Anarchism has had a special interest on the issue ofeducation from the works ofWilliam Godwin andMax Stirner onwards.
A wide diversity of issues related to education have gained the attention of anarchist theorists and activists. They have included the role of education insocial control andsocialization, the rights and liberties of youth and children within educational contexts, the inequalities encouraged by current educational systems, the influence of state and religiousideologies in the education of people, the division between social and manual work and its relationship with education,sex education andart education.
Various alternatives to contemporary mainstream educational systems and their problems have been proposed by anarchists which have gone fromalternative education systems and environments,self-education, advocacy ofyouth andchildren rights, andfreethought activism.
Max Stirner was a German philosopher linked mainly with the anarchist school of thought known asindividualist anarchism who worked as a schoolteacher in agymnasium for young girls.[1] He examines the subject of education directly in his long essayThe False Principle of our Education.[2] In that essay he deals with the debates between realist and humanistic educational commentators and reflects that both consider the learner as something to be acted upon rather than someone to be encouraged towards self-realization.[2]
Josiah Warren is widely regarded as the first Americananarchist.[3] "Where utopian projectors starting withPlato entertained the idea of creating an ideal species through eugenics and education and a set of universally valid institutions inculcating shared identities, Warren wanted to dissolve such identities in a solution of individual self-sovereignty. His educational experiments, for example, possibly under the influence of the...Swiss educational theoristJohann Heinrich Pestalozzi (viaRobert Owen), emphasized—as we would expect—the nurturing of the independence and the conscience of individual children, not the inculcation of pre-conceived values."[4]
In 1901,Catalan anarchist andfree-thinkerFrancisco Ferrer established "modern" orprogressive schools inBarcelona in defiance of an educational system controlled by the Catholic Church.[5] The schools' stated goal was to "educate the working class in a rational, secular and non-coercive setting". Fiercely anti-clerical, Ferrer believed in education free from the authority of church and state.[6] La Escuela Moderna, and Ferrer's ideas generally, formed the inspiration for a series ofModern Schools in theUnited States,[5]Cuba,South America andLondon.
The first, and most notable, of the Modern Schools was founded in New York City, in 1911, two years after Francisco Ferrer i Guàrdia's execution forsedition in monarchist Spain on 18 October 1909. Commonly called the Ferrer Center, it was founded by notable anarchists — includingLeonard Abbott,Alexander Berkman,Voltairine de Cleyre, andEmma Goldman — first meeting onSt. Mark's Place, in Manhattan'sLower East Side, but twice moved elsewhere, first within lower Manhattan, then toHarlem. The Ferrer Center opened with only nine students, one being the son ofMargaret Sanger, thecontraceptives-rights activist. Starting in 1912, the school's principal was the philosopherWill Durant, who also taught there. Besides Berkman and Goldman, the Ferrer Center faculty included theAshcan School paintersRobert Henri andGeorge Bellows, and its guest lecturers included writers and political activists such as Margaret Sanger,Jack London, andUpton Sinclair.[7] Student Magda Schoenwetter, recalled that the school usedMontessori methods and equipment, and emphasised academic freedom rather than fixed subjects, such as spelling and arithmetic.[8]
After the 4 July 1914Lexington Avenue bombing, the police investigated and several times raided the Ferrer Center and other labor and anarchist organisations in New York City.[9] Acknowledging the urban danger to their school, the organizers bought 68 acres (275,000 m2) inPiscataway Township, New Jersey, and moved there in 1914, becoming the center of the Stelton Colony. Moreover, beyond New York City, theFerrer Colony and Modern School was founded (c. 1910–1915) as a Modern School-based community, that endured some forty years. In 1933, James andNellie Dick, who earlier had been principals of the Stelton Modern School, founded the Modern School inLakewood, New Jersey.[9]
Experiments in Germany led toA. S. Neill founding what becameSummerhill School in 1921.[10] Summerhill is often cited as an example of anarchism in practice.[11] British anarchistsStuart Christie andAlbert Meltzer wrote that Neill pioneered of libertarian education and claimed him as an anarchist though he has denied this affiliation.[12] However, although Summerhill and otherfree schools are radically libertarian, they differ in principle from those of Ferrer by not advocating an overtly politicalclass struggle-approach.[13]
The English anarchist philosopher, art critic and poet,Herbert Read developed a strong interest in the subject of education and particularly inart education. Read's anarchism was influenced byWilliam Godwin,Peter Kropotkin andMax Stirner.[14]
Media related toAnarchism and education at Wikimedia Commons
