I spent the first half of this summer immersed with people working to create alternatives to traditional school at three conferences: Liberated Learners, AERO, and Blake Boles’ Young Professionals. The vision and commitment among these colleagues to change the established system feels revolutionary, and so I spent the past week of vacation reading about a group of people who preceded us by over a century: The Modern School Movement. I’ve known about Francisco Ferrer, the Spanish anarchist martyred in 1909 for his confrontation of the Spanish church and state’s rigid control of education and society, and this seemed to be a good moment to take Paul Avrich’s detailed book, The Modern School Movement, for a careful reading. What most stands out to me after reading this book are the similarities in challenges and debates these people faced one hundred years ago with what I spent the summer of 2019 discussing at my conferences.
Francisco Ferrer founded the Escuela Moderna in Barcelona in 1901, with a philosophy shared by all of my colleagues this summer. Avrich describes Ferrer’s credo:
Accordingly, the true function of the teacher was to encourage self-learning, to allow each child to develop in his own way, rather than force a predetermined program of study on him. Nor should the teacher smother the pupils under the weight of formal instruction. The emphasis, rather, must be on improvisation and experiment. Rigid programs, curricula, and timetables must be banished from the classroom, and the instruction given in a manner that will cause the least interference with the pupil’s freedom. For if a child is not compelled to learn, his own curiosity will draw him to the subjects that interest him, and his education will be more natural and pleasant, more enduring and meaningful. (p. 9)
I love reading this sort of stuff, reminding me that we are not so original! Over one hundred years ago, people were talking this talk and using it to build schools and programs. In addition to establishing the Escuela Moderna for children, Ferrer’s organization also hosted an adult education center, a publishing house, and a lively forum for political speakers. The Spanish authorities accused his community of organizing assassination attempts on King Alfonso XIII in 1905 and 1906, as well as fomenting a general strike in 1909. Ferrer was condemned to death and shot by a firing squad on October 13, 1909.
Ferrer’s death launched an international movement among anarchists and education revolutionaries. Avrich details many of the schools, some of which were Sunday schools only, which offered a fresh vision for learning and relationships among staff and students. The most famous and long-lasting of these schools was The Modern School, located first in New York City and then for several decades in Stelton, New Jersey. Avrich provides in-depth profiles of the characters associated with these schools and some of the struggles and highlights of their work.
Would it surprise any of us to know that all of these places struggled to find buildings that were affordable and well-located? Or that many of the staff were well-educated idealists willing to work for little or no salary? Or that they found it difficult to attract and retain a large student body? Or that they were subject to the whims of their benefactors? As I read these stories, I felt some strange time-travel alignment between my 2019 discussions and the experiences of these radicals a century ago.
Even more to my delight, they argued over the role of free play versus any academic teaching at all. The true believers in free play seemed to be Elizabeth and Alexis Ferm, who held a strong influence on their community. In contrast, many teachers and community members, including long-time teacher Jim Dick, valued academic learning along with free play. At various moments, these debates divided the movement with harmful effects.
The largest idea I took from reading this history was one that resonates today regarding the aim of our alternative schools. For many people involved in the Modern School Movement, the goal was to raise kids in a free way that might lead them to live as free adults and fight for a free society. The movement included a political vision that the best way to produce an anarchist society was to teach kids how to live in anarchist schools. This idea seems similar to me in what I hear from my colleagues at our modern democratic free schools. Speaking for some of my peers, I believe the argument goes that the best way to produce active adult citizens is to allow children to participate in genuine democracy in running their schools.
I thought a lot about the idealism of these anarchists while reading the book. I do not share the vision that we can shape a new society by teaching children a different vision or a different skill set in schools. I don’t see schools as a way to transform society. My goal at North Star and Liberated Learners has been to offer an escape mechanism for those that feel that school is unnecessarily oppressive. I aim to offer a chance for teens to define and pursue their interests in the present as a better way to grow up, but not with the hope that I will influence what kind of adults they will become, and especially not with a vision for how North Star alumni might politically influence our community. So I find that my overlap with some of these visionaries has its limits.
Nevertheless, I found some soul-mates in the book. For example, Avrich introduced me to Jo Ann Wheeler, who arrived at the Mohegan Colony in New York in 1929. He writes, “Jo Ann arrived at a new view of education that anticipated the “de-schooling” theorists of the 1970s. Libertarian schools, she conceded, with their emphasis on freedom and creative work and on learning by doing, were far superior to conventional schools, but ‘schools of any kind are unnecessary for the sort of education that we consider desirable.’” (p. 331)
One other interesting note: the Modern Schools described in this book were mostly K-8 schools that sent their graduates on to traditional public high schools. I find that a remarkable similarity to our current situation, where many free schools and even much of the independent homeschooling movement is a K-8 phenomenon. The vision for free play and self-directed learning holds an enchantment associated with childhood, one which seems to dissipate for many in this field as children become teenagers. I wonder why that is the case!
Avrich mentions many other writers and thinkers before and since the Modern School Movement who have challenged the notions of traditional schooling. I have ordered some of the books he mentioned, including ones by Johann Pestalozzi and Friedrich Froebel from the 1700s. I welcome any pointers or suggestions from those of you who have traveled this path ahead of me, and I would be delighted if any other colleagues would like to join me in exploring our historical roots.
As a postscript I offer this wonderful historical artifact. (p. 322)
Jim Dick’s response to a questionnaire distributed by the Progressive Education Association in 1927:
- Do you give marks at all? No.
- Do you give tests and examinations? No.
- Do you let the children know their marks? –
- If you do not give marks, how do you arrive at a grade standing? By studying each individual child.
- Do you keep for purposes of promotion an office record of the child’s academic rating or some approximate percentage scale?
- Do you send such records to the parents? We discuss with the individual parent about the child’s development.
- Do you have grades based on academic standing? No.
- Do you promote grade to grade only on the basis of academic standing?
- Do you use standard tests and if so how often?
