Lib Ed was formed in 1966 as the Libertarian Teachers Association. It now explores libertarian practice and ideas in education around the world, linking and supporting others with similar ideals, running a website and organising conferences....
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By David Gribble
Book of the week in the Times Educational Supplement
To celebrate David Gribble's life and work in education, we are reprinting Real Education.
David Gribble
Books
Recent articles
John Newsinger reviews Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes
The Cop explains that no matter how big a dickhead you are, you can still aspire to become Prime Minister
Students getting organised
Rebel City Collective explain how they do it in schools
Barbara Leeds remembers Nellie Dick
Déjà vu
Put the Woke Back to Sleep
Book Review: Ian Cunningham's Self Managed Learning and the New Educational Paradigm
James Bar Bowen
John Newsinger reviews three children's illustrated stories written by Donald Trump's 'spiritual advisory council',
Eric Metaxas
The Boris Revolution Derailed?
Covid Britain
John Shotton recalls the first time he met David Gribble, who died last December aged 87
An article by David published in Lib Ed 28, Summer 1997
Bar Bowen remembers Michael Gerard, a long-standing member of the Lib Ed Collective, who died, aged 73, earlier this year
Michael explored the issues around play and development in the very young in this article from Lib Ed 23-24, Spring 1994
A lesson from Dickens
The Curriculum Cop beds down with the new regime.
Ian Cunningham offered his thoughts on empowerment at the recent IDEC conference in Bangalore
The Great Oxbridge Conundrum
A call for a radical overhaul by the Radical Education Forum
An account of an open-minded school for children with major educational and social problems.
Dr. Alex Gray
A modest proposal from an ex-inspector.
Derry Hannam
There are more really free schools in the UK than you might think.
Danny Whitehouse
Some unfortunate results of friendly fire, but a continued attack on hope.
David Gribble tells us what he learned at Eton. What did you learn?
A clear account of a school where young people between the ages of four and eighteen really decide what they are going to do each day, and there are no lessons.
Daniel Greenberg
How a grammar school education in the 1970s failed to develop an artistic talent.
Roger Birchall
Fronted Adverbials.
Conferences in the UK and elsewhere
Laura Quick
Falko Peschel introduces a number of short films about his work
Chris W of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) sets out the background to their latest education workers campaign
The Phoenix Education Trust explain some of their activities
The curriculum cop puts down a revolt at the Spartacus Academy in Luton
A description of the village for abused, orphaned or abandoned children in Thailand, adapted from their website
A summary of a film by Michael Moore
Why and how they avoided conventional assemblies at William Booth primary school
Andy Mattison
The boss goes down with semi-colonitis
The new children's book by Kevin Doyle and Spark Deeley, reviewed by Alex Prichard and his family.
The Centre for Self-Managed Learning meets OFSTED
Ian Cunningham
The damage done by lining-up, and how to avoid it
Andy Mattison
Helping school students to discover their own interests
Jenifer Smith
David Gribble
Small Classes or Death
Ken Hosey
An assessment of the problems faced by boys when the school leaving age was raised to sixteen in 1973, still all too familiar.
Andy Mattison
A reflection on the Plowden Report's recommendation that teachers should care tenderly for individuals.
A few timely quotations.
The Last Trump.
Educating for Democracy in England and Finland.
Edited by Andrea Raiker and Matti Rautiainen
Laura Quick
Reviewed by C V Pawsey
A new review of a book that has perhaps been neglected because of its misleadingly obscure title
David Gribble
Curriculum Cop 11
An introduction to an article by William Doyle.
Ramin Farhanghi
A new school in Paris
Patrick Neustatter
A doctor's view of the effects of modern education
Ian Cunningham
Preparing children for jobs that don't exist any more
Curriculum Cop 10
Curriculum Cop tears into academies, among many other things
The Edge Foundation opposes the policy to require 90% of 16-year-olds to enter GCSEs in the full English Baccalaureate.
The inspiration of local history
Jo Carrington
An introduction to the Self-Managed Learning College
Ian Cunningham
Why most adults can’t manage democratic discussions
Jason Preater
Curriculum Cop 9
A transcript of a Radio Four Thought broadcast
Rachel Roberts
How children who have had their talents chopped off, have been helped to recover
Ian Cunningham
How the Department for Education is wriggling out of the commitments agreed in 2000
Zoe Redhead
Curriculum Cop 8
An experiment in free, co-operative higher education
A inspiring educational approach propounded by telling stories rather than theorising.
