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by Francisco Ferrer
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Title: The Origin and Ideals of the Modern School
Author: Francisco Ferrer
Translator: Joseph McCabe
Release Date: November 1, 2021 [eBook #66644]
Language: English
Produced by: Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed Proofreading
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ORIGIN AND IDEALS OF THE
MODERN SCHOOL ***
THE
ORIGIN AND IDEALS
OF THE
MODERN SCHOOL
BY
FRANCISCO FERRER
TRANSLATED BY JOSEPH McCABE
[ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED]
London:
WATTS & CO.,
17 JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
1913
CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction vii
Chap.
I. The Birth of My Ideals 1
II. Mlle. Meunier 7
III. I Accept the Responsibility 12
IV. The Early Programme 18
V. The Co-Education of the Sexes 24
VI. Co-Education of the Social Classes 32
VII. School Hygiene 38
VIII. The Teachers 40
IX. The Reform of the School 43
X. No Reward or Punishment 55
XI. The General Public and the Library 60
XII. Sunday Lectures 71
XIII. The Results 75
XIV. A Defensive Chapter 80
XV. The Ingenuousness of the Child 88
XVI. The “Bulletin” 96
XVII. The Closing of the Modern School 102
Epilogue 109
INTRODUCTION
On 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 out of
fifty who would have been heard patiently in a civil court of justice,
and even their testimony would at once have crumbled under
cross-examination. But there was no cross-examination, and no witnesses
were brought before the court. Five weeks were occupied in compiling an
enormously lengthy indictment of Ferrer; then twenty-four hours were
given to an inexperienced officer, chosen at random, to analyse it and
prepare a defense. Evidence sent in Ferrer’s favour was confiscated by
the police; the witnesses who could have disproved the case against him
were kept in custody miles away from Barcelona; and documents which
would have tended to show his innocence were refused to the defending
officer. And after the mere hearing of the long and hopelessly
bewildering indictment (in which the evidence was even falsified), and
in spite of the impassioned protest of the defending officer against
the brutal injustice of the proceedings, the military judges found
Ferrer guilty, and he was shot.
Within a month of the judicial murder of Ferrer I put the whole
abominable story before the British public. I showed the deep
corruption of Church and politics in Spain, and proved that clergy and
politicians had conspired to use the gross and pliable machinery of
“military justice” to remove a man whose sole aim was to open the eyes
of the Spanish people. A prolonged and passionate controversy followed.
That controversy has not altered a line of my book. Mr. William Archer,
in a cold and impartial study of the matter, has fully supported my
indictment of the prosecution of Ferrer; and Professor Simarro, of
Madrid University, has, in a voluminous study of the trial (El Proceso
Ferrer—two large volumes), quoted whole chapters of my little work.
When, in 1912, the Supreme Military Council of Spain was forced to
declare that no single act of violence could be directly or indirectly
traced to Ferrer (whereas the chief witness for the prosecution had
sworn that he saw Ferrer leading a troop of rioters), and ordered the
restoration of his property, the case for his innocence was closed. It
remains only for Spain to wipe the foul stain from its annals by
removing the bones of the martyred teacher from the trenches of
Montjuich, and to declare, with real Spanish pride, that a grave
injustice had been done.
Meantime, the restoration of Ferrer’s property has enabled his trustees
to resume his work. Among his papers they found a manuscript account,
from his own pen, of the origin and ideals of the Modern School, and
their first act is to give it to the world. In 1906 Ferrer had been
arrested on the charge of complicity in the attempt of Morral to
assassinate the King. He was kept in jail for a year, and the most
scandalous efforts were made, in the court and the country, to secure a
judicial murder; but it was a civil (or civilised) trial, and the
charge was contemptuously rejected. Going to the Pyrenees in the early
summer of 1908 to recuperate, Ferrer determined to write the simple
story of his school, and it is this I now offer to English readers.
In this work Ferrer depicts himself more truly and vividly than any
friend of his has ever done. For my part, I had never seen Ferrer, and
never seen Spain; but I was acquainted with Spanish life and letters,
and knew that there had been committed in the twentieth century one of
those old-world crimes by which the children of darkness seek to arrest
the advance of man. I interpreted Ferrer from his work, his letters, a
few journalistic articles he had written—he had never published a book,
and the impressions of his friends and pupils. In this book the man
portrays himself, and describes his aims with a candour that all will
appreciate. The less foolish of his enemies have ceased to assert that
he organised or led the riot at Barcelona in 1909. It was, they say,
the tendency, the subtle aim, of his work which made him responsible.
It may be remembered that the Saturday Review and other journals
published the most unblushingly mendacious letters, from anonymous
correspondents, saying that they had seen posters on the walls of
Ferrer’s schools inciting children to violence. As the very zealous
police did not at the trial even mention Ferrer’s schools, or the
text-books used in them, these lies need no further exposure. But many
persist in thinking, since there is now nothing further to think to the
disadvantage of Ferrer, that his schools were really hot-beds of
rebellion and were very naturally suppressed.
Here is the full story of the Modern School, told in transparently
simple language. Here is the whole man, with all his ideals, aims, and
resentments. It shows, as we well knew, and could have proved with
overwhelming force at his trial had we been permitted, that he was
absolutely opposed to violence ever since, in his youth, he had taken
part in an abortive revolution. It tells how he came to distrust
violence and those who used it; how he concluded that the moral and
intellectual training of children was to be the sole work of his
career; how, when he obtained the funds, he turned completely from
politics, and devoted himself to educating children in knowledge of
science and in sentiments of peace and brotherhood.
It tells also, with the same transparent plainness, why his
noble-minded work incurred such violent enmity. He naively boasts that
the education in the Modern School was free from dogmas. It was not,
and cannot be in any school, free from dogmas, for dogma means
“teaching,” and he gave teaching of a very definite character. Mr.
Belloc’s indictment of his schools is, like Mr. Belloc’s indictment of
his character and guilt, evidently based on complete ignorance of the
facts and a very extensive knowledge of the recklessly mendacious
literature of his opponents. Even Mr. Archer’s account of his school is
grossly misleading. The Modern School was “avowedly a nursery of
rebellious citizens” only in the same sense as is any Socialist
Sunday-school in England or Germany; and the Spanish Government has
never claimed, and could not claim, for a moment the right to close it,
except in so far as it falsely charged the founder with crime and
confiscated his property.
Ferrer’s school was thoroughly rationalistic, and this embittered the
clergy—for his system was spreading rapidly through Spain—without in
the least infringing Spanish law. Further, Ferrer’s school explicitly
taught children that militarism was a crime, that the unequal
distribution of wealth was a thing to be abhorred, that the capitalist
system was bad for the workers, and that political government is an
evil. He had a perfect right under Spanish law to found a school to
teach his ideas; as any man has under English or German law. The
prohibited and damnable thing would be even to hint to children that,
when they grew up, they might look forward to altering the industrial
and political system by violence. This Ferrer not only did not teach,
but strenuously opposed. We have overwhelming proof of this at every
step of his later career. But he was a child of the workers, and he had
a passionate and noble resentment of the ignorance, poverty, and
squalor of the lives of so large a proportion of the workers. He was
also an Anarchist, in the sense of Tolstoi; he believed that liberty
was essential to the development of man, and central government an
evil. But, as rigorously as Tolstoi, he relied on persuasion and
abhorred violence. I would call attention to Chapter VI of this book,
in which he pleads for “the co-education of the rich and poor”; and
there were children of middle-class parents, even of
university-professors, in his school. Most decidedly he preached no
class-hatred or violence. I do not share his academic and innocent
Anarchist ideal—which is far nearer to Conservatism than to
Socialism—but I share to the full that intense and passionate longing
for the uplifting and brightening of the poor, and for the destruction
of superstition, which was the supreme ideal of his life and of his
work. For that he was shot.
Finally, the reader must strictly bear in mind the Spanish atmosphere
of this tragedy. When Ferrer describes “existing schools” he means the
schools of Spain, which are, for the most part, a mockery and a shame.
When he talks of “ruling powers” he has in mind the politicians of
Spain, my indictment of whom, in their own language, has never been
questioned. When he talks of “superstition” he means primarily Spanish
superstition; he refers to a priesthood that still makes millions every
year by the sale of indulgences. If you remember these things, you
will, however you dissent from his teaching in parts, appreciate the
burning and unselfish idealism of the man, and understand why some of
us see the brand of Cain on the fair brow of Spain for extinguishing
that idealism in blood.
J. M.
February, 1913.
CHAPTER I.
