In 1971, a few months before the Scotland Road Free School opened, a book by two Danish teachers challenged many traditional ideas about education--and caused huge controversy.
The Little Red Schoolbook had originally been published in Denmark but translations soon appeared in other countries and it was banned in several of them. Pocket-sized and with a bright red cover, it resembled the little red book of Chairman Mao's thoughts that demonstrators had waved during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
It looked subversive, and in many ways it was. Intended as advice for teenagers, the book warned against smoking and drug use but, much more radically, it also questioned the authority of schoolteachers:
• "Many teachers have never done anything apart from teaching. As a result they may not know much about life outside school. Many of them come from a different social background to their pupils and were brought up at a time when the world looked different."
• "Teachers are there to teach you - not the things that you as an individual really need to know, but rather the things that other people think you ought to know."
• "Schools often use exams and tests to frighten you into working. In some schools teachers believe that exams can show exactly what you know. By far the greatest number of exams don't show what you know. They often ask the wrong questions. They may show what you've learnt parrot-fashion or had knocked into you. They rarely show whether you can think for yourself and find things out for yourself."
Not surprisingly, the most controversial part was its liberal-minded discussion of sex, including its description of masturbation as normal and harmless.
It went on sale in Britain early in 1971 after publisher Richard Handyside acquired UK rights and had 20,000 copies printed. "Morality" campaigner Mary Whitehouse called for it to be banned, claiming it had caused "incalculable harm" to children in Denmark" and that it normalised "the most licentious behaviour" (it had described masturbation as normal and harmless).
Conservative MPs also began pressing for action and police raided Handyside's office, seizing more than 1,000 copies (most of the others had already been distributed). He was later fined a total of £50 for two offences under the Obscene Publications Act.
The Liverpool Free Press began publication around the same time and ran extracts from the Little Red Schoolbook in its first seven issues. There were no legal repercussions, though the printer objected to the extract about sex. The Free Press overcame that by printing the extract separately as a leaflet and inserting it into copies of the paper.
A revised version was published without further problems after amendments to the parts of the book that had been criticised in court. The original version was re-published in 2014.