John Marchbanks Aitkenhead (21 May 1910 – 26 July 1998) was a Scottish teacher and co-founder (along with his wife Morag McKinnon Aitkenhead) of Kilquhanity School

Kilquhanity School

Kilquhanity School was one of several free schools to have been established in the United Kingdom in the twentieth century. Others include Sands School in Devon, Summerhill in Suffolk and Kirkdale School in London....

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Born in Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

, he attended Eglinton School and Ardrossan Academy before completing degrees in English and Education at Glasgow University. He worked as a secondary school teacher in Argyle, Glasgow and Ayrshire

Ayrshire

Ayrshire is a registration county, and former administrative county in south-west Scotland, United Kingdom, located on the shores of the Firth of Clyde. Its principal towns include Ayr, Kilmarnock and Irvine. The town of Troon on the coast has hosted the British Open Golf Championship twice in the...

. After spending two terms as an observer at A. S. Neill

A. S. Neill

Alexander Sutherland Neill was a Scottish progressive educator, author and founder of Summerhill school, which remains open and continues to follow his educational philosophy to this day...

's Summerhill School

Summerhill School

Summerhill School is an independent British boarding school that was founded in 1921 by Alexander Sutherland Neill with the belief that the school should be made to fit the child, rather than the other way around...

, but there being no vacancy on the staff, he decided to found his own free school

Free school

An anarchistic free school is a decentralized network in which skills, information, and knowledge are shared without hierarchy or the institutional environment of formal schooling. Free school students may be adults, children, or both...

 in Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

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Kilquhanity School, near Castle Douglas

Castle Douglas

Castle Douglas , a town in the south of Scotland in Dumfries and Galloway, lies in the eastern part of Galloway known as the Stewartry, between the towns of Dalbeattie and Gatehouse of Fleet.-History:...

, south-west Scotland, opened in 1940, as both a boarding and day school. With some difficulty, Aitkenhead gained recognition as a conscientious objector

Conscientious objector

A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....

, enabling him to continue the work. The school operated continously until closing in 1995.