On October 13, 1909, Francisco Ferrer y Guardia, a Spanish educator and freethinker, was shot in the trenches of Barcelona’s Montjuich fortress. Following a mock trial, at which no solid evidence against him was brought forward, a military court had found him guilty of fomenting a popular insurrection, which had raged for a week before being crushed by government forces. The execution of Ferrer, the founder of libertarian schools, provoked an international outcry. A little-known figure outside radical circles, he was catapulted into sudden prominence. On both sides of the Atlantic, there were meetings and demonstrations of protest. In a number of European cities streets were named after him and statues erected in his memory. Most important, however, a movement for libertarian education, spurred by his example, quickly spread throughout the world. In Brazil and Argentina, in Poland and Czechoslovakia, in China and Japan, not to mention England, France, and other Western European countries, schools were started on the Ferrer model. These schools, bearing Ferrer’s name and promoting his philosophy of education, emphasized the rights and dignity of the child, a give and take between pupil and teacher, and the cultivation of both manual and intellectual skills in a libertarian environment.

The most extensive Ferrer movement, however, arose in the United States, where it endured for more than fifty years. Between 1910 and 1960, an assortment of radicals from New York to Los Angeles carried on a venture in learning that was unique in American history. Inspired by Ferrer’s martyrdom, more than twenty schools were started in different parts of the country, where children might study in an atmosphere of freedom, in contrast to the formality and discipline of the traditional classroom. These Ferrer schools—or Modern Schools, as they were called—differed from other educational experiments of the same period in being schools for children of workers and directed by the workers themselves. Their founders, moreover, were mostly anarchists, who sought to abolish all forms of authority, political and economic as well as educational, and to usher in a new society based on the voluntary cooperation of free individuals. Their object, during an era of war, social ferment, and government oppression, was to create not only a new type of school but also a new culture, a new life, a new world.

In the wake of Ferrer’s execution, anarchist and free-thought groups marshaled their resources in a campaign to spread Ferrer’s teachings. By the spring of 1910, their efforts had crystallized into a national organization, the Francisco Ferrer Association (later the Modern School Association of North America), with Leonard Abbott as president and Harry Kelly and Emma Goldman among the charter members. Over the next few years the Ferrer Association prospered. Branches were started in all parts of the country, and membership grew with a rapidity that surpassed the most optimistic forecasts. By the out break of the First World War, moreover, Modern Schools had been opened in New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Port land, while additional schools were soon started in Boston, Paterson, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other locations. In addition to English, classes were conducted in German, Yiddish, Czech, Italian, and Spanish. Near the larger cities, including New York and Philadelphia, summer camps were established as retreats from the squalor of ghetto life.

Most of the Modern Schools in America were ephemeral ventures, lasting only two or three years, although the school at Stelton, New Jersey, continued• for four decades, and its counterpart at Mohegan, New York, for nearly two. Improvisation and experiment were the rule, and there was considerable variation from place to place, depending on resources and staff. Yet, for all the diversity, the schools shared a set of common practices and assumptions. Instruction was based on libertarian principles, with emphasis on learning by doing and on crafts as well as books. Rigid programs, curricula, and timetables were banished from the classroom.

Participants in the schools believed that traditional education restrained the spontaneous development of the child, stunted his growth, and brutalized his character Shunning memorization and rote, the staples of conventional learning, they argued that freedom must be the cornerstone of education, that education was a process of self-development, a drawing out rather than a driving in, a means by which the child’s unique spirit was nurtured rather than shaped or suppressed. As far as possible, they held, the pupils themselves must decide what to learn and how to learn it, that the function of the teacher was to allow them free scope, to encourage their self-reliance and independence. A favorite metaphor was that of a tree or a flower, growing, unfolding, blossoming, with nature alone to sustain it. In keeping with this philosophy, the students were treated with patience and understanding. Rewards and punishments were done away with, arbitrary rules abolished, and there were no marks or examinations which might engender hypocrisy or dissimulation or arouse feelings of envy among the pupils. Children, it was held, must be free to learn without fear and without the pressures of rivalry and competition.

