A. S. Neill

Alexander Sutherland Neill (17 October 1883 – 23 September 1973) was a Scottish educator and author known for his school, Summerhill, and its philosophy of freedom from adult coercion and community self-governance. Raised in Scotland, he became a schoolteacher at several schools across the country before attending the University of Edinburgh in 1908–1912. He took two jobs in journalism before World War I, and taught at Gretna Green Village School in the first year of the war, writing his first book, A Dominie's Log (1915), as a diary of his life as head teacher. He joined the staff of a Dresden school in 1921 and founded Summerhill on returning to England in 1924. Summerhill gained renown in the 1920s–1930s and then in the 1960s–1970s, due to progressive and counter-culture interest. Neill wrote altogether 20 books, his bestseller being the 1960 Summerhill, a compilation of four earlier books on his school, read widely in the free school movement in the 1960s onwards.