Conclusion

The New School is an innovation in the free school tradition. Its roots are firmly set in the traditions and practices of Summerhill and Sudbury Valley School. Drawing the best from those traditions, The New School offers authentic experience in both inner freedom and in political freedom.

The New School, with Sudbury Valley, continues the practice of student governance and non-coercion in lessons as initiated by Homer Lane and developed by A.S. Neill and Summerhill. All three schools share a common commitment to student freedom, equality, and authentic respect for those human beings who make up each school.

The New School accepts and perpetuates the insights of Sudbury Valley which strengthen the safeguards against anonymous authority and the tendency of children to unwittingly submit to the influence of adults and other forms of seductive influence. The use of explicit and articulated rights and the rule of law as a means of shedding light on these elusive power dynamics is a tradition shared by both Sudbury Valley and The New School.

The New School follows and adopts the practice of Sudbury Valley in rejecting the traditional class format and the student-teacher relationship as the usual means of exploration of areas of interest. By rejecting these methods, both Sudbury Valley and The New School allow broader range for innovation and exploration, without the constraints of convention or prior conceptions of others.

To these traditions and practices, The New School adds the intellectual traditions of St. John’s College, thus elevating intellectual engagement of the world to an equal status with the emotional and political experiences which the other traditions serve so well. In this way, The New School maintains and expands the advantages of the free school tradition, and offers an answer to the charge of under-appreciation of intellectual experience to which the other traditions might be liable.

By one lineage, The New School has roots in the 1913 innovations of Homer Lane and the 1920’s advent of Summerhill School. By another lineage, it has roots running to the founding of the United States, through the 1968 founding of Sudbury Valley School. By a third lineage, The New School has roots which run to the earliest Western thinkers and traditions of rational engagement of life, through the 1937 institution of the New Program at St. John’s College.

We hope that this gives some context to the place of The New School in both the free school tradition and in the human tradition of freedom stretching to the beginnings of civilization.

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