Child Rearing and Education in the Synanon School

Abstract

This paper proposes to examine in some depth Synanon's innovative experiment in collective child rearing and education. A detailed description of the Synanon School is presented, including its history and development, organization, and census data on its 200 resident children by age, sex, race, and time in Synanon. The school's functioning is discussed with special emphasis on the following areas: (a) Synanon as a new, emerging self-contained community with its own life style and value system; (b) The educational concepts and philosophical tenets which underly Synanon, its school curriculum and practices; (c) Synanon's unique and extensive use of small group processes to foster change at the individual, social, and institutional levels; (d) Its child rearing practices, role of parents, utilization of many adults as parenting figures, and socialization techniques that rely extensively on peer group influences. Frequent references are made to the Israeli Kibbutz system as an analagous model for communal child rearing and education. Differences and similarities between Synanon's emerging 'Community Parenting' model and the Kibbutz system are pointed out. Questions are also raised as to possible strengths and weakness of Synanon's approach to collective child rearing. The paper concludes with some observations on the significance and implications of Synanon's 'in vivo' experiment in alternative models of social organization, child rearing and education.