Homer Lane

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 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.

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 1960, 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 settled near North Branch, in farmland near the hamlet of Roscoe, New York, off Highway 17.

Bibliography

More information can be found from the following sources:

External links