Stuart Grauer
A successful alternative school in Japan
Shinichiro Hori
Concerned for Working Children (CWC)
An account of an attempted innovation in 1968
Jakob Jakobsen
Curriculum Cop
Reactions against imposed curricula in the USA and the UK
A French educator’s reaction to the recent terrorist attacks
Jean-Pierre Quayret
A brief introduction to the transformation of education in Colombia
A hitherto unrecorded incident in the life of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s young hero
Helmut Zöpfl
How Summerhill principles have been adopted at a home-schooling annexe in Gloucestershire
Hussein Lucas
Toff Aid
Progressively Worse, by Robert Peal: David Hansen
An all-embracing new approach in an Indian primary school
Jinan. K.B, and Ranjana Baji
What the results of the American election mean for education
Jerry Mintz
Aaron Keohane
Art is Money
Channel 5: James McAsh
Roshan Daryanani
Falko Peschel’s Bildungsschule Harzberg, where young children decide how to use their time.
How school pupils are indoctrinated in thinking about education.
A distinction between statistics and reality.
William Brown, as reported by Richmal Crompton.
Curriculum Cop assures us that it is not.
A small infringement of school uniform rules.
The work of the amazing Indian group, Concerned for Working Children.
A TED.x talk by the founder of Nuestra Escuela in Puerto Rico.
An account of the government assault on Down Hills Primary School in Tottenham.
A report and some news of developments
How the traditional Italian school makes life difficult for anarchist teachers
Edmondo
An account of the discovery of the importance of choice
Sean Bellamy
Curriculum Cop
A communiqué from the Coalition of Grassroots Educators
A review of Nick Duffel's book on the harm done by boarding-school survivors
David Gribble
A documentary made by a group of London school students.
Written and performed by poet Jess Green.
Programme Announcement for the March conference
What happens in the schools in Shanghai
A new look at Paul Goodman’s Compulsory Miseducation
The Centenary of The Little Commonwealth
Curriculum Cop welcomes traditional methods
A last-minute chance to apply for a scholarship to study ‘Freedom to Learn’.
Teachers in despair over the current atmosphere in schools.
Hussein Lucas
The common core curriculum in the USA is fiercely criticised.
Jerry Mintz
REEVO, AER0 and the Phoenix Education Trust are all preparing maps of sites of alternative or democratic education...
Curriculum Cop returns to the Lib Ed pages with a report on a new Govian free school
A film of Sands School by former student Rosa Tyler Clark
A song by Fascinating Aida
A film about the ways schools prevent authentic education, with English subtitles.
Kaia and Megan Bellamy, Tom Wright and Simone Turner
Four students tell of their experiences at the 2013 IDEC in Colorado.
Jerry Mintz’s new book, reviewed by Hussein Lucas
Lib Ed outdoes Michael Gove in outrageous proposals
A Russian school student describes current education in the CIS
A young child's choice of work
Amukta Mahapatra
The launch of the Save Childhood movement, and values in early education.
Alisdhair Mussell
The manifesto from a book on how to give your children places to play outside.
Mike Lanza
A charity offering weekly play therapy sessions at primary schools in London
Ros Kane
Alex Bloom: part 3 : Freedom in Community
Michael Fielding
An account of why a newly trained teacher decided to leave the profession
David Hansen
Alex Bloom: Introduction and Part 1 Freedom From Michael Fielding
School of thought: The New Education Between the Wars:
a forthcoming film
Joanna Grudzinksa
We master what we practise. So what do we want to practise?
Trevanion Grenfell
Richard Musgrove
In his book, The Ignorant Schoolmaster, Jacques Rancière sets out the radical theory that is the core of most of his later work.
Stefan Szczelkun
Only a small number can imagine a different way to do things.
Richard Fransham
Downloadable files of the first three LTA bulletins.
Other Education: The Journal of Education Alternatives, is a new, on-line academic magazine edited from the University of Stirling.
James Bar Bowen
As an undiagnosed autistic, Maurice Frank suffered severely at school from being classified as gifted and talented.
Details of the 2013 IDEC and Eudec Conferences.
Human Scale Education, which has been running since 1985, has had a grant from the Paul Hamlyn Trust. How are they going to use it?
Some extracts from a blog, describing extraordinary official attitudes.
