japan with a group of 15, including 12 students. Jim Connor arrived. He is a board member of the National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools and will teach this year at Upattinas School in PA. He had just been bicycle-riding in Spain. And had visited a school there, Los Muchachos, a school which takes students, some of whom are orphans, and trains them to be circus performers. He said they have new branches in South America.

The next day the conference opened, and was to be governed in the style of the Summerhill democratic meeting, with a Summerhill student chairing. We talked about how decisions were going to be made during the conference. Decisions were made about quiet times, smoking, etc.

At one point a special meeting was called because some people had been kept awake by noise the night before and have broken the rule which had been previously made. After long discussion it was decided to appoint "beddies officers" and two volunteered and were approved. But some were impatient with the meeting process and wanted to "get on with the conference." A proposal was made to end the meeting before the powers of the beddies officers were defined, and it passed, a decision which had at least one unfortunate results, which we will speak about later.

There were a total of 167 people at the conference, made up as follows: 123 delegates, 19 Summerhill students, 16 other students/children and 9 Summerhill staff. They came from 19 different countries. (Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, England, Germany, Greece, Holland, Ireland, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Palestine, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, United States, Wales)

I took the participants through a networking exercise at the start of the conference. We made a big circle and brought various categories into the center and asked a few of each to explain their connection and background in a few seconds. The categories included those from out of the country, from democratic schools, from state schools, writers, administrators, students, etc. It was a quick way for people to get to know each other.

Beyond Tokyo Shure and Summerhill there were not many students from democratic schools at the conference. About fifteen Summerhill students participated in the conference and their involvement was strong. We hope some of them will come to next year’s IDEC. One student came representing Sands School, and one student came from Hadera School in Israel. One great workshop involving students was led by David Gribble. Democratic education was discussed from the student point of view, with many questions for the students coming from the audience.

There were several workshops specific to the crisis which Summerhill is facing. One was about how alternative schools should be inspected and involved discussion of creating standards which would make sense to democratic schools. For example, one standard could require that a large majority of the students should vote that they like going to their school. Another could require empowerment of students.

Derry Hannam was one of two school inspectors to attend the conference he gave a very well documented talk about why schools which empower students and are learner-centered are more effective.

For my radio show that week I interviewed Derry. I also interviewed Helen Hughes from Windsor House School in Vancouver. We did the show from the office. Uri had worked very hard the evening before to download realaudio player so people would be able to hear the radio show live from the Internet and had finally succeeded. After the show I went over to the computer room to see what the reaction had been. I discovered to my surprise that they had been listening to the first 15 minutes of the show, which started at 11 PM, when the beddies officer came in and ordered them to shut it off! Despite protests, Uri complied with the order, although it seemed that the sound was disturbing nobody, and people later said that the officer was out of line. Thus, incomplete democratic process interfered with at least 10 people’s desire to hear the radio show!

One of the first keynote speakers was Gerison Lansdown who presented the case for children’s rights and discussed her work with the United Nations. Also, Roland Meighan from Education Now talked about "the Next Learning System." He said that it is an extension of the learner-centered approach which recognizes individual learning styles which we all pioneered, starting in the 60’s, but that the best way to present it is that it is the system of the future. Among other things, he showed us a cartoon of a line of animals including a monkey, squirrel, elephant, and fish, with the following instruction: To be fair, each of you must pass the same test—climb the tree!

I did a workshop, introducing participants to IDEC and showing the video from last year's IDEC at the Stork School in Ukraine. Later in the conference we had a meeting over lunch of IDEC people to discuss where the conference might be next year. To our surprise, there were several strong bids to host the conference, from Tokyo Shure in Japan, the Hope Flower School in Bethlehem, along with an offer last year from Alexander Tubelsky of the School of Self-Determination in Moscow, which I reminded the group about.

After the first meeting we seemed hopelessly deadlocked. The Hope Flower School and Hadera agreed they might be able to co-host. Tokyo Shure with their large representation had clearly been working hard on their bid, and even passed out to the group a flyer they had prepared, featuring a proposed budget, funding sources, and accommodations.

As we went into a second meeting during supper, I think we all assumed that we wouldn't be able to make a decision about the site, and the question might drag on through the year. But unexpectedly, Hussein Issa said, "As much as we need the conference at our school next year, I think that Tokyo Shure deserves to have it there, as they have clearly done more work on preparation. I suggest we have it in Japan next year, and that Hadera and Hope Flower co-host the next year." We had complete consensus on the suggestion, and a lot of energy behind it. We felt that this would give us a good lead time to get support for the conference in Tokyo, and even more time to get support for the Hadera/Hope Flower conference. We even suggested that funds should be found to bring Hope Flower students to the Japan conference to better prepare them for the next year.

The group did also recommend that we should create a more formal organization and decision-making process during this year.

Everybody left will good feelings and surprise that we had come to consensus.