THE BIRTH OF MY IDEALS
The share which I had in the political struggles of the last part of
the nineteenth century put my early convictions to a severe test. I was
a revolutionary in the cause of justice; I was convinced that liberty,
equality, and fraternity were the legitimate fruit to be expected of a
republic. Seeing, therefore, no other way to attain this ideal but a
political agitation for a change of the form of government, I devoted
myself entirely to the republican propaganda. [1]
My relations with D. Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla, who was one of the leading
figures in the revolutionary movement, brought me into contact with a
number of the Spanish revolutionaries and some prominent French
agitators, and my intercourse with them led to a sharp disillusion. I
detected in many of them an egoism which they sought hypocritically to
conceal, while the ideals of others, who were more sincere, seemed to
me inadequate. In none of them did I perceive a design to bring about a
radical improvement—a reform which should go to the roots of disorder
and afford some security of a perfect social regeneration.
The experience I acquired during my fifteen years’ residence at Paris,
in which I witnessed the crises of Boulangism, Dreyfusism, and
Nationalism, and the menace they offered to the Republic, convinced me
that the problem of popular education was not solved; and, if it were
not solved in France, there was little hope of Spanish republicanism
settling it, especially as the party had always betrayed a lamentable
inappreciation of the need of a system of general education.
Consider what the condition of the present generation would be if the
Spanish republican party had, after the banishment of Ruiz Zorrilla
[1885], devoted itself to the establishment of Rationalist schools in
connection with each committee, each group of Freethinkers, or each
Masonic lodge; if, instead of the presidents, secretaries, and members
of the committees thinking only of the office they were to hold in the
future republic, they had entered upon a vigorous campaign for the
instruction of the people. In the thirty years that have elapsed
considerable progress would have been made in founding day-schools for
children and night-schools for adults.
Would the general public, educated in this way, be content to send
members to Parliament who would accept an Associations Law presented by
the monarchists? Would the people confine itself to holding meetings to
demand a reduction of the price of bread, instead of resenting the
privations imposed on the worker by the superfluous luxuries of the
wealthy? Would they waste their time in futile indignation meetings,
instead of organising their forces for the removal of all unjust
privileges?
My position as professor of Spanish at the Philotechnic Association and
in the Grand Orient of France brought me into touch with people of
every class, both in regard to character and social position; and, when
I considered them from the point of view of their possible influence on
the race, I found that they were all bent upon making the best they
could of life in a purely individualist sense. Some studied Spanish
with a view to advancing in their profession, others in order to master
Spanish literature and promote their careers, and others for the
purpose of obtaining further pleasure by travelling in countries where
Spanish was spoken.
No one felt the absurdity of the contradictions between belief and
knowledge; hardly one cared to give a just and rational form to human
society, in order that all the members of each generation might have a
proportionate share in the advantages created by earlier generations.
Progress was conceived as a kind of fatalism, independent of the
knowledge and the goodwill of men, subject to vacillations and
accidents in which the conscience and energy of man had no part. The
individual, reared in a family circle, with its inveterate atavism and
its traditional illusions maintained by ignorant mothers, and in the
school with something worse than error—the sacramental untruth imposed
by men who spoke in the name of a divine revelation—was deformed and
degenerate at his entrance into society; and, if there is any logical
relation between cause and effect, nothing could be expected of him but
irrational and pernicious results.
I spoke constantly to those whom I met with a view to proselytism,
seeking to ascertain the use of each of them for the purpose of my
ideal, and soon realised that nothing was to be expected of the
politicians who surrounded Ruiz Zorrilla; they were, in my opinion,
with a few honourable exceptions, impenitent adventurers. This gave
rise to a certain expression which the judicial authorities sought to
use to my disadvantage in circumstances of great gravity and peril.
Zorrilla, a man of lofty views and not sufficiently on his guard
against human malice, used to call me an “anarchist” when he heard me
put forward a logical solution of a problem; at all times he regarded
me as a deep radical, opposed to the opportunist views and the showy
radicalism of the Spanish revolutionaries who surrounded and even
exploited him, as well as the French republicans, who held a policy of
middle-class government and avoided what might benefit the disinherited
proletariate, on the pretext of distrusting Utopias.
In a word, during the early years of the restoration there were men
conspiring with Ruiz Zorrilla who have since declared themselves
convinced monarchists and conservatives; and that worthy man, who
protested earnestly against the coup d’État of January 3, 1874,
confided in his false friends, with the result, not uncommon in the
political world, that most of them abandoned the republican party for
the sake of some office. In the end he could count only on the support
of those who were too honourable to sell themselves, though they lacked
the logic to develop his ideas and the energy to carry out his work.
In consequence of this I restricted myself to my pupils, and selected
for my purposes those whom I thought more appropriate and better
disposed. Having now a clear idea of the aim which I proposed to myself
and a certain prestige from my position as teacher and my expansive
character, I discussed various subjects with my pupils when the lessons
were over; sometimes we spoke of Spanish customs, sometimes of
politics, religion, art, or philosophy. I sought always to correct the
exaggerations of their judgments, and to show clearly how mischievous
it is to subordinate one’s own judgment to the dogma of a sect, school,
or party, as is so frequently done. In this way I succeeded in bringing
about a certain agreement among men who differed in their creeds and
views, and induced them to master the beliefs which they had hitherto
held unquestioningly by faith, obedience, or sheer indolence. My
friends and pupils found themselves happy in thus abandoning some
ancient error and opening their minds to truths which uplifted and
ennobled them.
A rigorous logic, applied with discretion, removed fanatical
bitterness, established intellectual harmony, and gave, to some extent
at least, a progressive disposition to their wills. Freethinkers who
opposed the Church and rejected the legends of Genesis, the imperfect
morality of the gospels, and the ecclesiastical ceremonies; more or
less opportunist republicans or radicals who were content with the
futile equality conferred by the title of citizen, without in the least
affecting class distinctions; philosophers who fancied they had
discovered the first cause of things in their metaphysical labyrinths
and established truth in their empty phrases—all were enabled to see
the errors of others as well as their own, and they leaned more and
more to the side of common sense.
When the further course of my life separated me from these friends and
brought on me an unmerited imprisonment, I received many expressions of
confidence and friendship from them. From all of them I anticipate
useful work in the cause of progress, and I congratulate myself that I
had some share in the direction of their thoughts and endeavours.
CHAPTER II.
MLLE. MEUNIER
Among my pupils was a certain Mlle. Meunier, a wealthy old lady with no
dependents, who was fond of travel, and studied Spanish with the object
of visiting my country. She was a convinced Catholic and a very
scrupulous observer of the rules of her Church. To her, religion and
morality were the same thing, and unbelief—or “impiety,” as the
faithful say—was an evident sign of vice and crime.
She detested revolutionaries, and she regarded with impulsive and
undiscriminating aversion every display of popular ignorance. This was
due, not only to her education and social position, but to the
circumstance that during the period of the Commune she had been
insulted by children in the streets of Paris as she went to church with
her mother. Ingenuous and sympathetic, without regard to antecedents,
accessories, or consequences, she always expressed her dogmatic
convictions without reserve, and I had many opportunities to open her
eyes to the inaccuracy of her opinions.
In our many conversations I refrained from taking any definite side; so
that she did not recognise me as a partisan of any particular belief,
but as a careful reasoner with whom it was a pleasure to confer. She
formed so flattering an opinion of me, and was so solitary, that she
gave me her full confidence and friendship, and invited me to accompany
her on her travels. I accepted the offer, and we travelled in various
countries. My conduct and our constant conversation compelled her to
recognise the error of thinking that every unbeliever was perverse and
every atheist a hardened criminal, since I, a convinced atheist,
manifested symptoms very different from those which her religious
prejudice had led her to expect.
She thought, however, that my conduct was exceptional, and reminded me
that the exception proves the rule. In the end the persistency and
logic of my arguments forced her to yield to the evidence, and, when
her prejudice was removed, she was convinced that a rational and
scientific education would preserve children from error, inspire men
with a love of good conduct, and reorganise society in accord with the
demands of justice. She was deeply impressed by the reflection that she
might have been on a level with the children who had insulted her if,
at their age, she had been reared in the same conditions as they. When
she had given up her belief in innate ideas, she was greatly
preoccupied with the following problem: If a child were educated
without hearing anything about religion, what idea of the Deity would
it have on reaching the age of reason?
