The Origins and Ideals of the Modern School

Epilogue
"That is the story of what the Modem School was, is, and ought to be." When Ferrer wrote this, in the summer of 1908, he was full of plans for the continuation of his work in various ways. He was fostering such free schools as the Government still permitted. He was promoting his "popular university and multiplying works of science and sociology for the million. His influence was growing, and he saw with glad eyes the light breaking on the ignorant masses of his fellows. In the summer of 1909 he came to England to study the system of moral instruction which, under the inspiration of the Moral Instruction League, is used in thousands of English schools. A friend in London begged him never to return to Spain, as his life was sought. He, knew it, but nothing would divert him from his ideal. And three months later he was shot, among the graves of criminals, in the trenches of Montjuich. Form your own opinion of him from his words. He conceals nothing. He was a rebel against rel... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Chapter 17 : The Closing of the Modern School
I have reached the culmination of my life and my work. My enemies, who are all the reactionaries in the world, represented by the reactionaries of Barcelona and of Spain, believed that they had triumphed by involving me in a charge of attempted assassination. But their triumph proved to be only an episode in the struggle of practical Rationalism against reaction. The shameful audacity with which they claimed sentence of death against me (a claim that was refused on account of my transparent innocence rather than on account of the justice of the court) drew on me the sympathy of all liberal men---all true progressives---in all parts of the world, and fixed attention oil the meaning and ideal of the Rational School. There was a universal and uninterrupted movement of protest and admiration for a whole year -from May, 1906, to May and June, 1907---echoed in the Press of every civilized country, and in meetings and other popular manifestations. It proved in the end that the mo... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Chapter 16 : The "Bulletin"
The Modern School needed and found its organ in the Press. The political and ordinary press, which at one time favored us and at another time denounced us as dangerous, cannot maintain an impartial attitude. It either gives exaggerated or unmerited praise, or calumnious censures. The only remedy for this was the sincerity and clearness of our own indications. To allow these libels to pass without correction would have done us considerable harm, and the Bulletin enabled us to meet them. The directors published in it the program of the school, interesting notes about it, statistical details, original pædagogical articles by the teachers, accounts of the progress of rational education in our own and other countries, translations of important articles from foreign reviews and periodicals which were in harmony with the main character of our work, reports of the Sunday lectures, and announcements of the public competitions for the engagement of teachers and of our l... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Chapter 15 : The Ingenuousness of the Child
In the Bulletin of September 30, 1903, we published the work of the pupils in the various classes of the Modern School, which had been read on the closing day of the second scholastic year. In these writings, in which the children are requested to apply their dawning judgment to some particular subject, the influence of mind over the inexpert, ingenuous reasoning power, inspired by the sentiment of justice, is more apparent than the observance of rules. The judgments are not perfect from the logical point of view, only because the child has not the knowledge necessary for the formation of a perfectly sound opinion. This is the opposite of what we usually find, as opinions are generally founded only on prejudice arising from traditions, interests, and dogmas. A boy of twelve, for instance, gave the following principle for judging the value of nations: To be called civilized, a nation or State must be free from the following Le... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Chapter 14 : A Defensive Chapter
To promote the progressive evolution of childhood by avoiding all anachronistic practices, which are merely obstacles placed by the past to any real advance towards the future, is, in sum, the predominant aim of the Modern School. Neither dogmas nor systems, molds which confine vitality to the narrow exigencies of a transitory form of society, will be taught. Only solutions approved by the facts, theories accepted by reason, and truths confirmed by evidence, shall be included in our lessons, so that each mind shall be trained to control a will, and truths shall irradiate the intelligence, and, when applied in practice, benefit the whole of humanity without any unworthy and disgraceful exclusiveness. Two years of success are a sufficient guarantee to us. They prove, in the first place, the excellence of mixed education, the brilliant result---the triumph, we would almost say---of an elementary common sense over prejudice and tradition. As we think it advisable, especially t... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

The Results
At the beginning of the second scholastic year I once more drew up a program. Let us, I said, confirm our earlier program; vindicated by results, approved in theory and practice, the principle which from. the first informed our work and governs the Modern School is now unshakable. Science is the sole mistress of our life. Inspired with this thought, the Modern School proposes to give the children entrusted to it a mental vitality of their own, so that when they leave our control they will continue to be the mortal enemies of all kinds of prejudices and will form their own ideas, individually and seriously, on all subjects. Further, as education does not consist merely in the training of the mind, but must include the emotions and the will, ... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

No Reward or Punishment
Rational education is, above all things, a means of defense against error and ignorance. To ignore truth and accept absurdities is, unhappily, a common feature in our social order; to that we owe the distinction of classes and the persistent antagonism of interests. Having admitted and practiced the co-education of boys and girls, of rich and poor-- having that is to say started from the principle of solidarity and inequality--we are not prepared to create a new inequality. Hence in the Modern School there will be no rewards and no punishments; there will be no examinations to puff up some children withe the flattering title of excellent, to give others the vulgar title of "good", and make others unhappy with a consciousness of incapacity a... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

October 12, 1909, Francisco Ferrer y Guardia was shot in the trenches of the Montjuich Fortress at Barcelona. A Military Council had found him guilty of being "head of the insurrection" which had, a few months before, lit the flame of civil war in the city and province. The clergy had openly petitioned the Spanish Premier, when Ferrer was arrested, to look to the Modern School and its founder for the source of the revolutionary feeling; and the Premier had, instead of rebuking them, promised to do so. When Ferrer was arrested the prosecution spent many weeks in collecting evidence against him, and granted a free pardon to several men who were implicated in the riot, for testifying against him. These three or four men were the only witnesses... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

The General Public and the Library
In setting out to establish a rational school I for the purpose of preparing children for their entry into the free solidarity of humanity, the first problem that confronted us was the selection of books. The whole educational luggage of the ancient system was all incoherent mixture of science and faith, reason and unreason, good and evil, human experience and revelation, truth and error in a word, totally unsuited to meet the new needs that arose with the formation of a new School. If the school has been from remote antiquity equipped not for teaching in the, broad sense of communicating to the rising generation the gist of the knowledge of' previous generations, but for teaching on the basis of authority and the convenience of the ruling ... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

The Teachers
The choice of teachers was another point of great difficulty. The tracing of a program of rational instruction once accomplished, it remained to choose teachers who were competent to carry it out, and I found that in fact no such persons existed. We were to illustrate once more that a need creates its own organs. Certainly there were plenty of teachers. reaching, though not very lucrative, is a profession by which a man can support himself. There is not a universal truth in the popular proverb which says of an unfortunate man: "He is hungrier than a schoolmaster."1 The truth is that in many parts of Spain the Schoolmaster forms part of the local governing clique, with the priest, the doctor, the shopkeeper and the moneylender (who is often ... (From : Anarchy Archives.)