In all the Modern Schools, education was conceived of as a never-ending process, extending from cradle to grave. Adults, accordingly, were encouraged not only to take part in the operation of the schools but also to attend evening and Sunday lectures by well-known speakers and writers, supplemented by courses on art, literature, and a range of historical and scientific subjects. In several schools, moreover, Esperanto was taught as an international language, promoting solidarity among the different nationalities, and nearly all the schools doubled as radical centers, involved not only with education but with a variety of social causes, from industrial unionism and freedom of speech to sexual liberation and antimilitarist propaganda. The prevailing ideology was a mixture of anarchism, socialism, and syndicalism, with Kropotkin as the most influential theorist. Apart from the Ferrer Association newsletter, a number of publications—notably Mother Earth and The Modem School magazine— carried news of the different schools, keeping them abreast of each other’s activities. Contacts between them were frequent, including exchanges of teachers and equipment, and they shared a sense of common mission in their quest for educational freedom.

No school better exemplified the dual pursuit of children’s and adult education than the Modern School of New York, familiarly known as the Ferrer Center. Established in 1911, it was a place where adults came to hear lectures by Clarence Darrow, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and other public figures, to see new plays staged by the Free Theatre, to listen to concerts of the Modern School Trio, and to debate the burning questions of the day. It was an outlet for men and women of talent, where Man Ray could experiment with camera and brush, Mike Gold read from Shelley and Blake, and Sadakichi Hartmann put on finger dances and perfume concerts.

Apart from a day school for children, supervised by Will Durant, the Ferrer Center offered evening classes for adults in literature, art, physiology, and psychology, as well as in Spanish, Esperanto, and French. The most successful of these was the art class, conducted by Robert Henri and George Bellows. An other popular course was the weekly forum on “Radical Literature and the Great Libertarians,” organized by Leonard Abbott, who lectured on Maeterlinck, Shaw, and other writers of advanced views. Jacques Rudome, the teacher’ of the French class, remembers the Ferrer Center as “bustling with life and activity,” and to Moritz Jagendorf, director of the Free Theatre, it was “a seething ocean of thought and activity, everybody working and creating.” “I liked it at once,” recalls the writer Manuel Komroff. “One felt unfettered, one felt free. Views were freely exchanged between the speaker and the audience, and the air seemed charged with excitement.”

The Ferrer Center was viewed by its enthusiasts as a model of what was desirable in human relations. In its structure and operations, in the behavior of its participants to one another, it provided a foretaste of the libertarian future, of what life could be like once the restraints imposed by authority had been removed. For some it was also a vehicle of rebellion, a means of altering social foundations by removing the fetters of ignorance, dogmatism, and convention. Its central aim, however, was to free the child. From this the rest would follow.

The progress of the school was interrupted, however, during its fourth year of existence. In April 1914, during a coal miners’ strike in Colorado, a detachment of militia attacked a tent colony at the town of Ludlow, killing five miners and a boy. The soldiers then poured oil on the tents and set them ablaze; eleven children and two women were smothered to death. Following this, three persons, including a leader of the strike, were savagely beaten, then murdered. The Ludlow massacre, as the episode became known, touched off protests throughout the nation, directed at John D. Rockefeller, Jr., principal owner of the Ludlow mines. In the ensuing weeks, moreover, a plot took shape to blow up Rockefeller’s mansion near Tarrytown, New York. Masterminded by Alexander Berkman, the conspiracy was hatched at the Ferrer Center On July 4, 1914, an explosion occurred in a tenement on Lexington Avenue, a few blocks from the Center, killing three anarchists, Arthur Caron, Carl Hanson, and Charles Berg. A bomb intended for Rockefeller had gone off prematurely.