After a while, it seemed to me that we were wasting time if we were not
prepared to go on from words to deeds. To be in possession of an
important privilege through the imperfect organisation of society and
by the accident of birth, to conceive ideas of reform, and to remain
inactive or indifferent amid a life of pleasure, seemed to me to incur
a responsibility similar to that of a man who refused to lend a hand to
a person whom he could save from danger. One day, therefore, I said to
Mlle. Meunier:—
“Mlle., we have reached a point at which it is necessary to reconsider
our position. The world appeals to us for our assistance, and we cannot
honestly refuse it. It seems to me that to expend entirely on comforts
and pleasures resources which form part of the general patrimony, and
which would suffice to establish a useful institution, is to commit a
fraud; and that would be sanctioned neither by a believer nor an
unbeliever. I must warn you, therefore, that you must not count on my
company in your further travels. I owe myself to my ideas and to
humanity, and I think that you ought to have the same feeling now that
you have exchanged your former faith for rational principles.”
She was surprised, but recognised the justice of my decision, and,
without other stimulus than her own good nature and fine feeling, she
gave me the funds for the establishment of an institute of rational
education. The Modern School, which already existed in my mind, was
thus ensured of realisation by this generous act.
All the malicious statements that have been made in regard to this
matter—for instance, that I had to submit to a judicial
interrogation—are sheer calumnies. It has been said that I used a power
of suggestion over Mlle. Meunier for my own purposes. This statement,
which is as offensive to me as it is insulting to the memory of that
worthy and excellent lady, is absolutely false. I do not need to
justify myself; I leave my vindication to my acts, my life, and the
impartial judgment of my contemporaries. But Mlle. Meunier is entitled
to the respect of all men of right feeling, of all those who have been
delivered from the despotism of sect and dogma, who have broken all
connection with error, who no longer submit the light of reason to the
darkness of faith nor the dignity of freedom to the yoke of obedience.
She believed with honest faith. She had been taught that between the
Creator and the creature there is a hierarchy of intermediaries whom
one must obey, and that one must bow to a series of mysteries contained
in the dogmas imposed by a divinely instituted Church. In that belief
she remained perfectly tranquil. The remarks I made and advice I
offered her were not spontaneous commentaries on her belief, but
natural replies to her efforts to convert me; and, from her want of
logic, her feeble reasoning broke down under the strength of my
arguments, instead of her persuading me to put faith before reason. She
could not regard me as a tempting spirit, since it was always she who
attacked my convictions; and she was in the end vanquished by the
struggle of her faith and her own reason, which was aroused by her
indiscretion in assailing the faith of one who opposed her beliefs.
She now ingenuously sought to exonerate the Communist boys as poor and
uneducated wretches, the offspring of crime, disturbers of the social
order on account of the injustice which, in face of such a disgrace,
permits others, equal disturbers of the social order, to live
unproductive lives, enjoy great wealth, exploit ignorance and misery,
and trust that they will continue throughout eternity to enjoy their
pleasures on account of their compliance with the rites of the Church
and their works of charity. The idea of a reward of easy virtue and
punishment of unavoidable sin shocked her conscience and moderated her
religious feeling, and, seeking to break the atavistic chain which so
much hampers any attempt at reform, she decided to contribute to the
founding of a useful work which would educate the young in a natural
way and in conditions which would help them to use to the full the
treasures of knowledge which humanity has acquired by labour, study,
observation, and the methodical arrangement of its general conclusions.
In this way, she thought, with the aid of a supreme intelligence which
veils itself in mystery from the mind of man, or by the knowledge which
humanity has gained by suffering, contradiction, and doubt, the future
will be realised; and she found an inner contentment and vindication of
her conscience in the idea of contributing, by the bestowal of her
property, to a work of transcendent importance.
CHAPTER III.
I ACCEPT THE RESPONSIBILITY
Once I was in possession of the means of attaining my object, I
determined to put my hand to the task without delay. [2] It was now
time to give a precise shape to the vague aspiration that had long
haunted my imagination; and to that end, conscious of my imperfect
knowledge of the art of pædagogy, I sought the counsel of others. I had
not a great confidence in the official pædagogists, as they seemed to
me to be largely hampered by prejudices in regard to their subject or
other matters, and I looked out for some competent person whose views
and conduct would accord with my ideals. With his assistance I would
formulate the programme of the Modern School which I had already
conceived. In my opinion it was to be, not the perfect type of the
future school of a rational state of society, but a precursor of it,
the best possible adaptation of our means; that is to say, an emphatic
rejection of the ancient type of school which still survives, and a
careful experiment in the direction of imbuing the children of the
future with the substantial truths of science.
I was convinced that the child comes into the world without innate
ideas, and that during the course of his life he gathers the ideas of
those nearest to him, modifying them according to his own observation
and reading. If this is so, it is clear that the child should receive
positive and truthful ideas of all things, and be taught that, to avoid
error, it is essential to admit nothing on faith, but only after
experience or rational demonstration. With such a training the child
will become a careful observer, and will be prepared for all kinds of
studies.
When I had found a competent person, and while the first lines were
being traced of the plan we were to follow, the necessary steps were
taken in Barcelona for the founding of the establishment; the building
was chosen and prepared, and the furniture, staff, advertisements,
prospectuses, leaflets, etc., were secured. In less than a year all was
ready, though I was put to great loss through the betrayal of my
confidence by a certain person. It was clear that we should at once
have to contend with many difficulties, not only on the part of those
who were hostile to rational education, but partly on account of a
certain class of theorists, who urged on me, as the outcome of their
knowledge and experience, advice which I could only regard as the fruit
of their prejudices. One man, for instance, who was afflicted with a
zeal for local patriotism, insisted that the lessons should be given in
Catalan [the dialect of the province of Barcelona], and would thus
confine humanity and the world within the narrow limits of the region
between the Ebro and the Pyrenees. I would not, I told the enthusiast,
even adopt Spanish as the language of the school if a universal
language had already advanced sufficiently to be of practical use. I
would a hundred times rather use Esperanto than Catalan.
The incident confirmed me in my resolution not to submit the settlement
of my plan to the authority of distinguished men who, with all their
repute, do not take a single voluntary step in the direction of reform.
I felt the burden of the responsibility I had accepted, and I
endeavoured to discharge it as my conscience directed. Resenting the
marked social inequalities of the existing order as I did, I could not
be content to deplore their effects; I must attack them in their
causes, and appeal to the principle of justice—to that ideal equality
which inspires all sound revolutionary feeling.
If matter is one, uncreated, and eternal—if we live on a relatively
small body in space, a mere speck in comparison with the innumerable
globes about us, as is taught in the universities, and may be learned
by the privileged few who share the monopoly of science—we have no
right to teach, and no excuse for teaching, in the primary schools to
which the people go when they have the opportunity, that God made the
world out of nothing in six days, and all the other absurdities of the
ancient legends. Truth is universal, and we owe it to everybody. To put
a price on it, to make it the monopoly of a privileged few, to detain
the lowly in systematic ignorance, and—what is worse—impose on them a
dogmatic and official doctrine in contradiction with the teaching of
science, in order that they may accept with docility their low and
deplorable condition, is to me an intolerable indignity. For my part, I
consider that the most effective protest and the most promising form of
revolutionary action consist in giving the oppressed, the disinherited,
and all who are conscious of a demand for justice, as much truth as
they can receive, trusting that it will direct their energies in the
great work of the regeneration of society.
Hence the terms of the first announcement of the Modern School that was
issued to the public. It ran as follows:—
PROGRAMME.
The mission of the Modern School is to secure that the boys and
girls who are entrusted to it shall become well-instructed,
truthful, just, and free from all prejudice.
To that end the rational method of the natural sciences will be
substituted for the old dogmatic teaching. It will stimulate,
develop, and direct the natural ability of each pupil, so that he
or she will not only become a useful member of society, with his
individual value fully developed, but will contribute, as a
necessary consequence, to the uplifting of the whole community.
It will instruct the young in sound social duties, in conformity
with the just principle that “there are no duties without rights,
and no rights without duties.”
In view of the good results that have been obtained abroad by mixed
education, and especially in order to realise the great aim of the
Modern School—the formation of an entirely fraternal body of men
and women, without distinction of sex or class—children of both
sexes, from the age of five upward, will be received.
For the further development of its work, the Modern School will be
opened on Sunday mornings, when there will be classes on the
sufferings of mankind throughout the course of history, and on the
men and women who have distinguished themselves in science, art, or
the fight for progress. The parents of the children may attend
these classes.
In the hope that the intellectual work of the Modern School will be
fruitful, we have, besides securing hygienic conditions in the
institution and its dependencies, arranged to have a medical
inspection of children at their entrance into the school. The
result of this will be communicated to the parents if it is deemed
necessary; and others will be held periodically, in order to
prevent the spread of contagious diseases during the school hours.
