A NOVEL SCHOOL

Waipa Post, Volume 42, Issue 3305, 4 June 1931, Page 3

A NOVEL SCHOOL

The most extraordinary school in Britain, conducted by an earl and a countess, may soon have to close, as parents are too conservative to send their children to it.

Beacon House, an estate on Hampshire Downs, near Petersfield, is run on “ do-as-you-please ” principles by Earl Bussell, the famous philosopher, formerly the Hon. Bertrand Russell, with his wife, and six teachers as assistants (says 'the London Sunday Express).

The thirteen boys and girls aged between three and ten years come to lessons each morning 4 they like. Otherswise they go out —and nothing happens to them. If they do not like a subject, it is dropped. If they want to be rude to a teacher they are, and if she is grumpy they tell her so. One teacher figures on the lesson list, as “ Betty,” and the other teachers may also be addressed by their Christian names. “ Our object all along has been to remove restraints and let the children be educated without interference, and even, as far as possible, without the assistance of the teachers,” said Mrs Dora Russell, who does not wish to use her title. “ Most parents either spoil or bully, and we rectify that. Two of my own three children, John, aged 10, and Kate, aged 8, are in the school, but they are treated exactly as the others. What .is the good of punishing pupils, for instance, for saying you are grumpy, as ours have done ? They think it if they do not say it, and sometimes it is true.”