The Lexington Avenue incident had immediate repercussions within the school. In the wake of the explosion, police agents infiltrated the adult classes in an effort to sniff out the conspirators. Overnight the school acquired the reputation as a bomb factory, a hotbed of incendiarism and subversion. The number of visitors dwindled, and financial contributions dried up. The straits in which the school now found itself, combined with the presence of spies and the general atmosphere of anxiety and suspense, led to a decision to move the school outside of New York. A quiet, rural location was found in the village of Stelton, New Jersey, where an anarchist colony sprang into being. In May 1915 the Modern School moved from New York to Stelton, where it maintained a continuous existence for nearly forty years, the longest such venture on record.

Education at Stelton continued along the lines laid down in New York. There was no segregation of the sexes. Attendance was voluntary; the children came and went as they pleased, pursuing what interested them, ignoring the rest. There was no discipline, no punishment, no formal curriculum. Pupils as well as parents took part in the administration of the school, which formed the centerpiece of the colony, the focus of its life and main reason for its existence. In conformity with the principles of libertarian education, due emphasis was laid on handicrafts as well as books. Instruction was given in carpentry, weaving, and basket-making; a Belgian anarchist, Jules Scarceriaux, came from Trenton to teach pottery and brick-making; and Joseph Ishill started a class in printing. Under the guidance of Hugo Gellert, moreover, the children produced strikingly original art work. As in New York, much effort was devoted to experiment and improvisation. Furthermore, given the school’s rural location, an outdoor education was more the rule than ever, featuring hiking, swimming, gardening, and a variety of games and sports.

Of the many teachers at Stelton during the school’s prolonged existence, the most notable, perhaps, were Alexis and Elizabeth Ferm, the objects of much attention in the interviews. “The school was run by saints,” Roger Baldwin remarks. “Alexis and Elizabeth Ferm were so dedicated, so self-sacrificing, that no setback or discouragement—and there were many—could stop them from carrying out their mission.” The Ferms—Uncle and Aunty, as they were called—were among the earliest pioneers of libertarian education in the United States. In 1901 they started a free school in New Rochelle, New York, moving to Brooklyn and then to the Lower East Side, before ending up at Stelton in 1920. Both—and especially Aunty—were strong personalities who left a deep impression on the Ferrer movement, in which they were active for nearly thirty years. The Ferms left Stelton in 1925, only to return eight years later Aunty died there in 1944, after which Uncle retired to a single-tax colony in Fairhope, Alabama, where he died in 1971.

Meanwhile, in 1923, a new colony had sprung up on Lake Mohegan, New York, with a Modern School of its own that lasted for two decades. The Mohegan school opened in 1924 under the direction of James and Nellie Dick, who were also in charge of the children’s boarding house. Both had been ardent proponents of libertarian education in England, where they had founded Modern Schools in Liverpool and London. Emigrating to the United States in 1917, they supervised the boarding house at Stelton until their move to Mohegan. In 1928 they returned to Stelton as coprincipals, before starting their own Modern School at Lakewood, New Jersey, which continued for twenty-five years, closing in 1958. For half a century, then, the Dicks had played a major role in the Ferrer movement on both sides of the Atlantic.

The closing of the Lakewood school marked the end of the Modern School movement in America. To preserve its legacy, however, a group of former teachers and pupils met in 1973 and established the Friends of the Modern School. In September of that year the new organization held its first annual reunion at Rutgers University, a stone’s throw from the defunct Stelton Colony. Since that time Rutgers has become the repository of the Ferrer movement archives, and hundreds of pupils and teachers, colonists and friends have attended the reunions, among them Nellie Dick, her son James Junior, and the children and grandchildren of Leonard Abbott, Harry Kelly, and Joseph Cohen, three of the principal founders of the movement. From all over the country the alumni of the New York, Stelton, Mohegan, and other Modern Schools have gathered each year to take part in lectures and symposiums and to deposit material in the Rutgers collection.