During the week which preceded the opening of the Modern School I
invited the representatives of the press to visit the institution and
make it known, and some of the journals inserted appreciative notices
of the work. It may be of historical interest to quote a few paragraphs
from El Diluvio:—
The future is budding in the school. To build on any other
foundation is to build on sand. Unhappily, the school may serve
either the purposes of tyranny or the cause of liberty, and may
thus serve either barbarism or civilisation.
We are therefore pleased to see certain patriots and humanitarians,
who grasp the transcendent importance of this social function,
which our Government systematically overlooks, hasten to meet this
pressing need by founding a Modern School; a school which will not
seek to promote the interests of sect and to move in the old ruts,
as has been done hitherto, but will create an intellectual
environment in which the new generation will absorb the ideas and
the impulses which the stream of progress unceasingly brings.
This end can only be attained by private enterprise. Our existing
institutions, tainted with all the vices of the past and weakened
by all the trivialities of the present, cannot discharge this
useful function. It is reserved for men of noble mind and unselfish
feeling to open up the new path by which succeeding generations
will rise to higher destinies.
This has been done, or will be done, by the founders of the modest
Modern School which we have visited at the courteous invitation of
its directors and those who are interested in its development. This
school is not a commercial enterprise, like most scholastic
institutions, but a pædagogical experiment, of which only one other
specimen exists in Spain (the Free Institution of Education at
Madrid).
Sr. Salas Antón brilliantly expounded the programme of the school
to the small audience of journalists and others who attended the
modest opening-festival, and descanted on the design of educating
children in the whole truth and nothing but the truth, or what is
proved to be such. His chief theme was that the founders do not
propose to add one more to the number of what are known as “Lay
Schools,” with their impassioned dogmatism, but a serene
observatory, open to the four winds of heaven, with no cloud
darkening the horizon and interposing between the light and the
mind of man.
CHAPTER IV.
THE EARLY PROGRAMME
The time had come to think of the inauguration of the Modern School.
Some time previously I had invited a number of gentlemen of great
distinction and of progressive sentiments to assist me with their
advice and form a kind of Committee of Consultation. My intercourse
with them at Barcelona was of great value to me, and many of them
remained in permanent relation with me, for which I may express my
gratitude. They were of opinion that the Modern School should be opened
with some display—invitation-cards, a circular to the press, a large
hall, music, and oratorical addresses by distinguished Liberal
politicians. It would have been easy to do this, and we would have
attracted an audience of hundreds of people who would have applauded
with that momentary enthusiasm which characterises our public
functions. But I was not seduced by the idea. As a Positivist and an
idealist I was convinced that a simple modesty best befitted the
inauguration of a work of reform. Any other method seemed to me
disingenuous, a concession to enervating conventions and to the very
evil which I was setting out to reform. The proposal of the Committee
was, therefore, repugnant to my conscience and my sentiments, and I
was, in that and all other things relating to the Modern School, the
executive power.
In the first number of the Bulletin of the Modern School, issued on
October 30, 1901, I gave a general exposition of the fundamental
principles of the School, which I may repeat here:—
Those imaginary products of the mind, a priori ideas, and all the
absurd and fantastical fictions hitherto regarded as truth and
imposed as directive principles of human conduct, have for some
time past incurred the condemnation of reason and the resentment of
conscience. The sun no longer merely touches the tips of the
mountains; it floods the valleys, and we enjoy the light of noon.
Science is no longer the patrimony of a small group of privileged
individuals; its beneficent rays more or less consciously penetrate
every rank of society. On all sides traditional errors are being
dispelled by it; by the confident procedure of experience and
observation it enables us to attain accurate knowledge and criteria
in regard to natural objects and the laws which govern them. With
indisputable authority it bids men lay aside for ever their
exclusivisms and privileges, and it offers itself as the
controlling principle of human life, seeking to imbue all with a
common sentiment of humanity.
Relying on modest resources, but with a robust and rational faith
and a spirit that will not easily be intimidated, whatever
obstacles arise in our path, we have founded the Modern School. Its
aim is to convey, without concession to traditional methods, an
education based on the natural sciences. This new method, though
the only sound and positive method, has spread throughout the
civilised world, and has innumerable supporters of intellectual
distinction and lofty principles.
We are aware how many enemies there are about us. We are conscious
of the innumerable prejudices which oppress the social conscience
of our country. This is the outcome of a medieval, subjective,
dogmatic education, which makes ridiculous pretensions to the
possession of an infallible criterion. We are further aware that,
in virtue of the law of heredity, strengthened by the influences of
the environment, the tendencies which are connatural and
spontaneous in the young child are still more pronounced in
adolescence. The struggle will be severe, the work difficult; but
with a constant and unwavering will, the sole providence of the
moral world, we are confident that we will win the victory to which
we aspire. We will develop living brains, capable of reacting on
our instruction. We will take care that the minds of our pupils
will sustain, when they leave the control of their teachers, a
stern hostility to prejudice; that they will be solid minds,
capable of forming their own rational convictions on every subject.
This does not mean that we will leave the child, at the very outset
of its education, to form its own ideas. The Socratic procedure is
wrong, if it is taken too literally. The very constitution of the
mind, at the commencement of its development, demands that at this
stage the child shall be receptive. The teacher must implant the
germs of ideas. These will, when age and strength invigorate the
brain, bring forth corresponding flowers and fruit, in accordance
with the degree of initiative and the characteristic features of
the pupil’s mind.
On the other hand, we may say that we regard as absurd the
widespread notion that an education based on natural science stunts
the organ of the idealist faculty. We are convinced that the
contrary is true. What science does is to correct and direct it,
and give it a wholesome sense of reality. The work of man’s
cerebral energy is to create the ideal, with the aid of art and
philosophy. But in order that the ideal shall not degenerate into
fables, or mystic and unsubstantial dreams, and the structure be
not built on sand, it is absolutely necessary to give it a secure
and unshakable foundation in the exact and positive teaching of the
natural sciences.
Moreover, the education of a man does not consist merely in the
training of his intelligence, without having regard to the heart
and the will. Man is a complete and unified whole, in spite of the
variety of his functions. He presents various facets, but is at the
bottom a single energy, which sees, loves, and applies a will to
the prosecution of what he has conceived or affected. It is a
morbid condition, an infringement of the laws of the human
organism, to establish an abyss where there ought to be a sane and
harmonious continuity. The divorce between thought and will is an
unhappy feature of our time. To what fatal consequences it has led!
We need only refer to our political leaders and to the various
orders of social life; they are deeply infected with this
pernicious dualism. Many of them are assuredly powerful enough in
respect of their mental faculties, and have an abundance of ideas;
but they lack a sound orientation and the fine thoughts which
science applies to the life of individuals and of peoples. Their
restless egoism and the wish to accommodate their relatives,
together with their leaven of traditional sentiments, form an
impermeable barrier round their hearts and prevent the infiltration
of progressive ideas and the formation of that sap of sentiment
which is the impelling and determining power in the conduct of man.
Hence the attempt to obstruct progress and put obstacles in the way
of new ideas; hence, as a result of these attempts, the scepticism
of multitudes, the death of nations, and the inevitable despair of
the oppressed.
We regard it as one of the first principles of our pædagogical
mission that there is no such duality of character in any
individual—one which sees and appreciates truth and goodness, and
one which follows evil. And, since we take natural science as our
guide in education, a further consequence will be recognised; we
shall endeavour to secure that the intellectual impressions which
science conveys to the pupil shall be converted into the sap of
sentiment and shall be intensely loved. When sentiment is strong it
penetrates and diffuses itself through the deepest recesses of a
man’s being, pervading and giving a special colour to his
character.
And as a man’s conduct must revolve within the circle of his
character, it follows that a youth educated in the manner we have
indicated will, when he comes to rule himself, recognise science as
the one helpful master of his life.
The school was opened on September 8, 1901, with thirty pupils—twelve
girls and eighteen boys. These sufficed for the purpose of our
experiment, and we had no intention of increasing the number for a
time, so that we might keep a more effective watch on the pupils. The
enemies of the new school would take the first opportunity to criticise
our work in co-educating boys and girls.
The people present at the opening were partly attracted by the notices
of our work published in the press, and partly consisted of the parents
of the pupils and delegates of various working-class societies who had
been invited on account of their assistance to me. I was supported in
the chair by the teachers and the Committee of Consultation, two of
whom expounded the system and aim of the school. In this quiet fashion
we inaugurated a work that was destined to last. We created the Modern,
Scientific, and Rational School, the fame of which soon spread in
Europe and America. Time may witness a change of its name—the “Modern”
School—but the description “scientific and rational” will be more and
more fully vindicated.
CHAPTER V.
THE CO-EDUCATION OF THE SEXES
The most important point in our programme of rational education, in
view of the intellectual condition of the country, and the feature
which was most likely to shock current prejudices and habits, was the
co-education of boys and girls.
