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Francisco Ferrer and the
Free Education Movement
By John Brinker
(AGR) -- The free education movement that blossomed in Francisco
Ferrer’s Escuela Moderna had its roots in the contributions of
many 19th century anarchists. Bakunin had first proposed such an approach
to pedagogy at the First International in 1870. A Spanish professor,
Trinidad Soriano, further developed these ideas at the Second Workers’
Congress in 1872. Even then, the urgent need for a new model of
education along libertarian lines had become evident. Classical education
was in almost all cases intended for the privileged. The object was
to produce a disciplined subject, intelligent, perhaps, but within sharply
defined limits. The old model relied on memorization by rote. Natural
curiosity was suppressed, genders were kept separate, and the entire
experience was one of submission to authority.
In contrast, the free education system was based on the principle of
egalitarianism. Free educators recognized that not only did all people
deserve an education, but also that education itself must unfold in
a way that nurtured the talents of all students, without the use of
force or authority. Skills should be imparted in ways that felt
natural and comfortable to the students, through direct experience with
the world around them. Free education also demolished the barriers to
experience that classical education had erected: boys and girls learned
together, and students were encouraged to learn from nature. The arts,
sports, and ethics were considered central in the development of a well-rounded
human being.
By the time ideas about free education had begun to circulate, Barcelona,
Spain had become a major center of anarchist activity, due mainly to
a large population of radicalized workers. Public education in Barcelona
and throughout Spain merely served the needs of the ruling classes –
inasmuch as it existed at all. Only about a third of school-aged
children received an education, and these were of course the wealthiest
third, since the schools demanded that students paid for their own books
and materials, despite being run by the Church and subsidized by the
State. Naturally, the education provided was largely along religious
lines, and did little to raise the level of literacy.
Francisco Ferrer Guardia was born on a farm in Allela, a small town
near Barcelona, in 1859. His parents were practicing Catholics,
but his uncle was a freethinker who strongly influenced him. As a young
man, Ferrer was involved with the anticlerical republican movement against
the Spanish monarchy, and became a follower of radical republican Manuel
Ruíz Zorilla, acting as a messenger for the exiled leader. In
1885, Ruiz Zorilla launched a failed coup attempt, and the next year
Ferrer made an aborted attempt on the life of General Villacampe and
was himself exiled to Paris.
It was in France that Ferrer would refine his anarchist philosophy and
devote himself to the cause of free education. In 1899, Ferrer married
a wealthy teacher who was a supporter of the experimental school at
Cempuis. While in France, Ferrer offered free Spanish lessons; one of
his most notable pupils was a wealthy spinster named Jeanne Ernestine
Meunie. In March 1901, Meunie died, leaving Ferrer a sizable fortune.
Ferrer returned to Spain later that year, now more of a threat to Spanish
authorities than ever – not only was he a radical reformer, but
a wealthy one, and he wasted little time putting his money to good use.
On September 8, 1901, Ferrer opened the Escuela Moderna. The professed
goal of the school was to educate the working class in a rational, secular
and non-coercive setting. However, the school’s high tuition allowed
only wealthy middle class students to attend.
It was Ferrer’s intention to train a revolutionary vanguard of
middle-class anarchists through his schools. Ironically, he only gained
middle-class support for his schools by emphasizing the reformist aspects
of his philosophy and downplaying his genuinely revolutionary aspirations.
Losing sight of the importance of the working classes and of their great
need for free education was perhaps Ferrer’s greatest failing.
Such contradictions helped make Ferrer a controversial figure from the
start, but also a well-known one. Ferrer’s notoriety brought
attention his schools, which worked to his advantage – at first.
The Escuela Moderna grew rapidly. In five years, one school had grown
into thirty-four. More than 1,000 students were enrolled in Escuela
Moderna schools or using its textbooks, which Ferrer published himself.
On April 12, 1906, 1,700 children from anarchist and lay schools all
over Barcelona assembled in a demonstration of the widening reach of
free education. Unfortunately, it would be all downhill from there.
That September, Mateo Moral, an employee of Ferrer’s printing house,
threw a bomb at the wedding procession during King Alfonso XIII’s
marriage celebration. Moral committed suicide shortly afterwards, leaving
Ferrer as the government’s scapegoat. He was arrested as the mastermind
of the bombing and all the anarchist schools in Barcelona were closed. Predictably,
the forces of reaction sprung on the chance to connect free education
with political violence. El Corazón de Jesus, a local paper
run by the clergy wrote, “These crimes will continue as long as
Spaniards maintain the freedom to read, to teach and to think, from
which comes all these antisocial monsters.”
An international campaign for his release was quickly organized, and
Ferrer maintained his innocence. Lacking evidence to convict to the
contrary, the government reluctantly acquitted him on June 12, 1907.