[By Paul Avrich]

There are two ways open to those who seek to reform the education of children. They may seek to transform the school by studying the child and proving scientifically that the actual scheme of instruction is defective, and must be modified; or they may found new schools in which principles may be directly applied in the service of that ideal which is formed by all who reject the conventions, the cruelty, the trickery, and the untruth which enter into the bases of modern society. The first method offers great advantages, and is in harmony with the evolutionary conception which men of science regard as the only effective way of attaining the end. They are right in theory, as we fully admit. It is evident that the progress of psychology and physiology must lead to important changes in educational methods; that the teachers, being now in a better position to understand the child, will make their teaching more in conformity with natural laws. I further grant that this evolution will proceed in the direction of greater liberty, as I am convinced that violence is the method of ignorance, and that the educator who is really worthy of the name will gain everything by spontaneity; he will know the child's needs, and will be able to promote its development by giving it the greatest possible satisfaction.

In point of fact, however, I do not think that those who are working for the regeneration of humanity have much to hope from this side. Rulers have always taken care to control the education of the people; they know better than any that their power is based entirely on the school, and they therefore insist on retaining their monopoly of it. The time has gone by when rulers could oppose the spread of instruction and put limits to the education of the masses. Such a policy was possible formerly because economic life was consistent with general ignorance, and this ignorance facilitated despotism. The circumstances have changed, however. The progress of science and our repeated discoveries have revolutionised the conditions of labour and production. It is no longer possible for the people to remain ignorant; education is absolutely necessary for a nation to maintain itself and make headway against its economic competitors. Recognising this, the rulers have sought to give a more and more complete organisation to the school, not because they look to education to regenerate society, but because they need more competent workers to sustain industrial enterprises and enrich their cities. Even the most reactionary rulers have learned this lesson; they clearly understand that the old policy was dangerous to the economic life of nations, and that it was necessary to adapt popular education to the new conditions.

It would be a serious mistake to think that the ruling classes have not foreseen the danger to themselves of the intellectual development of the people, and have not understood that it was necessary to change their methods. In fact, their methods have been adapted to the new conditions of life; they have sought to gain control of the ideas which are in course of evolution. They have endeavoured to preserve the beliefs on which social discipline had been grounded, and to give to the results of scientific research and the ideas involved in them a meaning which will not be to the disadvantage of existing institutions; and it is this that has induced them to assume control of the school. In every country the governing classes, which formerly left the education of the people to the clergy, as these were quite willing to educate in a sense of obedience to authority, have now themselves undertaken the direction of the schools.

The danger to them consists in the stimulation of the human mind by the new spectacle of life and the possible rise of thoughts of emancipation in the depths of their hearts. It would have been folly to struggle against the evolving forces; the effect would be only to inflame them, and, instead of adhering to earlier methods of government, they would adopt new and more effective methods. It did not require any extraordinary genius to discover the solution. The course of events itself suggested to those who were in power the way in which they were to meet the difficulties which threatened; they built schools, they sought generously to extend the sphere of education, and if there were at one point a few who resisted this impulse--as certain tendencies favoured one or other of the political parties-all soon understood that it was better to yield, and that the best policy was to find some new way of defending their interests and principles. There were 'then sharp struggles for the control of the schools, and these struggles continue to-day in every civilised country; sometimes the republican middle-class triumphs, sometimes the clergy. All parties appreciate the importance of the issue, and they shrink from no sacrifice to win the victory. " The school" is the cry of every party. The public good must be recognised in this zeal. Everybody seeks to raise himself and improve his condition by education. In former times it might have been said: "Those people want to keep thee in ignorance in order the better to exploit thee: we want to see thee educated and free." That is no longer possible; schools of all kinds rise on every side.

In regard to this general change of ideas among the governing classes as to the need of schools -I may state certain reasons for distrusting their intentions and doubting the efficacy of the means of reform which are advocated by certain writers. As a rule, these reformers care little about the social significance of education; they are men who eagerly embrace scientific truth, but eliminate all that is foreign to the object of their studies. they are patiently endeavouring to understand the child, and are eager to know-though their science is young, it must be remembered-what are the best methods to promote its intellectual development.