The idea was not absolutely new in Spain. As a result of necessity and
of primitive conditions, there were villages in remote valleys and on
the mountains where some good-natured neighbour, or the priest or
sacristan, used to teach the catechism, and sometimes elementary
letters, to boys and girls in common. In fact, it is sometimes legally
authorised, or at least tolerated, by the State among small populations
which have not the means to pay both a master and mistress. In such
cases, either a master or mistress gives common lessons to boys and
girls, as I had myself seen in a village not far from Barcelona. In
towns and cities, however, mixed education was not recognised. One read
sometimes of the occurrence of it in foreign countries, but no one
proposed to adopt it in Spain, where such a proposal would have been
deemed an innovation of the most utopian character.
Knowing this, I refrained from making any public propaganda on the
subject, and confined myself to private discussion with individuals. We
asked every parent who wished to send a boy to the school if there were
girls in the family, and it was necessary to explain to each the
reasons for co-education. Wherever we did this, the result was
satisfactory. If we had announced our intention publicly, it would have
raised a storm of prejudice. There would have been a discussion in the
press, conventional feeling would have been aroused, and the fear of
“what people would say”—that paralysing obstacle to good
intentions—would have been stronger than reason. Our project would have
proved exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. Whereas, proceeding as
we did, we were able to open with a sufficient number of boys and
girls, and the number steadily increased, as the Bulletin of the school
shows.
In my own mind, co-education was of vital importance. It was not merely
an indispensable condition of realising what I regard as the ideal
result of rational education; it was the ideal itself, initiating its
life in the Modern School, developing progressively without any form of
exclusion, inspiring a confidence of attaining our end. Natural
science, philosophy, and history unite in teaching, in face of all
prejudice to the contrary, that man and woman are two complementary
aspects of human nature, and the failure to recognise this essential
and important truth has had the most disastrous consequences.
In the second number of the Bulletin, therefore, I published a careful
vindication of my ideas:—
Mixed education (I said) is spreading among civilised nations. In
many places it has already had excellent results. The principle of
this new scheme of education is that children of both sexes shall
receive the same lessons; that their minds shall be developed,
their hearts purified, and their wills strengthened in precisely
the same manner; that the sexes shall be in touch with each other
from infancy, so that woman shall be, not in name only, but in
reality and truth, the companion of man.
A venerable institution which dominates the thoughts of our people
declares, at one of the most solemn moments of life, when, with
ceremonious pomp, man and woman are united in matrimony, that woman
is the companion of man. These are hollow words, void of sense,
without vital and rational significance in life, since what we
witness in the Christian Church, in Catholicism particularly, is
the exact opposite of this idea. Not long ago a Christian woman of
fine feeling and great sincerity complained bitterly of the moral
debasement which is put upon her sex in the bosom of the Church:
“It would be impious audacity for a woman to aspire in the Church
even to the position of the lowest sacristan.”
A man must suffer from ophthalmia of the mind not to see that,
under the inspiration of Christianity, the position of woman is no
better than it was under the ancient civilisations; it is, indeed,
worse, and has aggravating circumstances. It is a conspicuous fact
in our modern Christian society that, as a result and culmination
of our patriarchal development, the woman does not belong to
herself; she is neither more nor less than an adjunct of man,
subject constantly to his absolute dominion, bound to him—it may
be—by chains of gold. Man has made her a perpetual minor. Once this
was done, she was bound to experience one of two alternatives: man
either oppresses and silences her, or treats her as a child to be
coaxed—according to the mood of the master. If at length we note in
her some sign of the new spirit, if she begins to assert her will
and claim some share of independence, if she is passing, with
irritating slowness, from the state of slave to the condition of a
respected ward, she owes it to the redeeming spirit of science,
which is dominating the customs of races and the designs of our
social rulers.
The work of man for the greater happiness of the race has hitherto been
defective; in future it must be a joint action of the sexes; it is
incumbent on both man and woman, according to the point of view of
each. It is important to realise that, in face of the purposes of life,
man is neither inferior nor (as we affect to think) superior to woman.
They have different qualities, and no comparison is possible between
diverse things.
As many psychologists and sociologists observe, the human race displays
two fundamental aspects. Man typifies the dominion of thought and of
the progressive spirit; woman bears in her moral nature the
characteristic note of intense sentiment and of the conservative
spirit. But this view of the sexes gives no encouragement whatever to
the ideas of reactionaries. If the predominance of the conservative
element and of the emotions is ensured in woman by natural law, this
does not make her the less fitted to be the companion of man. She is
not prevented by the constitution of her nature from reflecting on
things of importance, nor is it necessary that she should use her mind
in contradiction to the teaching of science and absorb all kinds of
superstitions and fables. The possession of a conservative disposition
does not imply that one is bound to crystallise in a certain stage of
thought, or that one must be obsessed with prejudice in all that
relates to reality.
“To conserve” merely means “to retain,” to keep what has been given us,
or what we have ourselves produced. The author of The Religion of the
Future says, referring to woman in this respect: “The conservative
spirit may be applied to truth as well as to error; it all depends what
it is you conserve. If woman is instructed in philosophical and
scientific matters, her conservative power will be to the advantage,
not to the disadvantage, of progressive thought.”
On the other hand, it is pointed out that woman is emotional. She does
not selfishly keep to herself what she receives; she spreads abroad her
beliefs, her ideas, and all the good and evil that form her moral
treasures. She insists on sharing them with all those who are, by the
mysterious power of emotion, identified with her. With exquisite art,
with invariable unconsciousness, her whole moral physiognomy, her whole
soul, so to say, impresses itself on the soul of those she loves.
If the first ideas implanted in the mind of the child by the teacher
are germs of truth and of positive knowledge; if the teacher himself is
in touch with the scientific spirit of the time, the result will be
good from every point of view. But if a man be fed in the first stage
of his mental development with fables, errors, and all that is contrary
to the spirit of science, what can be expected of his future? When the
boy becomes a man he will be an obstacle to progress. The human
conscience is in infancy of the same natural texture as the bodily
organism; it is tender and pliant. It readily accepts what comes to it
from without. In the course of time this plasticity gives place to
rigidity; it loses its pliancy and becomes relatively fixed. From that
time the ideas communicated to it by the mother will be encrusted and
identified with the youth’s conscience.
The acid of the more rational ideas which the youth acquires by social
intercourse or private study may in cases relieve the mind of the
erroneous ideas implanted in childhood. But what is likely to be the
practical outcome of this transformation of the mind in the sphere of
conduct? We must not forget that in most cases the emotions associated
with the early ideas remain in the deeper folds of the heart. Hence it
is that we find in so many men such a flagrant and lamentable
antithesis between the thought and the deed, the intelligence and the
will; and this often leads to an eclipse of good conduct and a
paralysis of progress.
This primary sediment which we owe to our mothers is so tenacious and
enduring—it passes so intimately into the very marrow of our being—that
even energetic characters, which have effected a sincere reform of mind
and will, have the mortification of discovering this Jesuitical
element, derived from their mothers, when they turn to make an
inventory of their ideas.
Woman must not be restricted to the home. The sphere of her activity
must go out far beyond her home: it must extend to the very confines of
society. But in order to ensure a helpful result from her activity we
must not restrict the amount of knowledge we communicate to her; she
must learn, both in regard to quantity and quality, the same things as
man. When science enters the mind of woman it will direct her rich vein
of emotion, the characteristic element of her nature, the glad
harbinger of peace and happiness among men.
It has been said that woman represents continuity, and man represents
change: man is the individual, woman is the species. Change, however,
would be useless, fugitive, and inconstant, with no solid foundation of
reality, if the work of woman did not strengthen and consolidate the
achievements of man. The individual, as such, is the flower of a day, a
thing of ephemeral significance in life. Woman, who represents the
species, has the function of retaining within the species the elements
which improve its life, and to discharge this function adequately she
needs scientific instruction.
Humanity will advance more rapidly and confidently in the path of
progress and increase its resources a hundredfold if it combines the
ideas acquired by science with the emotional strength of woman. Ribot
observes that an idea is merely an idea, an act of intelligence,
incapable of producing or doing anything, unless it is accompanied by
an emotional state, a motive element. Hence it is conceived as a
scientific truth that, to the advantage of progress, an idea does not
long remain in a purely contemplative condition when it appears. This
is obviated by associating the idea with emotion and love, which do not
fail to convert it into vital action.
