Homer Lane

Homer Tyrrel Lane (* 1875 ; † September 5, 1925 in Neuilly-sur-Seine ) was an American-British educator and social reformer. He became known for founding the "Little Commonwealth", a reformatory for juvenile offenders in Dorset, England, which existed between 1913 and 1918 .

life and work

Lane originally came from the United States , where he made a name for himself by directing various educational institutions (including participation in the George Junior Republic ). Initially, he gave Swedish “Slöjd” lessons as a craft teacher. Slöjd means “manual skill” and refers to working with natural materials such as wood and textiles. In this way, the children should develop respect for manual work methods by handling the material. The American "Sloyd" movement, from which Lane descended, had set itself the goal of making manual work, as opposed to desk learning, the basis of elementary education.

In the "Little Commonwealth" Lane was given the opportunity to conduct his experiments on his own by a group of interested prison reformers under the direction of the Earl of Sandwich . The newly established educational facility was on a farm with different buildings that were gradually populated by groups of children and young people. Other buildings were built by the citizens of this "republic" themselves. The children and adolescents were either orphans or were sent by their parents who could not get along with them. Many of them had suspended sentences. The older children determined the fate of the community in weekly meetings. Lane called this "self-government" and Alexander Sutherland Neill later adopted the term from him. In meetings, the children and young people made their own laws and elected officials such as judges and treasurers.

Lane's therapeutic methods remained in the background of this basic pattern, but if he intervened it often took the form of paradoxical sanctions . For example, the local government penalized lawbreakers with leave for which the community paid, or Lane asked a boy who had smashed all the dishes to break his watch as well.

The "Little Commonwealth" existed from 1913 to 1918 when a scandal led to its closure:

The Little Commonwealth was closed because an adolescent girl ran away after stealing. When cought by the police she made the excuse that Lane had assaulted her sexually. The Home Office sent down a learned KC to investigate; he found no evidence against Lane, but apparrently didn't like the free system, for the Home Office decided that they would withdraw its license if the committee did not appoint another superintendent in Lane's stead. The committee, knowing that Lane would never assault any girl, chose rather to close down the Commonwealth

Neill wrote this later about the events, the actual course of which never came to light. Despite repeated requests by David Wills, the biographer of Homer Lanes, the report of the investigative commission was never published and - as the supervisory authority announced in 1975 - was later destroyed.

Homer Lane later worked with adults in London. Sick of typhus and pneumonia, Lane died of heart failure on September 5, 1925 in the American Hospital Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine .

Fonts (selection)

• Talks to Parents and Teachers (1928)

literature

• ET Bazeley: Homer Lane and the Little Commonwealth , Allen & Unwin Ltd., London 1928
• David W. Wills: Homer Lane. A Biography , London 1964
• Leslie R. Perry (Eds.): Bertrand Russell, AS Neill, Homer Lane, WH Kilpatrick. Four progressive educators , London 1967
• Kamp, Johannes-Martin: Children's Republics . History, practice and theory of radical self-government in children's and youth homes . Opladen: Leske + Budrich 1995. ISBN 3-8100-1357-9 (pp. 99–186: The psychoanalytic pedagogy of Homer Lane and his successors in England ; pp. 243–253: Homer Lane in USA: The Ford Republic ; pp. 254–273: Homer Lane and the Little Commonwealth in England )
• Brehony, Kevin J. The genesis and disappearance of Homer Lane's Little Commonwealth: A Weberian analysis. Persistence and disappearance. / Persistence and Disappearance: Educational Organizations in a Historical Context. / Educational Organizations in their historical Contexts in M. Göhlich, C. Hopf and D. Tröhler (Eds.). Wiesbaden, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften: 237-53, 2008.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ quoted from (?) Neill, 1949, p. 131
2. ^ Robert Shaw: 'Homer Lane and the Little Commonwealth' by Elsie Bazeley , Digest. Retrieved April 2, 2013.