Sane Child vs. Insane Society

SANE CHILD VS. INSANE SOCIETY is an essay about what the author calls a 'sane education', which requires emotional maturity from the side of the educator, and also a most-possible freedom from co-dependence, so that emotional abuse and entanglement can be prevented from the start. The author argues that preventing child abuse requires first of all the empowerment of the child and the granting the child opportunities for love and sex with peer children, as this has been practiced successfully since decades in Summerhill. Fact is however that patriarchal society is hostile to all those present-time approaches to a liberal and emotionally permissive education, which is why we face a friction here. The essay points out the large array of aspects that contribute to raise, or else alleviate this friction, which is first of all a friction of sanity vs. insanity, or of the sane child vs. a largely insane culture that puts morality over nature, and taboo over naturalness, and that rules and regulates natural processes in education instead of first of all understanding them and then, as much as this is possible, letting things over to natural self-regulation. And this is the magic word, then, in this essay, and it has been a central focus in Alexander Neill's educational approach. For achieving the purpose of educating the child sanely, the author believes non-interference is the most appropriate educational approach; it requires the educator to stay away from judging, harsh criticism and punishment, and on the other hand from emotional and sexual entanglement with the children he or she educates. All forms of educational sadism, that typically humble the child through humiliating the child, are in last resort triggered by hidden erotic attraction that, because of fear, are repressed and then begin to dominate the educator's psyche as a split-self. Hence the necessity to educate the educators through a form of consulting that renders conscious the fact that wherever we are in touch with children for longer periods of time, some or the other form of erotic attraction will manifest. And as this is invariably the case in educational relationships, these emotions have to be monitored and emotional awareness has to be built about them. These precautions taken, there is nothing that could stand against an education that insures that the sane child remains sane until he or she has turned into adulthood. It will then be of true advantage not only for the individuals concerned, but a benefit for the whole of society.