When will all this be accomplished? When shall we see the marriage of
ideas with the impassioned heart of woman? From that date we shall have
a moral matriarchate among civilised nations. Then, on the one hand,
humanity, considered in the home circle, will have the proper teacher
to direct the new generations in the sense of the ideal; and, on the
other hand, it will have an apostle and enthusiastic propagandist who
will impress the value of liberty on the minds of men and the need of
co-operation upon the peoples of the world.
CHAPTER VI.
CO-EDUCATION OF THE SOCIAL CLASSES
There must be a co-education of the different social classes as well as
of the two sexes. I might have founded a school giving lessons
gratuitously; but a school for poor children only would not be a
rational school, since, if they were not taught submission and
credulity as in the old type of school, they would have been strongly
disposed to rebel, and would instinctively cherish sentiments of
hatred.
There is no escape from the dilemma. There is no middle term in the
school for the disinherited class alone; you have either a systematic
insistence, by means of false teaching, on error and ignorance, or
hatred of those who domineer and exploit. It is a delicate point, and
needs stating clearly. Rebellion against oppression is merely a
question of statics, of equilibrium. Between one man and another who
are perfectly equal, as is said in the immortal first clause of the
famous Declaration of the French Revolution (“Men are born and remain
free and equal in rights”), there can be no social inequality. If there
is such inequality, some will tyrannise, the others protest and hate.
Rebellion is a levelling tendency, and to that extent natural and
rational, however much it may be discredited by justice and its evil
companions, law and religion.
I venture to say quite plainly: the oppressed and the exploited have a
right to rebel, because they have to reclaim their rights until they
enjoy their full share in the common patrimony. The Modern School,
however, has to deal with children, whom it prepares by instruction for
the state of manhood, and it must not anticipate the cravings and
hatreds, the adhesions and rebellions, which may be fitting sentiments
in the adult. In other words, it must not seek to gather fruit until it
has been produced by cultivation, nor must it attempt to implant a
sense of responsibility until it has equipped the conscience with the
fundamental conditions of such responsibility. Let it teach the
children to be men; when they are men, they may declare themselves
rebels against injustice.
It needs very little reflection to see that a school for rich children
only cannot be a rational school. From the very nature of things it
will tend to insist on the maintenance of privilege and the securing of
their advantages. The only sound and enlightened form of school is that
which co-educates the poor and the rich, which brings the one class
into touch with the other in the innocent equality of childhood, by
means of the systematic equality of the rational school.
With this end in view I decided to secure pupils of every social rank
and include them in a common class, adopting a system accommodated to
the circumstances of the parents or guardians of the children; I would
not have a fixed and invariable fee, but a kind of sliding scale, with
free lessons for some and different charges for others. I later
published the following article on the subject in the Bulletin (May 10,
1905):—
Our friend D. R. C. gave a lecture last Sunday at the Republican
Club on the subject of “Modern Pædagogy,” explaining to his
audience what we mean by modern education and what advantages
society may derive from it. As I think that the subject is one of
very great interest and most proper to receive public attention, I
offer the following reflections and considerations on it. It seems
to me that the lecturer was happy in his exposition of the ideal,
but not in the suggestions he made with a view to realising it, nor
in bringing forward the schools of France and Belgium as models to
be imitated.
Señor C., in fact, relies upon the State, upon Parliament or
municipalities, for the building, equipment, and management of
scholastic institutions. This seems to me a great mistake. If
modern pædagogy means an effort towards the realisation of a new
and more just form of society; if it means that we propose to
instruct the rising generation in the causes which have brought
about and maintain the lack of social equilibrium; if it means that
we are anxious to prepare the race for better days, freeing it from
religious fiction and from all idea of submission to an inevitable
socio-economic inequality; we cannot entrust it to the State nor to
other official organisms which necessarily maintain existing
privileges and support the laws which at present consecrate the
exploitation of one man by another, the pernicious source of the
worst abuses.
Evidence of the truth of this is so abundant that any person can
obtain it by visiting the factories and workshops and other centres
of paid workers, by inquiring what is the manner of life of those
in the higher and those in the lower social rank, by frequenting
what are called courts of justice, and by asking the prisoners in
our penal institutions what were the motives for their misconduct.
If all this does not suffice to prove that the State favours those
who are in possession of wealth and frowns on those who rebel
against injustice, it may be useful to notice what has happened in
Belgium. Here, according to Señor C., the government is so
attentive to education and conducts it so excellently that private
schools are impossible. In the official schools, he says, the
children of the rich mingle with the children of the poor, and one
may at times see the child of wealthy parents arm in arm with a
poor and lowly companion. It is true, I admit, that children of all
classes may attend the Belgian schools; but the instruction that is
given in them is based on the supposed eternal necessity for a
division of rich and poor, and on the principle that social harmony
consists in the fulfilment of the laws.
It is natural enough that the masters should like to see this kind
of education given on every side. It is a means of bringing to
reason those who might one day be tempted to rebel. Not long ago,
in Brussels and other Belgian towns, the sons of the rich, armed
and organised in national troops, shot down the sons of the poor
who were claiming universal suffrage. On the other hand, my
acquaintance with the quality of Belgian education differs
considerably from that of the lecturer. I have before me various
issues of a Belgian journal (L’Exprèss de Liège) which devotes an
article to the subject, entitled “The Destruction of our National
System of Education.” The facts given are, unfortunately, very
similar to the facts about education in Spain, though in this
country there has been a great development of education by
religious orders, which is, as everybody knows, the systematisation
of ignorance. In fine, it is not for nothing that a violently
clerical government rules in Belgium.
As to the modern education which is given in French schools, we may
say that not a single one of the books used in them serves the
purpose of a really secular education. On the very day on which
Señor C. was lecturing in Gracia the Parisian journal L’Action
published an article, with the title “How Secular Morality is
Taught,” in regard to the book Recueil de maximes et pensées
morales, and quoted from it certain ridiculously anachronistic
ideas which offend the most elementary common sense.
We shall be asked, What are we to do if we cannot rely on the aid
of the State, of Parliament, or municipalities? We must appeal to
those whose interest it is to bring about a reform; to the workers,
in the first place, then to the cultivated and privileged people
who cherish sentiments of justice. They may not be numerous, but
there are such. I am personally acquainted with several. The
lecturer complained that the civic authorities were so dilatory in
granting the reforms that are needed. I feel sure that he would do
better not to waste his time on them, but appeal directly to the
working class.
The field has been well prepared. Let him visit the various working
men’s societies, the Republican Fraternities, the Centres of
Instruction, the Workers’ Athenæums, and all the bodies which are
working for reform, [3] and let him give ear to the language of
truth, the exhortations to union and courage. Let him observe the
attention given to the problem of rational and scientific
instruction, a kind of instruction which shows the injustice of
privilege and the possibility of reforms. If individuals and
societies continue thus to combine their endeavours to secure the
emancipation of those who suffer—for it is not the workers only who
suffer—Señor C. may rest assured of a positive, sound, and speedy
result, while whatever may be obtained of the government will be
dilatory, and will tend only to stupefy, to confuse ideas, and to
perpetuate the domination of one class over another.
CHAPTER VII.
SCHOOL HYGIENE
In regard to hygiene we are, in Spain, dominated by the abominable
ideas of the Catholic Church. Saint Aloysius and Saint Benedict J.
Labré are not the only, or the most characteristic, saints in the list
of the supposed citizens of the kingdom of heaven, but they are the
most popular with the masters of uncleanliness. With such types of
perfection, [4] in an atmosphere of ignorance, cleverly and maliciously
sustained by the clergy and the middle-class Liberals, it was to be
expected that the children who would come to our school would be
wanting in cleanliness; dirt is traditional in their world.
We began a discreet and systematic campaign against it, showing the
children how a dirty person or object inspires repugnance, and how
cleanliness attracts esteem and sympathy; how one instinctively moves
towards the cleanly person and away from the dirty and malodorous; and
how we should be pleased to win the regard of those who see us and
ashamed to excite their disgust.
We then explained cleanliness as an aspect of beauty, and uncleanliness
as a part of ugliness; and we at length entered expressly into the
province of hygiene, pointing out that dirt was a cause of disease and
a constant possible source of infection and epidemic, while cleanliness
was one of the chief conditions of health. We thus soon succeeded in
disposing the children in favour of cleanliness, and making them
understand the scientific principles of hygiene.
The influence of these lessons spread to their families, as the new
demands of the children disturbed traditional habits. One child would
ask urgently for its feet to be washed, another would ask to be bathed,
another wanted a brush and powder for its teeth, another new clothes or
boots, and so on. The poor mothers, burdened with their daily tasks,
sometimes crushed by the hardness of the circumstances in which their
life was passed, and probably under the influence of religious
teaching, endeavoured to stop their petitions; but in the end the new
life introduced into the home by the child triumphed, a welcome presage
of the regeneration which rational education will one day accomplish.
