A Dominie's Log

A.S.Neill's 'A Dominie's Log' Published in 1915

Dominie's Log original cover, 1915.

This year is the centenary of the first book by A.S.Neill. He wrote it as a diary of his first year as headteacher at Gretna Green Village School, during 1914-15. It is an autobiographical novel. He changed a hard working, academic school controlled by corporal punishment and the fear of the authority of the teacher into one of happiness, play and children controlling their learning. He was a reflective teacher, sitting on his desk thinking out why he and the children were at the school. He also, most importantly thought the children were human beings, and engaged with them as such, joining in their games, sliding with them on an ice slide in the street, sharing their sweets, laughing with them, and appreciating and respecting their individuality, and creativity.

Celebrating the Practicing Teacher

Most images of teachers are about the individual as hero overcoming the problems of school and parents and leading the children to enlightenment. To Neill the child, and their school and local community, are the heroes, they are the ones that he wants to help to be individuals and happy children. The story is about him trying to 'create an attitude'. He reads the war news everyday to discuss with the children. He uses Ibsen's play 'An Enemy of the People', replacing that day's bible lesson,to question the justice of democracy when the mob rules. This book, the way it is written, the way he thinks through issues, the way it ends, can be seen as representing all those teachers who at that time helped create the community known as New Ideals in Education Conferences. They believed in the foundation value for all schools and children's communities, of 'liberating the child from the authority of the teacher'.

Basing Our Schools on Children's Rights

It was recognised by the New Ideal's teachers, professors, soldiers, politicians, headteachers, artists, musicians, actors... that the liberty of the child, the autonomy of the learner, their creativity, self expression, their search for knowledge and learning was the hope for a world of justice and peace.

"In the first place, this amazing Conference at which we have seen sitting side by side Government Officials, advanced Montessorians, antediluvian Teachers like myself, University Professors, Soldiers in khaki, Musicians, Artists, Headmasters of Public Schools, the superintendent of the Little Commonwealth, Primary Schoolteachers, and the American Ambassador himself stands, first and foremost, for Freedom, - I do not like “emancipation”, for the word suggests slavery, and the use of it probably promotes it. We have all agreed that the child is to be free: yes, but the teacher must be free as well as the child…" Mr Lionel Helbert, Headmaster of West Downs, Winchester, 1915

Neill in 'A Dominie's Log' writes about the children's ice slide being salted by the policeman to protect the property of the farmer's, their horses. He reflects with the children that they have no voice because they have no vote, he compares them to women, and women's low pay and menial jobs. He suggests they write a charter of children's rights. As through the whole book he does not do what teachers so often do now, turn things into projects, getting the kids to role play a campaign or draw cartoons of their plans for play in the town and its streets, but to look at the issue in terms of power, and how to get equality!

Need for a Culture and Shared History of Children's Rights

For all rights movements to succeed they build on their history, on changes their struggles have caused, and just as importantly on the culture of struggle they have created. This empowers them to feel a part of a movement, a successful, heroic struggle, with numerous examples of small successes that help to build the momentum for sustained change in laws and attitudes. Children and teachers need to feel they are a part of an historical struggle for the rights of the child. A Dominie's Log is one personal story of a headteacher, it is representative of a whole movement, New Ideals, and it is vital that we celebrate and share this history, so that it effects the present.

Evidence has been submitted to the Select Committee on Education for their meeting with the Children's Commissioner, Anne Longfield OBE, to discuss her new report 'Ambitious for Children' (August 2015). It is trying to input into the discussion of the voice of the child, and their future society and culture, the importance of this history.