Summerhill: Childhood Manifesto (please read!)

[H2O Man]

"In my lifetime I have seen two horrible wars, and I may live to see a much more horrible third one. Many millions of youths died in those two wars. When I was a boy, men died in an imperialist cause in South Africa. From 1914 to 1918, they died in the 'war to end all wars.' From 1939 to 1945, they died to crush Fascism. Tomorrow, many may die to crush or to further Communism. That means that the great masses of people are willing to give up their lives and their children's lives at the command of central authorities for causes that do not touch their individual lives.

"We are anti-life and pro-death if we are pawns of politicians, merchants, or exploiters. We are pawns because we were trained to seek life negatively, humbly fitting ourselves into an authoritative society, and ready to die for the ideals of our masters. Only in romantic novels do people die for love; in reality, they die for hate.

"That is the crowd aspect. But the individual is anti-life in his everyday existence. His love-making is in the main unsatisfactory; his pleasures are mostly tawdry, cheap, escapist. He is a moralist, that is, one who considers natural living to be wrong or at the best inadequate, and he trains his children accordingly.

"No pro-life child would ever be given a conscience about sex or lessons or God or manners or nice behavior. No pro-life parent or teacher would ever strike a child. No pro-life citizen would tolerate our penal code, our hangings, our punishment of homosexuals, our attitude toward bastardy. No pro-life person would sit in a church and claim to be a miserable sinner."

-- A.S. Neill; Summerhill; Hart Press; 1959