I entrusted the expounding of the principles of scholastic hygiene to
competent men, and Dr. Martínez Vargas and others wrote able and
detailed articles on the subject in the Bulletin. Other articles were
written on the subject of games and play, on the lines of modern
pædagogy. [5]
CHAPTER VIII.
THE TEACHERS
The choice of teachers was another point of great difficulty. The
tracing of a programme 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. Teaching, 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.” [6] 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
money-lender (who is often one of the richest men in the place, though
he contributes least to its welfare). The master receives a municipal
salary, and has a certain influence which may at times secure material
advantages. In larger towns the master, if he is not content with his
salary, may give lessons in private schools, where, in accord with the
provincial institute, he prepares young men for the University. Even if
he does not obtain a position of distinction, he lives as well as the
generality of his fellow townsmen.
There are, moreover, teachers in what are called “secular schools”—a
name imported from France, where it arose because the schooling was
formerly exclusively clerical and conducted by religious bodies. This
is not the case in Spain; however Christian the teaching is, it is
always given by lay masters. However, the Spanish lay teachers,
inspired by sentiments of freethought and political radicalism, were
rather anti-Catholic and anti-clerical than Rationalist, in the best
sense of the word.
Professional teachers have to undergo a special preparation for the
task of imparting scientific and rational instruction. This is
difficult in all cases, and is sometimes rendered impossible by the
difficulties caused by habits of routine. On the other hand, those who
had had no pædagogical experience, and offered themselves for the work
out of pure enthusiasm for the idea, stood in even greater need of
preparatory study. The solution of the problem was very difficult,
because there was no other place but the rational school itself for
making this preparation.
The excellence of the system saved us. Once the Modern School had been
established by private initiative, with a firm determination to be
guided by the ideal, the difficulties began to disappear. Every
dogmatic imposition was detected and rejected, every excursion or
deviation in the direction of metaphysics was at once abandoned, and
experience gradually formed a new and salutary pædagogical science.
This was due, not merely to my zeal and vigilance, but to my earliest
teachers, and to some extent to the naive expressions of the pupils
themselves. We may certainly say that if a need creates an organ, the
organ speedily meets the need.
Nevertheless, in order to complete my work, I established a Rationalist
Normal School for the education of teachers, under the direction of an
experienced master and with the co-operation of the teachers in the
Modern School. In this a number of young people of both sexes were
trained, and they worked excellently until the despotic authorities,
yielding to our obscure and powerful enemies, put a stop to our work,
and flattered themselves that they had destroyed it for ever.
CHAPTER IX.
THE REFORM OF THE SCHOOL
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 look-out
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. The
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.
CHAPTER X.
NO REWARD OR PUNISHMENT
Rational education is, above all things, a means of defence 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 practised the co-education of boys and girls, of
rich and poor—having, that is to say, started from the principle of
solidarity and equality—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 with the
flattering title of “excellent,” to give others the vulgar title of
“good,” and make others unhappy with a consciousness of incapacity and
failure.
These features of the existing official and religious schools, which
are quite in accord with their reactionary environment and aim, cannot,
for the reasons I have given, be admitted into the Modern School. Since
we are not educating for a specific purpose, we cannot determine the
capacity or incapacity of the child. When we teach a science, or art,
or trade, or some subject requiring special conditions, an examination
may be useful, and there may be reason to give a diploma or refuse one;
I neither affirm nor deny it. But there is no such specialism in the
Modern School. The characteristic note of the school, distinguishing it
even from some which pass as progressive models, is that in it the
faculties of the children shall develop freely without subjection to
any dogmatic patron, not even to what it may consider the body of
convictions of the founder and teachers; every pupil shall go forth
from it into social life with the ability to be his own master and
guide his own life in all things.
Hence, if we were rationally prevented from giving prizes, we could not
impose penalties, and no one would have dreamed of doing so in our
school if the idea had not been suggested from without. Sometimes
parents came to me with the rank proverb, “Letters go in with blood,”
on their lips, and begged me to punish their children. Others who were
charmed with the precocious talent of their children wanted to see them
shine in examinations and exhibit medals. We refused to admit either
prizes or punishments, and sent the parents away. If any child were
conspicuous for merit, application, laziness, or bad conduct, we
pointed out to it the need of accord, or the unhappiness of lack of
accord, with its own welfare and that of others, and the teacher might
give a lecture on the subject. Nothing more was done, and the parents
were gradually reconciled to the system, though they often had to be
corrected in their errors and prejudices by their own children.
Nevertheless, the old prejudice was constantly recurring, and I saw
that I had to repeat my arguments with the parents of new pupils. I
therefore wrote the following article in the Bulletin:—
The conventional examinations which we usually find held at the end
of a scholastic year, to which our fathers attached so much
importance, have had no result at all; or, if any result, a bad
one. These functions and their accompanying solemnities seem to
have been instituted for the sole purpose of satisfying the vanity
of parents and the selfish interests of many teachers, and in order
to put the children to torture before the examination and make them
ill afterwards. Each father wants his child to be presented in
public as one of the prodigies of the college, and regards him with
pride as a learned man in miniature. He does not notice that for a
fortnight or so the child suffers exquisite torture. As things are
judged by external appearances, it is not thought that there is any
real torture, as there is not the least scratch visible on the
skin....
The parent’s lack of acquaintance with the natural disposition of
the child, and the iniquity of putting it in false conditions so
that its intellectual powers, especially in the sphere of memory,
are artificially stimulated, prevent the parent from seeing that
this measure of personal gratification may, as has happened in many
cases, lead to illness and to the moral, if not the physical, death
of the child.
On the other hand, the majority of teachers, being mere
stereotypers of ready-made phrases and mechanical inoculators,
rather than moral fathers of their pupils, are concerned in these
examinations with their own personality and their economic
interests. Their object is to let the parents and the others who
are present at the public display see that, under their guidance,
the child has learned a good deal, that its knowledge is greater in
quantity and quality than could have been expected of its tender
years and in view of the short time that it has been under the
charge of this very skilful teacher.
In addition to this wretched vanity, which is satisfied at the cost
of the moral and physical life of the child, the teachers are
anxious to elicit compliments from the parents and the rest of the
audience, who know nothing of the real state of things, as a kind
of advertisement of the prestige of their particular school.
Briefly, we are inexorably opposed to holding public examinations.
In our school everything must be done for the advantage of the
pupil. Everything that does not conduce to this end must be
recognised as opposed to the natural spirit of positive education.
Examinations do no good, and they do much harm to the child.
Besides the illness of which we have already spoken, the nervous
system of the child suffers, and a kind of temporary paralysis is
inflicted on its conscience by the immoral features of the
examination; the vanity provoked in those who are placed highest,
envy and humiliation, grave obstacles to sound growth, in those who
have failed, and in all of them the germs of most of the sentiments
which go to the making of egoism.
In a later number of the Bulletin I found it necessary to return to the
subject:—
We frequently receive letters from Workers’ Educational Societies
and Republican Fraternities asking that the teachers shall chastise
the children in our schools. We ourselves have been disgusted,
during our brief excursions, to find material proofs of the fact
which is at the base of this request; we have seen children on
their knees, or in other attitudes of punishment.
These irrational and atavistic practices must disappear. Modern
pædagogy entirely discredits them. The teachers who offer their
services to the Modern School, or ask our recommendation to teach
in similar schools, must refrain from any moral or material
punishment, under penalty of being disqualified permanently.
Scolding, impatience, and anger ought to disappear with the ancient
title of “master.” In free schools all should be peace, gladness,
and fraternity. We trust that this will suffice to put an end to
these practices, which are most improper in people whose sole ideal
is the training of a generation fitted to establish a really
fraternal, harmonious, and just state of society.
CHAPTER XI.
THE GENERAL PUBLIC AND THE LIBRARY
In setting out to establish a rational school 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 an
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 classes, for the purpose
of making children humble and submissive, it is clear that none of the
books hitherto used would suit us. But the severe logic of this
position did not at once convince me. I refused to believe that the
French democracy, which worked so zealously for the separation of
Church and State, incurred the anger of the clericals, and adopted
obligatory secular instruction, would resign itself to a semi-education
or a sophisticated education. I had, however, to yield to the evidence,
against my prejudice. I first read a large number of works in the
French code of secular instruction, and found that God was replaced by
the State, Christian virtue by civic duty, religion by patriotism,
submission to the king, the aristocracy, and the clergy by subservience
to the official, the proprietor, and the employer. Then I consulted an
eminent Freethinker who held high office in the Ministry of Public
Instruction, and, when I had told him my desire to see the books they
used, which I understood to be purged of traditional errors, and
explained my design and ideal to him, he told me frankly that they had
nothing of the sort; all their books were, more or less cleverly and
insidiously, tainted with untruth, which is the indispensable cement of
social inequality. When I further asked if, seeing that they had
replaced the decaying idol of deity by the idol of oligarchic
despotism, they had not at least some book dealing with the origin of
religion, he said that there was none; but he knew one which would suit
me—Malvert’s Science and Religion. In point of fact, this was already
translated into Spanish, and was used as a reading-book in the Modern
School, with the title Origin of Christianity.