Jenny Collins
Lib Ed's range of activity has been declining over the last few years, indicating a need for new blood.
A pupil at a free school confronts parental anxiety.
Krischan Müller
Local youth was incurring the age-old ire of its despairing elders in a small Derbyshire town.
Bryn Purdy
The Student Voice Team from the Phoenix Education Trust describe their new projects.
The Student Voice Team
An ex-pupil from a free school in Vienna describes a life of extraordinarily varied learning.
Sirna David
Children need to play out of doors, so why not sometimes close your street to cars?
A film by Alice Ferguson and Amy Rose
A report on IDEC 2012 in Puerto Rico, and an announcement about EUDEC 2012, to be held in Freiburg at the end of July.
Stories of some of Bryn Purdy’s ex-pupils which demonstrate the success of his approach.
Bryn Purdy
Tamariki is a democratic school funded by the government. This teachers’ guide expresses their philosophy in a way acceptable to bureaucrats.
It is to be expected that education in China today should be centrally controlled and authoritarian. Cireena Simcox has experience to prove it.
A letter announcing that the Indian organisation, Concerned for Working Children, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Annie Quick is sure that she is not the only person whose memories of citizenship classes are less than inspiring.
Annie Quick
People say Summerhill methods will only work with children from the wealthy, liberal middle class. Bryn Purdy’s experience proves the opposite.
Two new online journals are being launched this year.
An interesting new school has been started by Russian immigrants in Sinai, Egypt
Katerina Perkhova
The Government puts teachers and young people into boxes. How can we escape?
Tania Hales-Richardson
This book consists of fifteen articles compiled some years ago from interviews with former pupils of Summerhill.
Too Much, too soon: Early Learning and the Erosion of Childhood
An OpenEYE publication edited by Richard House
An article from the Süddeutsche Zeitung about the 2011 IDEC, hosted by Sands School, in Devon.
Simone Kosog
A new website, which instead of praising libertarian education, goes into the attack.
David Gribble
A psychotherapist tries rewarding bad behaviour to cure it.
Renee Sadler
Just to keep you up-to-date.
What happened when twenty disaffected young people were given specialist teaching by experts.
Anyone who has passed through the regular graduations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it ...
William Hazlitt
Some reflections after a year of working with education in freedom. Land of Treasure is a free nursery school in Łodz, Poland.
Ola Matyska
Recent research into education based on children's rights in state schools in Hampshire, England
Derry Hannam
The Ragged University is a new and rapidly growing initiative in the UK.
Alex Dunedin
Pédagogie Nomade is a democratically run school in Belgium that is under threat.
A song for any child-friendly school condemned by Ofsted
A brief account of the work already done by Change the Future, a new attempt to make the voice of young people heard.
Luke Flegg
An article originally published in the Sudbury Valley School Journal, revealing surprising similarities between Sudbury Valley and Pixar.
Mark Bell
A description of a visit to William Booth by David Gribble, and a brief summary of the contested report by Ofsted in January 2011.
David Gribble
Dhruba Ghimire is workiing to improve the lives of Nepali women through education.
Echo Zang
A comment on the case of the teacher who attacked a pupil with a dumbbell
David Gribble
An ex-student from Sands School describes the development of democracy in another school.
Rachel Roberts
This article about the Bulger case was originally published in Issue 12 of The Journal of Personalised Education Now.
Christopher Shute
Turning Points
Edited by Jerry Mintz and Carlo Ricci
Thirty-five visionaries in education tell their own stories.
David Gribble
Children have moral perceptions which atrophy with age.
Review by Richard Seebohm
A sample article from Turning Points, a book published earlier this year in the USA, which is an anthology of responses to four specific questions.
Gustavo Esteva
A letter in support of an application to found a democratic school in Croatia.
Derry Hannam
A reaction to the article 'Die, Die, Die' and the 'Teachers' Advice' article in the January posting.
James Bar Bowen
Arvind Gupta is an Indian scientist who has developed fascinating ways of teaching science using only the cheapest materials and household rubbish.
A personal story of recovery after a period of despair as a student in a conventional school.
Rachel Roberts
An account of the achievements and disappointments of Coole Schule, the Austrian movement for student involvement in school decision-making.
The Lycée Autogéré de Paris is a self-governing state school that has been running since 1982.
Heike Freire
A new definition of a loosely defined term.