This kind of professional indifference is, in my opinion, very prejudicial to the cause they seek to serve. I do not in the least think them insensible of the realities of the social world, and I know that they believe that the public welfare will be greatly furthered by their labours. "Seeking to penetrate the secrets of the life of man," they reflect, "and unravelling the normal process of his physical and psychic development, we shall direct education into a channel which will be favourable to the liberation of energy. We are not immediately concerned with the reform of the school, and indeed we are unable to say exactly what lines it should follow. We will proceed slowly, knowing that, from the very nature of things, the reform of the school will result from our research. If you ask us what are our hopes, we will grant that, like you, we foresee a revolution in the sense of a placing of the child and humanity under the direction of science; yet even in this case we are persuaded that our work makes for that object, and will be the speediest and surest means of promoting it."

This reasoning is evidently logical. No one could deny this, yet there is a considerable degree of fallacy in it, and we must make this clear. If the ruling classes have the same ideas as the reformers, if they are really impelled by a zeal for the continuous reorganisation of society until poverty is at last eliminated, we might recognise that the power of science is enough to improve the lot of peoples. Instead of this however, we see clearly that the sole aim of those who strive to attain power is the defence of their own interests, their own advantage, and the satisfaction of their personal desires For some time now we have ceased to accept the phrases with which they disguise their ambitions. It is true that there are some in whom we may find a certain amount of sincerity, and who imagine at times that they are impelled by a zeal for the good of their fellows. But these become rarer and rarer, and the positivism of the age is very severe in raising doubts as to the real intentions of those who govern us.

And just as they contrived to adapt themselves when the necessity arose, and prevented education from becoming a danger, they also succeeded in organising the school in accord with the new scientific ideas in such a way that nothing should endanger their supremacy. These ideas are difficult to accept, and one needs to keep a sharp lookout for successful methods and see how things are arranged so as to avoid verbal traps. How much has been, and is, expected of education! Most progressive people expect everything of it, and, until recent years, many did not understand that instruction alone leads to illusions. Much of the knowledge actually imparted in schools is useless; and the hope of reformers has been void because the organisation of the school, instead of serving an ideal purpose, has become one of the most powerful instruments of servitude in the hands of the ruling class. The teachers are merely conscious or unconscious organs of their will, and have been trained on their principles from their tenderest years, and more drastically than anybody, they have endured the discipline of authority. Very few have escaped this despotic domination; they are generally powerless against it, because they are oppressed by the scholastic organisation to such an extent that they have nothing to do but obey. It is unnecessary here to describe that organisation. One word will suffice to characterise it--Violence. The school dominates the children physically, morally, and intellectually, in order to control the development of their faculties in the way desired, and deprives them of contact with nature in order to modify them as required. This is the explanation of the failure; the eagerness of the ruling class to control education and the bankruptcy of the hopes of reformers. "Education" means in practice domination or domestication. I do not imagine that these systems have been put together with the deliberate aim of securing the desired results. That would be a work of genius. But things have happened just as if the actual scheme of education corresponded to some vast and deliberate conception; it could not have been done better. To attain it teachers have inspired themselves solely with the principles of discipline and authority, which always appeal to social organisers; such men have only one clear idea and one will--the children must learn to obey, to believe, and to think according to the prevailing social dogmas. If this were the aim, education could not be other than we find it to-day. There is no question of promoting the spontaneous development of the child's faculties, or encouraging it to seek freely the satisfaction of its physical, intellectual, and moral needs. There is question only of imposing ready-made ideas on it, of preventing it from ever thinking otherwise than is required for the 'maintenance of existing social institutions-of making it, in a word, an individual rigorously adapted to the social mechanism.

It cannot be expected that this kind of education will have any influence on the progress of humanity. I repeat that it is merely an instrument of domination in the hands of the ruling classes, who have never sought to uplift the individual, and it is quite useless to expect any good from the schools of the present day. What they have done up to the present they will continue to do in the future. There is no reason whatever why they should adopt a different system; they have resolved to use education for their purposes, and they will take advantage of every improvement of it. If only they preserve the spirit of the school and the authoritative discipline which rules it, every innovation will tend to their advantage. For this they will keep a constant watch, and take care that their interests are secured.

