Homer Lane

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Homer Lane (1875-1925) was an American-born educator who believed that the behaviour and character of children improved when they were given more control over their lives.

He was born in Connecticut and started his teaching career at Peters High School in Southborough, Massachusetts. He later went to Detroit where he worked with youths who had run afoul of the law. In 1912 he was invited to go to England where he founded the Little Commonwealth school in Dorset, England and greatly influenced A. S. Neill, the founder of Summerhill School.

Homer Lane had two children by his first wife, Cora Barney and three by his second wife. They also adopted a daughter. He died in Paris after having been deported from England for failing to maintain his alien registration. His family remained in England. As is somewhat common among anarchic educators, Lane got in to trouble with the authorities because of an affair.

Lane's foremost disciple was his patient, Alexander S. Neill, who began a school, Summerhill, which became exceptionally well known after an American publisher, Harold Hart, published Summerhill: A Radical Approach To Child Rearing, in 1969, as the book sold 200,000 copies. Hart had never before published a trade book, being a publisher of children's books and having been advised strongly against publishing Neill's. He was given moral support by a number of alternative educators in the United States, but took the plunge on his own.

The American school, Summerlane, in North Branch, New York, was explicitly named for Summerhill and Homer Lane. It began in 1963 in North Carolina but was burned by racists and moved to Mileses, New York, then settling near North Branch (from New York City, Highway 17 to Roscoe, NY, thence into the farmland).

More information can be found from the following sources:

Homer Lane Talks to Parents and Teachers, Allen & Unwin, London, 1928

http://www.infed.org/thinkers/homerlane.htm, Homer Lane and The Little Commonwealth (an excerpt from Homer Lane's "Talks")

von Hilsheimer, G. Is There A Science of Behavior, Humanitas, Maitland, Fl 1967; How To Live With Your Special Child, Acropolis Books, 1970 (also published as Understanding Young People in Trouble, Acropolis Books, 1970, soft cover); Summerhill: A radical approach to education, IN Values for a changing America, Hellen Huus, ed., University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975 pp 59-75; Children, Schools and Utopias. This Magazine is about Schools, 1966, 23-37

W.David Wills, Homer Lane: A biography, Allen & Unwin, 1964

Aichorn, August, Wayward Youth, New York, Viking Press, 1935

Aiken, W.M. Adventure in American education, 5 vol., New York, Harper & Brothers, 1942

Allen, Lady of Hurtwood; Hurd H. et al Adventure playgrounds, The National Playing Fields Association, London, 1960

Binns, H.B., A Century of Education: 1808-1908, London, J.M. Dent & Co., 1908

Burns, M., Mr. Lyward’s Answer, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1956

Holms, G., The Idiot Teacher, Longon, Faber & Faber, 1952

Holt, John, How Children Fail, New York, Pittman, 1964

Holt, John, How Children Learn, New York, Pittman, 1966

Makarenko, A.S., A Book for Parents, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954; Learning to Live, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953; The Road to Life, 3 vol., Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1951

National Playing Fields Association, Adventure Playgrounds, 71 Escleston Square,London SW1, 1960, pamphlets; Planning an imaginative children’s playground without leadership, mimeograph, 1964

Neill, A. S., Summerhill: A radical approach to child rearing. New York, Harold Hart, 1960

Pearse, J.H. & Crocker, L.H., The Peckham Experiment: a study in the living structure of society. London, Allen & Unwin for the Sir Halley Steart Trust, 1943