But the damage was done. Ferrer’s moderate allies in Spain weren’t
willing to be publicly connected to a suspected assassin. Many lay schools
stopped using his textbooks. In response, Ferrer focused his attention
on the broader movement for free education in Europe. He returned to
Paris and helped to found the International League for the Rational
Education of Children. In 1908, Ferrer began publishing L’Ecole
Renovee, a magazine intended to promote communication among European
educators.
In July of 1909, spontaneous protests broke out in the streets of Barcelona,
evolving into a massive general strike against the Moroccan War in what
became known as the “Tragic Week.” In the course of the riots,
80 religious foundations were destroyed or burned (we can assume it
was the Church who found the events so tragic). On July 28, the government
responded by declaring martial law. Once again, Ferrer was the
scapegoat; clearly, the government was holding a grudge about the 1886
and 1906 assassination attempts. He was arrested that September and
tried by military tribunal, which accused him of masterminding the uprising.
Ferrer had very little, if anything, to do with the uprising, but he
was nevertheless convicted as the “author and chief” of the
events of the “Tragic Week,” and was executed by firing squad
at the fortress of Monjuich on October 13th, 1909.
Because Ferrer was well known internationally, his execution caused
an uproar throughout North America and Western Europe. In the UK, notable
freethinkers like George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle protested with along with Peter Kropotkin and other anarchists.
Thanks to their efforts, Ferrer became widely known as a martyr and
a key figure in Spanish anarchism.
However, Ferrer was not necessarily considered a hero to Spanish leftists.
By dissimulating his revolutionary ideals, he had managed to alienate
both the radical working class and the moderate middle class. Free,
secular education in Spain was ultimately set back by Ferrer’s
execution, and not only because of the loss of a tireless organizer.
The Church and State could now point to Ferrer as “proof”
that free education produced “antisocial monsters.” Nevertheless,
it was Ferrer who put free education on the map and proved that it could
be done. Subsequent schools throughout Europe and in America were built
on the model of the Escuela Moderna, and educators today still have
much to learn from Ferrer’s contributions to free education.
Anthology of the dead
Killed: Great Journalism Too Hot to Print
Edited by David Wallis
Nation Books (2004)
By Nicholas Holt
(AGR) -- “Consider Killed a kind of literary orphanage,”
writes editor David Wallis, introducing Killed: Great Journalism to
Hot to Print, “albeit one with high standards, that rescues remarkable
stories that editors commissioned, then abandoned.”
Killed is an interesting sampler of rejected journalism, on topics ranging
from the silly (a fictional convention of living food industry mascots)
to the very serious (the wars in the Middle East and western press coverage
thereof), stories that would, even if not tied together by the novelty
of premature editorial death, make for good reading.
Editors are known to reject stories for plenty of legitimate reasons,
and after all, that’s their job, essential for quality publishing.
But most of the pieces in Killed weren’t ditched for legitimate
concerns about quality, relevance, accuracy, or space. In fact, relevance
and accuracy seemed to be what frightened editors — or the lawyers
or ad execs who tell the editors much about what to edit.
Sometimes the concern was the threat of lengthy, expensive court battles
with the powerful targets of investigative pieces.
An revealing portrait of Body Shop founder and liberal icon Anita Roddick
was dropped by Vanity Fair, who faced an ugly pummeling from a “legal
SWAT team” in the extremely power-friendly realm of British libel
law.
The subject of a piece on the mistreatment of child circus performers
not only convinced Mirabella not to run the story, but also hired a
former head of CIA covert operations to trail and meddle in the life
of the journalist for years.
Writing well about important and interesting subjects also appears to
be a liability for journalists looking for publication.
GQ traded an intimate look at the post-crackdown lives of three of the
architects of the 1989 Tianamen Square demonstrations for a profile
of weirdo millionaire and presidential candidate Steve Forbes, while
Rolling Stone dropped a fascinating piece on the author of controversial
George W. Bush biography Fortunate Son, as too long and “too depressing.”
Betty Friedan was prompted to write The Feminine Mystique after McCall’s,
Redbook, and Ladies Home Journal refused to publish her 1958 challenge
to the notion that “over education” was limiting women’s
shot at a happy life.
The finest two pieces of writing in the book concern the Middle East.
One is a touching piece of reportage from the first Intifada based around
the premise that “Palestinians must be people, too,” dropped
by the Washington Post, which was concerned about “larger considerations.”
The other, titled “Remember the Whys” written by Independent
(UK) reporter Robert Fisk, and refused publication by Harpers, should
be required reading for all readers — and writers — of serious
journalism.
Fisk’s article about Middle East reporting “hit out hard at
the double standards of journalism as well as the breakdown of serious
journalism during the 2001 Afghanistan bombardment” but Harper’s
told him they’d received angry letters after running another article
about the” Israeli-Palestinian war, and was hoping to avoid such
incidents in the future.
Killed is a good reminder that, as Wallis concludes in his intro, “what
is left unsaid, and unwritten, often has profound consequences, because
when editors kill, readers often end up as the unwilling victims.”
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