I would fix the attention of my readers on this point: the whole value of education consists in respect for the physical, intellectual, and moral faculties of the child. As in science, the only possible demonstration is demonstration by facts; education is not worthy of the name unless it be stripped of all dogmatism, and unless it leaves to the child the direction of its powers and is content to support them in their manifestations. But nothing is easier than to alter this meaning of education, and nothing more difficult than to respect it. The teacher is always imposing, compelling and using violence; the true educator is the man who does not impose his own ideas and will on the child, but appeals to its own energies.

From this we can understand how easily education is conducted, and how light is the task of those who seek to dominate the individual. he best conceivable methods become in their hands so many new and more effective means of despotism. Our ideal is that of science; we appeal to it in demanding the power to educate the child by fostering its development and procuring a satisfaction of its needs as they manifest themselves.

We are convinced that the education of the future will be entirely spontaneous. It is plain that we cannot wholly realise this, but the evolution of methods in the direction of a broader comprehension of life and the fact that all improvement involves the suppression of violence indicate that we are on solid ground when we look to science for the liberation of the child.

Is this the ideal of those who actually control the scholastic system? Is this what they propose to bring about? Are they eager to abandon violence? Only in the sense that they employ new and more effective methods to attain the same end-that is to say, the formation of individuals who will accept all the conventions, all the prejudices, and all the untruths on which society is based.

We do not hesitate to say that we want men who will continue unceasingly to develop; men who are capable of constantly destroying and renewing their surroundings and renewing themselves; men whose intellectual independence is their supreme power, which they will yield to none; men always disposed for things that are better, eager for the triumph of new ideas, anxious to crowd many lives into the one life they have. Society fears such men; you cannot expect it to set up a system of education which will produce them.

What, then, is our mission? What is the policy we must adopt in order to contribute to the reform of the school?

Let us follow closely the work of the experts who are engaged in the study of the child, and let us endeavour to find a way of applying their principles to the education we seek to establish, aiming at an increasingly complete emancipation of the individual. But

how are we to do this? By putting our hand energetically to the work, by promoting the establishment of new schools in which, as far as possible, there shall rule this spirit of freedom which, we feel, will colour the whole education of the future.

We have already had proof that it leads to excellent results. We can destroy whatever there is in the actual school that savours of violence, all the artificial devices by which the children are estranged from nature and life, the intellectual and moral discipline which has been used to impose ready-made thoughts, all beliefs which deprave and enervate the will. Without fear of injury we may place the child in a proper and natural environment, in which it will find itself in contact with all that it loves, and where vital impressions will be substituted for the wearisome reading of books. If we do no more than this, we shall have done much towards the emancipation of the child.

In such an environment we may freely make use of the data of science and work with profit. It is true that we could not realise all our hopes; that often we shall find ourselves compelled, from lack of knowledge, to use the wrong means. But we shall be sustained by the confident feeling that, without having achieved our entire aim, we shall have done a great deal more than is being done by the actual school. I would rather have the free spontaneity of a child who knows nothing than the verbal knowledge and intellectual deformation of one that has experienced the existing system of education.

What we have sought to do in Barcelona is being done by others in various places. All of us saw that the work was possible. Dedicate yourself to it at once. We do not hope that the studies of children will be suspended that we may regenerate the school. Let us apply what we know, and go on learning and applying. A scheme of rational education is already possible, and, in such schools as we advocate, the children may develop freely according to their aspirations. Let us endeavour to improve and extend the work.

Those are our aims. We know well the difficulties we have to face; but we have made a beginning in the conviction that we shall be assisted in our task by those who work in their various spheres to deliver men from the dogmas and conventions which secure the prolongation of the present unjust arrangement of society.

Compiled by Romano Krauth