Ian Cunningham
Harry Potter is defended against the critics who accept The Lord of the Rings and His Dark Materials as serious literature.
David Gribble
A selection of startling suggestions from the TES website.
Clive Harber
'Schooling not only reproduces society fundamentally as it is, but also ...'
Richard Layard and Judy Dunn
Is the government review of home education another attempt to control or silence educational diversity?
Derry Hannam
Some entries for the English Secondary Students' Association competition for videos suggesting improvements to schools.
The International Democratic Education Conference planned for Korea met an unexpected problem.
The story of a project for helping unemployed young people to learn circus skills.
Alice Finbow
An email discussion between Milan Rai and David Gribble
A description of the new European Democratic Education Community.
Zsa-Zsa Shea
A response to the extract from Siegfried Bernfeld’s article on the Baumgarten Children’s Home, posted on this site in September 2008.
Robert Hamm
Extracts from a book by David Mearns and Brian Thorne on Carl Rogers' approach to counselling, rewritten to illustrate an approach to education.
Edge Learner Forums aim to promote vocational qualifications and bring them up to an equal status with academic learning. In fact they do much more.
An account of a visit to Butterflies, the organisation for street and working children in New Delhi.
Jerry Mintz
Amukta Mahapatra describes Neel Bagh, founded by David Horsburgh in 1972, the inspiration for many prominent Indian educators.
Amukta Mahapatra
Alan was one of the victims of the raising of the school-leaving age in 1972. His experience has contemporary relevance.
Alan Nettleton
An account of what must be the most widespread liberalisation of education anywhere in the world.
Amukta Mahapatra
A new student teacher's unexpected response to the demand for an essay.
Lucy Golston
Positive and negative reactions to the new English Education and Skills Bill
Inspiring extracts from the leaflets published by William Booth Nursery and Infant School in Nottingham
An anonymous poem from the 1990s
Nigel Wright responds to Jenny Auster's article published on this site in May last year, and Jenny Auster replies.
Eva Ibbotson
Tally, who is eleven, is sent to a progressive boarding-school away from London in 1939.
The Kinderheim Baumgarten was an innovative Jewish children's home set up in Vienna after the first world war.
Siegfried Bernfeld.
Leonard Turton
An address to The first EUDEC (European Democratic Education Conference) which was held at the University of Leipzig in 2008.
The Indian organisation, Shikshantar, runs a campaign against academic qualifications. They have published many relevant stories.
Akira Potter has been a pupil at two free schools in Japan, and at Summerhill. He describes his experiences.
Akira Potter
Peter Higginson
A response to Peter Higginson's article
James Bar Bowen
Robin Alexander's lecture at the conference on Childhood, Wellbeing and Primary Education organised by the General Teaching Council for England.
An extract from the NGO alternative report on the UK implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The speech delivered by Danielle Souness, of Room 13, at the Artworks Conference in the Tate Modern, when she was twelve years old.
The December Newsletter from Hope Flowers School, in Bethlehem.
An ex-pupil tells of her own experiences at the school and describes the effect it had on her life.
Jenny Auster
Coole Schule, the Austrian association of school students, gives up on politics.
An email correspondence between Luke Flegg, an ex-pupil of Sands School, and Moe Zimmerberg, staff member at the Tutorial School, New Mexico.
Extracts from Tolstoy's writing about his school at Yasnaya Polyana
CWC's report of the first public children's meetings in Karnataka
Research into School Councils
Two views of the London Secondary Schools Action Research Project on school councils.
An extract from the prospectus of the proposed Netzwerkschule in Berlln
Comments on the NASUWT's position statement in which they justify their anxiety about current development of student voice in British Schools.
This obituary for the great Russian teacher is translated from his school's website.
An account of Tubelsky's school
A new book is planned by ex-students of Michael Duane's celebrated school.
Booroobin, as small Sudbury school in Australia, joins the list of free schools threatened by government action.
A Free School Meets the Exam System
Kapriole, a free school in Bad Würtemberg, takes its first exams.
A review of five DVDs about democratic initiatives in different countries.
Gert J. J. Biesta
A philosophical argument for a type of education which has long relied only on personal feeling and practical experience.
A teacher at Bishop's Park College, in Clacton, writes about the inspiration he found there.
