Research On Neill’s Curriculum Thoughts

Alexander Sutherland Neill(1883-1973) is a theorist and practitioner of liberal education thought. He founded the Summerhill school, the "world’s happiest school", which caused a lot of controversy in modern educational history. Despite many ups and downs, Summerhill school still exists over nearly hundred years. With the development of the education, human nature attracts more and more attention, as a result, the research on Neill and Summerhill school becomes a hot topic.This paper about Neill’s curriculum thoughts, which base on Neill’s works and his education practices in Summerhill school, can be divided into five parts. The beginning of the paper is the reason of the topic, the significance of the research, the innovation and deficiency, as well as the key concepts. The second part is the background of Neill’s curriculum thoughts, including the social background of economy, politics, science and technology, education and the personal experiences of problem child, young people and great educator. In other words, changes of the times and special experience stimulated Neill’s curriculum thoughts. In the third part, Neill’s curriculum thoughts rooted in the unique view of human nature, understanding and freedom, and inherited and developed from the related thoughts of Rousseau, Freud, and Russell. In the fourth part, the basic content of the Neill’s curriculum thoughts includes four aspects: the curriculum objective, the curriculum content, the curriculum implementation and the curriculum evaluation. Neill took the children development as the ultimate goal of curriculum, so he pursued freedom for children, and paid attention to children’s emotion and creativity; Neill chose the curriculum content to meet needs, attaching great importance to the traditinal curriculum and the interests of children, meanwhile, games and activities occupy an important place; Neill highlighted the student center in curriculum implementation, and the relationship between teachers and students is equal and democratic, with teaching methods to inspire students’ autonomous learning and to make individual counseling; The main characteristic of Neill’s curriculum evaluation is diversified on criteria, subject and methods. The last part is a review of Neill’s curriculum thoughts, its features are to challenge authority, respect for differences, pursue for all-round development, focus on self-awareness and creativity, while its limits are idealism, knowledge system and exaggerated subconscious. In a word, Neill’s curriculum thoughts is useful to enlighten Chinese current basic education curriculum reform.