Jonathan Kozol

In 1972 Jonathan Kozol from Boston in the US wrote a book called 'Free Schools' about how he and a group of like-minded individuals started a 'free school'. He writes:

'The term Free School is used very often, in a cheerful but unthinking way, to mean entirely different things and to define the dreams and yearnings of entirely disparate and even antagonistic individuals and groups. It is honest to say right from the start, that I am speaking mainly of one type of Free School and that many of the ventures which go under the name of Free School will not be likely to find much of their own experiences reflected here. At one end of the spectrum, there is the large, public school-connected, neighborhood-created and politically controversial operation...at the opposite extreme is the rather familiar type of relatively isolated, politically non-controversial and generally all-white rural free school. This kind of school is often tied in with commune or with what is described as an 'intentional community', attracts people frequently who, if not rich themselves have parents who are wealthy, and is often associated with a certain kind of media-promoted counter-culture '(p.7).

If you have an hour, watch the lecture he gives here. Kozol is a liberal, and although not talking about free schools here, one can discern that his perspectives on education are different than recent government views on education in the US and the UK and so his concept of free schools is very different to the one being promoted by the present government in the UK too. He is a good speaker.

Someone suggested to me the other day that the idea of a free school being run a by a group of local like-minded families may well be rather a smoke screen for business enterprise organisations taking over schools in the UK...