Dominies log

A.S. Neill's A Dominie's Log is a diary of his first year as headteacher at Gretna Green Village School, during 1914-15. It is an autobiographical novel. He changed a hard working, academic school controlled by corporal punishment and the fear of the authority of the teacher into one of happiness, play and children controlling their learning. He was a reflective teacher, sitting on his desk thinking out why he and the children were at the school. He also, most importantly, thought the children were human beings, and engaged with them as such, joining in their games, sliding with them on an ice slide in the street, sharing their sweets, laughing with them, and appreciating and respecting their individuality, and creativity.

Most images of teachers are about the individual as hero overcoming the problems of school and parents and leading the children to enlightenment. Like the heroes of fairy tales they do not challenge or change the system, they are simply heroes of the system, if only all teachers were like them. To Neill the children, and their school and local community, are the heroes, they are the ones that he sees as helping the child to be happy, healthy and free. In the first review it states that he has opinions on everything, but that was to miss the point, that the issues of the school and its children impinge on political and cultural life, they are not separate. Neill is thinking of the culture of childhood and schooling, not of the school as a place for effective, efficient methods and positive measurable outcomes. The story is about him trying to 'create an attitude'. Indeed, after ten years of teaching, in 1921 he creates a school, a community, that is the hero, Summerhill School. Its formation is portrayed in A Dominie Abroad, and the Children's BBC producer, Jon East, uses it to get audiences to question what a school is in his drama about the school and its fight with Ofsted inspectors, Summerhill.

"An awful lot of drama is set in schools - and yet each series only reinforces the dominant paradigm," Jon East says. "What we're trying to say in this drama is that there could just be another way of doing things."

Neill reads the war news everyday to discuss with the children. He uses Ibsen's play An Enemy of the People, replacing that day's bible lesson, to question the justice of democracy when the mob rules. This book, the way it is written, the way he thinks through issues, the way it ends, can be seen as representing all those teachers who at that time helped create the community known as New Ideals in Education Conferences. They believed in the foundation value for all schools and children's communities, of 'liberating the child from the authority of the teacher'.

It was recognised by the New Ideal's teachers, professors, soldiers, politicians, headteachers, artists, musicians, actors... that the liberty of the child, the autonomy of the learner, their creativity, self-expression, their search for knowledge and learning was the hope for a world of justice and peace.

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