Mark Curtis
A new experience for someone used to introducing democratic meetings to older groups
Jerry Mintz
Leonard Turton
An examination of leadership, personalisation and high performance schooling
Michael Fielding
A year-eight pupil at George Mitchell School in Leyton describes some of the innovations there.
Sylvia Lim
The University of the Third Age, established to offer further education to the over forty-fives is healthily anti-authoritarian.
Martyn Everett
A model of an educational philosophy adapted, with permission, from a diagram by Lynne Smith.
In Falko Peschel's classes, children really want to learn.
Camila Batmanghelidjh
These are the lives of the London children who the rest of us prefer to despise, evict, punish or ignore.
Edited by Mark Vaughan with contributions by Zoë Neill Readhead, Tim Brighouse and Ian Stronach
Professor Lynn Davies, Dr Christopher Williams and Hiromi Yamashita with Ko Man-Hing
Why, when bilingualism is so highly valued, are immigrant languages ignored?
Christine Hélot
An account of a school in Alsace where languages are taught in a different way
Igor Mitschka, aged 14, of Austria's Cool School Association, has organised two children's conferences, open to every school student in the country.
Circus Kaos is not a typical circus – it doesn't have any animals and its artists come under the Youth Protection Act.
Ruth Schleicher
An open letter from the Executive Director of the Indian organisation, the Concerned for Working Children (CWC)
Damodar Acharya
Edited extracts from the report by P. J. Lolichen of the CWC (The Concerned for Working Children) on their 2005 research into access and mobility.
Adapted from reflections in the report by P. J. Lolichen
Is there a lack of ecological concern among democratic educators?
Eric Nicolas Schneider
Two versions of an article about Brooklyn Free School which give very different impressions
Judith Stinton
We probably all know a little about the Little Commonwealth (1913 - 1918). This book fills in some of the gaps.
Leonard Turton describes his delightful and important work within a state school in Canada.
Leonard Turton
Gerard Mathot tells how Seliba Sa Boithuto grew from his own schooling and his early experiences as a teacher and as a trainer of teachers.
A new teacher at Sands School describes his impressions.
Martin Roberts
Shikshantar, an Indian institute for rethinking education, has published a number of comments on the undesirability of relying on certification.
IDEC stands for International Democratic Education Conference. It has been happening for twelve years now, and you ought to know about it.
A translation of the charter of the Freinet movement in France
A brief introduction to the recent founded English Secondary Students' Association.
David Gribble
Seliba Sa Boithuto provides learners with a quiet, comfortable place to learn, materials such as books, pamphlets, computers and videos, and tutors for advice and help. It offers no courses. The tutors do not teach. Instead but they encourage students to learn together when they share an interest and to learn from each other as much as possible.
David Gribble
A former Summerhill houseparent, writes about his impressions of the school.
Matthew Appleton
When Maria, who had been home-educated in Austria and Turkey, was considering a career, she took a placement in a school.
Maria Kopta
Semco is a business in Brazil where everyone decides what work to do, when to do it and how much to be paid. Now they have started a school.
Have you ever wondered what it is really like at Eton? Some of the privileges are described here.
David Gribble
The School I'd Like
Catherine Burke and Ian Grosvenor
The Guardian newspaper asked the questions, and children answered them.
Revolution within
Sammy Kunina
Tony Brown, Michael Foot and Peter Holt
What happened when three retired teachers spent two days in a modern primary school.
Room 13 is a pupil-run studio in a primary school in Scotland. It has exhibited at Tate Modern, but it is remarkable for much more than its art.
Bonaventure – an Alternative School in France
Michael Gerard
Extracts from a correspondence that first appeared on the IDEC listserve.
(Children's rights fighters)
Krätzä is a group of people in Berlin who are concerned about children's rights, and are working for fundamental changes in society.
Pat Edwards, of Tamariki School in Christchurch, New Zealand, describes one particular kind of learning outside the classroom.
Pat Edwards
David Gribble visited the Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School, Chicago.
This article is an extract from Jürg Jegge's book Dummheit ist lernbar (Stupidity is learnable).
Jürg Jegge
A Catalogue of Damage
David Gribble
For twenty years or more I have been visiting schools described as democratic or progressive or free or child-centred and finding a huge variety of places that seemed to me to be excellent. Some had no lessons but many rules and others had many lessons but no rules, some were governed entirely by the school meetings of students and staff and others were owned by benevolent dictators, at some the staff offered courses and at others the students decided entirely for themselves ...
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