INNISFREE

A personal account by Clyde B. Rue,
Written December 16, 1976.

During the school year of 1969-70, I was working at Montclair High School. At that time, I was teaching mathematics and having a great deal of trouble feeling that I was doing justice to most of my students. At that time I had taught 12 years and really felt that the issues of "relevance" and "value-imposition" were of paramount importance. I felt that these issues were not honestly being faced by the public schools. I was not alone in this belief. Several of my colleagues and I made several attempts to approach the administration with a formal proposal to organize an alternate program within the school that did attempt to deal with these issues. The first attempt was met with a three-month delay, after which the principal explained to me that our proposal had been lost. The second attempt was met with another three-month delay before getting a response indicating the administration didn't feel the "time was right." It was due to this kind of frustrating experience that two of my colleagues and I turned to the private community to seek support for our proposal.

On February 22, 1970, the three of us and our spouses announced ourselves to our students, to the high school staff, and to the rest of the community. We were looking for support from any quarter. What we had in mind was a program that was to be designed and implemented by its participants. There was to be input from all involved, where decisions would be made not just by the adult initiators but by the whole group of those people who would participate.

We found support first among young people, many of whom knew they could not actually participate in the program but wanted to help in any way they could. We attracted other staff members, a total of 12. The staff included a nurse, a psychologist, a professional artist, a couple involved in theater and others of interesting and reputable backgrounds.

The group decided what we wanted to do was raise the money to purchase property that could become our school. We located an old summer boarding house in Milanville, Pa. that really seemed appropriate to our needs. It came completely furnished and was only $61,000. (Only $61,000! For all practical purposes we had no money.)

We decided that if we promoted a summer program as a camp experience and charged tuition on a sliding scale, so that money did not exclude anyone who otherwise could go, we might be able to raise the capital to purchase the site.

Two high school bands local to Montclair donated their services to provide fund-raising concerts. A total of six concerts were held in different locations around the community, each of which raised several hundred dollars. These concerts, combined with a number of bake sales, rummage sales, and a benefit local play only raised a couple thousand dollars. More important than the money these activities raised was the attention they attracted. It was our intention that they would do so, and we tried to capitalize on this attention with the local media. Several of the students involved knew personally or had access to people who owned or controlled small foundations. At every opportunity I went by invitation with some of the youngsters to make an appeal for support.

To make a long story somewhat shorter, we found enough support to purchase the land. The site in Milanville, Pa. was christened Innisfree after the poem by Yeats.

Our basic argument was that there were many kids who wanted and deserved a chance at really developing their own program. We used A.S. Neill's Summerhill as a model in promotion, even though we were not trying to duplicate it, but rather create our own model to meet our own needs.

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By the time school closed in June (four months), we had recruited 45 youngsters who paid anywhere from nothing to $650 for an eight-week experience. By this time we had raised $40,000 and recruited 12 staff members who were ready to donate their services for the summer with no expectation of financial remuneration. We had the land purchased with an 11-year mortgage and enough funds to hopefully get us through the first year. We had books and other supplies donated from individuals and companies to the extent of what we estimated our needs to be.

As I have mentioned, the main thrust of our program was that it be self-directed. That the community as a whole accept responsibility for the program and that all individual members be accountable to assist in the resolution of the community's problems. By definition, the problems of the community included the problems of each of its members. It was this issue, that the greatest difference in where the line was drawn, that we had parted ways with Montclair High School. Many of us really believed the public school was not functioning in any realistic way to help its people to resolve their problems. It seemed the more energy we put into MHS the harder the "official" attitude was toward us and our efforts.

In our Innisfree program there was only one regularly scheduled community-wide meeting per week, and as many more "general" meetings as were called by individual members of the community. We probably averaged three or four a weekend. These meetings dealt mostly with organizational problems; how to fairly distribute whatever work needed to be done; how to organize the various instructional and or recreational activities, who would teach them (many of them were taught by youngsters), how to deal with community-wide problems like theft, drugs, neighbor problems, animals, cleanliness, noise, and so on and on.

I think these meetings were really very unusual. They succeeded, to a large extent, in resolving many of the problems. Most people felt "heard" and therefore felt they had been taken into account in whatever decisions the community made.

There also were other meetings. They were of a smaller size where the whole community was divided up into six groups. These groups met several times each week for the first four weeks, after which we re-organized all groups. The purpose of these smaller groups was to provide help for each of its members in dealing with the interpersonal problems that we are all faced with. These groups were all led by experienced facilitators who were all working under the direction of the psychologist. I don't want to imply there were no problems with these groups. There were many, but those very problems were the content of a large slice of what we would call curriculum.

There were many of the usual summer camp type of activities, but all with a slight twist. The initiation for the activity, and the responsibility for its success or failure, came as often as from the youngsters as id did from the adults. The word responsibility really did take on a heavy meaning.

It may sound like I am implying all people accepted "responsibility" and thrived in this program. This was not the case. Where it was not the case, it became content for discussion at meetings. During the summer, two youngsters went home because in one case the child was very hunhappy and in the other the child's parent was unhappy with the program. I might also add we lost a staff member for the same reason.

I also do not want to sound like it wall "all good" from my point of view. I had accepted final financial responsibility (signed on the mortgage bond) and found myself frequently caught between commitments to community goals and my own financial fears. I have to say, in retrospect, I believe there were no instances where the community did not seriously take my situation into account.

My experiences at Innisfree were mostly positive. Probably one of the most important, for me, was a recognition of the limits of my own ability to function in a "free" community. Here, as often the case is, when the limits are recognized the limit shifts position. I believe that much more freedom to be responsible or irresponsible can and should be afforded by our communities, as long as this is balanced by a commitment to "work out" the resulting problems.

We ran another similar program the second summer, but have not done so since. It is my hope to return to Innisfree when we are more able to handle the finances (my family's) and really do a school. I'm not sure this school would have the same kind of philosophy of commitment to freedom, but there certainly would be strong similarities -- mostly in terms of working out problems in some humanistic way.

When we started Innisfree, it was an attempt to get away from what we perceived as an oppressive way of educating people. At this point, I'm not at all sure there is a way of getting away from it. It seems, in retrospect, there were many at Innisfree who were oppressed or dominated by the "articulate" and I'm not at all sure of how to deal with that.

Those of us who felt the need to get away and do our own program were all fired from Montclair High School, and initially didn't care. We have all now returned to "straight society," whatever that is, and are leading lives that could hardly be called deviant, except in insignificant ways.

I believe the humanistic principles we strived so hard for are reachable. They are costly. Very often, it hurts to get really close to a group. And too often, the "high" being sought evaporates before attainment.

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Post Script

One of the greatest ironies of the experience, for me, was that Montclair High School, the year after we created Innisfree, started not one but two alternative programs; one of which seemed to me very close in approach to what we originally proposed (the one that got lost). I like to think the trauma of Innisfree's birth provided the impetus for this change of heart, but I really don't know. I do know a number of the kids from Innisfree became involved in these programs and were able to demand and get a significant role in their design. -- C.B.R.

Editor's Note: The above was written in a partial fulfillment of a graduate seminar in education at Trenton State College, dated December 16, 1976. This web page was posted on Sunday, June 14, 1997, by Tom Rue . All rights reserved. Copyright 1976, renewed 1997.