Talk:A. S. Neill

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History[edit]

Lillian's sister, novelist Henry Handel Richardson, has a note on her page claiming Lillian was first wife to Neill, and helped him found and run Summerhill, yet she isn't mentioned here at all. Anyone know of any external evidence of their marriage? BessieMaelstrom (talk) 11:40, 3 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Untitled[edit]

I think this site is really good!

I am glad :-) Ben@liddicott.com 15:10, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I also think both descriptions (that of A.S. Neill and that of John Holt) are pretty accurate and certainly do not, in my view, need 'clean up'. redpathjohn@mac.com

Hmmm. Made many changes here. The sentences are too long and the advocacy gets pretty thick. There's way too many generalizations without attribution. The bits on John Holt, although nice, are out of place. Certianly give my chages a look and tell me what you think. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Argybarg (talk • contribs).

Everything you've changed so far seems fine to me. I agree that the section on Holt is misplaced, and it ought to be cut down (a single condensed paragraph would be fine) or removed entirely. -- Rbellin|Talk 03:16, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So much of this article seemed to consist of the author discussing Neill's ideas that I began to suspect we're looking at a term paper (perhaps for education school?) pasted into Wikipedia. It hurt to cut the thing down to stub-length but I think, in the absence of much biographical detail, that's what we're left with. It particularly needs more attributions on reactions to Neill's work and quotes from and about the man.


Wikipedia is supposed to be an impartial reference resource. This article is an inappropriate propoganda piece. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wrlord (talk • contribs) 17:34, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence that Neill was an educational psychologist[edit]

I'm removing this article from the educational psychologist category until evidence is forthcoming that he was considered one. University degrees and appointments in educational psychology and publications in educational psychology books and journals are relevant. Merely referring to psychological concepts in his books, as Neill occasionally did, does not seem sufficient. Of course there is no doubt that he was an influential educator. Nesbit 13:46, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Neill was awarded an honorary degree, I think from Edinburgh and I think in educational psychology, but I'll check back when I've been able to look up the specifics. Mishagale (talk) 15:05, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

please note the info on portrait head previously deleted - it IS the definitive head. It is in the national collection of Scotland and the papers relating to correspondence with Neill are in a nationally-important archive Cazimir (talk) 16:05, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So Interesting[edit]

I am really interested in A. S. Neill and Summerhill School as A. S. Neill is a distant relative to me! He was on my great grandfather's side of the family and he shares my surname! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.34.173.149 (talk) 20:22, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Broken External Links[edit]

The following links were broken:

They all go to vidyaonline. I found one resource there about Neill which I included in the external links. If anyone knows where to find the books above elsewhere on the internet, please add them.--Charles Jeffrey Danoff 03:57, 26 February 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Charles Jeffrey Danoff (talk • contribs)

Germany and Austria[edit]

I find it very odd that the artice on Summerhill refers to his activities in Germany and Austria in the 20s, but this article on the man himself never mentions them. Jpg1954 (talk) 21:02, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Dead link[edit]

During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!

--JeffGBot (talk) 22:17, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The criticism section is silly and contains no criticism. If this guy was threatening to others, let's please have some kind of example in the text of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.217.16.9 (talk) 02:51, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Draft[edit]

I'm looking at rewriting this mostly unsourced article from scratch and taking it to FA in the next few months. I was planning on doing it in userspace so the full text could be in the public domain (per my user page release) and then moving it here (into mainspace). Any objections to this, or other thoughts? czar ♔ 22:56, 30 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Richard Bailey?[edit]

I notice that most of the page references a book about A.S. Neill by a Richard Bailey. However, I am unable to find trustworthy information as to who is this Richard Bailey and what are his credentials. It ought to be known that there is a huge difference in whether this is a work of a known scholar or a random book writer. I'm curious. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.75.133.213 (talk) 20:40, 29 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oh dear, an anonymous note. How awkward. There's a thing called Google you might like to look into. I found quite a lot about him. Bmcln1 (talk) 23:56, 29 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I too found a lot of information about a Richard W. Bailey and a Richard B. Bailey but I can not find a Richard Bailey who has "worked in several top universities" and who claims to be an author of this book. A lot of the article is written in a rather critical tone about A.S. Neill and the source being this Richard Bailey certainly raises my eyebrows. But I'm only a lowly grad student in an average university so of course my anonymous comment is worthless and I'm just a crazy conspiracy theorist for questioning the veracity of this information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.75.133.213 (talk • contribs)

  • The article does feature a lot of page references to the book by Bailey (who has also edited a textbook on "The Philosophy of Education" among other books for the same publisher: [1]) since a batch of article improvements in late 2013. I might quibble with some assessment and names in the "Few of Neill's acolytes continued his work" paragraph and its predecessor. But it has the merit of ascribing assessments - to this Bailey and to others - rather than to editor opinions. As with any article, it always remains open to expansion with other attributed views. (From a quick JSTOR search, it is surprising how little written in the past 20 years can be found.) AllyD (talk) 14:42, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I found the whole article very confusing, especially with the surprising amount of criticism from this Bailey person (out of 76 notes, 67 are Bailey) who seems to be someone that really didn't like Neill one bit. Also, there are some vague hints here and there of Neill being a pedophile. I tried to browse the history to see when this happened, as I don't remember the article being anything like this the first time I read it (long ago), but it was to much for me. I hope someone with more stamina would take a look at this. Annaxt (talk) 14:22, 30 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Agree that there is far too much of Bailey's take on Neill here. It would be wonderful to balance this with other writers' input. Totorotroll (talk) 22:03, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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