In Spanish literature I found several works written by a distinguished
author, of some eminence in science, who had produced them rather in
the interest of the publishers than with a view to the education of
children. Some of these were at first used in the Modern School, but,
though one could not accuse them of error, they lacked the inspiration
of an ideal and were poor in method. I communicated with this author
with a view to interesting him in my plans and inducing him to write
books for me, but his publishers held him to a certain contract and he
could not oblige me.
In brief, the Modern School was opened before a single work had been
chosen for its library, but it was not long before the first appeared—a
brilliant book by Jean Grave, which has had a considerable influence on
our schools. His work, The Adventures of Nono, is a kind of poem in
which a certain phase of the happier future is ingeniously and
dramatically contrasted with the sordid realities of the present social
order; the delights of the land of Autonomy are contrasted with the
horrors of the kingdom of Argirocracy. The genius of Grave has raised
the work to a height at which it escapes the strictures of the
sceptical and conservative; he has depicted the social evils of the
present truthfully and without exaggeration. The reading of the book
enchanted the children, and the profundity of his thought suggested
many opportune comments to the teachers. In their play the children
used to act scenes from Autonomy, and their parents detected the causes
of their hardships in the constitution of the kingdom of Argirocracy.
It was announced in the Bulletin and other journals that prizes were
offered for the best manuals of rational instruction, but no writers
came forward. I confine myself to recording the fact without going into
the causes of it. Two books were afterwards adopted for reading in
school. They were not written for school, but they were translated for
the Modern School and were very useful. One was called The Note Book,
the other Colonisation and Patriotism. Both were collections of
passages from writers of every country on the injustices connected with
patriotism, the horrors of war, and the iniquity of conquest. The
choice of these works was vindicated by the excellent influence they
had on the minds of the children, as we shall see from the little
essays of the children which appeared in the Bulletin, and the fury
with which they were denounced by the reactionary press and
politicians.
Many think that there is not much difference between secular and
rationalist education, and in various articles and propagandist
speeches the two were taken to be synonymous. In order to correct this
error I published the following article in the Bulletin:—
The word education should not be accompanied by any qualification.
It means simply the need and duty of the generation which is in the
full development of its powers to prepare the rising generation and
admit it to the patrimony of human knowledge. This is an entirely
rational ideal, and it will be fully realised in some future age,
when men are wholly freed from their prejudices and superstitions.
In our efforts to realise this ideal we find ourselves confronted
with religious education and political education: to these we must
oppose rational and scientific instruction. The type of religious
education is that given in the clerical and convent schools of all
countries; it consists of the smallest possible quantity of useful
knowledge and a good deal of Christian doctrine and sacred history.
Political education is the kind established some time ago in
France, after the fall of the Empire, the object of which is to
exalt patriotism and represent the actual public administration as
the instrument of the common welfare.
Sometimes the qualification free or secular is applied abusively
and maliciously to education, in order to distract or alienate
public opinion. Orthodox people, for instance, call free schools
certain schools which they establish in opposition to the really
free tendency of modern pædagogy; and many are called secular
schools which are really political, patriotic, and
anti-humanitarian.
Rational education is lifted above these illiberal forms. It has,
in the first place, no regard to religious education, because
science has shown that the story of creation is a myth and the gods
legendary; and therefore religious education takes advantage of the
credulity of the parents and the ignorance of the children,
maintaining the belief in a supernatural being to whom people may
address all kinds of prayers. This ancient belief, still
unfortunately widespread, has done a great deal of harm, and will
continue to do so as long as it persists. The mission of education
is to show the child, by purely scientific methods, that the more
knowledge we have of natural products, their qualities, and the way
to use them, the more industrial, scientific, and artistic
commodities we shall have for the support and comfort of life, and
men and women will issue in larger numbers from our schools with a
determination to cultivate every branch of knowledge and action,
under the guidance of reason and the inspiration of science and
art, which will adorn life and reform society.
We will not, therefore, lose our time praying to an imaginary God
for things which our own exertions alone can procure.
On the other hand, our teaching has nothing to do with politics. It
is our work to form individuals in the full possession of all their
faculties, while politics would subject their faculties to other
men. While religion has, with its divine power, created a
positively abusive power and retarded the development of humanity,
political systems also retard it by encouraging men to depend for
everything on the will of others, on what are supposed to be men of
a superior character—on those, in a word, who, from tradition or
choice, exercise the profession of politics. It must be the aim of
the rational schools to show the children that there will be
tyranny and slavery as long as one man depends upon another, to
study the causes of the prevailing ignorance, to learn the origin
of all the traditional practices which give life to the existing
social system, and to direct the attention of the pupils to these
matters.
We will not, therefore, lose our time seeking from others what we
can get for ourselves.
In a word, our business is to imprint on the minds of the children
the idea that their condition in the social order will improve in
proportion to their knowledge and to the strength they are able to
develop; and that the era of general happiness will be the more
sure to dawn when they have discarded all religious and other
superstitions, which have up to the present done so much harm. On
that account there are no rewards or punishments in our schools; no
alms, no medals or badges in imitation of the religious and
patriotic schools, which might encourage the children to believe in
talismans instead of in the individual and collective power of
beings who are conscious of their ability and knowledge.
Rational and scientific knowledge must persuade the men and women
of the future that they have to expect nothing from any privileged
being (fictitious or real); and that they may expect all that is
reasonable from themselves and from a freely organised and accepted
social order.
I then appealed in the Bulletin and the local press to scientific
writers who were eager for the progress of the race to supply us with
text-books on these lines. They were, I said, “to deliver the minds of
the pupils from all the errors of our ancestors, encourage them in the
love of truth and beauty, and keep from them the authoritarian dogmas,
venerable sophisms, and ridiculous conventionalities which at present
disgrace our social life.” A special note was added in regard to the
teaching of arithmetic:—
The way in which arithmetic has hitherto been generally taught has
made it a powerful instrument for impressing the pupils with the
false ideals of the capitalist règime which at present presses so
heavily on society. The Modern School, therefore, invites essays on
the subject of the reform of the teaching of arithmetic, and
requests those friends of rational and scientific instruction who
are especially occupied with mathematics to draw up a series of
easy and practical problems, in which there shall be no reference
to wages, economy, and profit. These exercises must deal with
agricultural and industrial production, the just distribution of
the raw material and the manufactured articles, the means of
communication, the transport of merchandise, the comparison of
human labour with mechanical, the benefits of machinery, public
works, etc. In a word, the Modern School wants a number of problems
showing what arithmetic really ought to be—the science of the
social economy (taking the word “economy” in its etymological sense
of “good distribution”).
The exercises will deal with the four fundamental operations
(integrals, decimals, and fractions), the metrical system,
proportion, compounds and alloys, the squares and cubes of numbers,
and the extraction of square and cube roots. As those who respond
to this appeal are, it is hoped, inspired rather with the ideal of
a right education of children than with the desire of profit, and
as we wish to avoid the common practice in such circumstances, we
shall not appoint judges or offer any prizes. The Modern School
will publish the Arithmetic which best serves its purpose, and will
come to an amicable agreement with the author as to his fee.
A later note in the Bulletin was addressed to teachers:—
We would call the attention of all who dedicate themselves to the
noble ideal of the rational teaching of children and the
preparation of the young to take a fitting share in life to the
announcements of a Compendium of Universal History by Clémence
Jacquinet, and The Adventures of Nono by Jean Grave, which will be
found on the cover. [7] The works which the Modern School has
published or proposes to publish are intended for all free and
rational teaching institutions, centres of social study, and
parents, who resent the intellectual restrictions which dogma of
all kinds—religious, political, and social—imposes in order to
maintain privilege at the expense of the ignorant. All who are
opposed to Jesuitism and to conventional lies, and to the errors
transmitted by tradition and routine, will find in our publications
truth based upon evidence. As we have no desire of profit, the
price of the works represents almost their intrinsic value or
material cost; if there is any profit from the sale of them, it
will be spent upon subsequent publications.
In a later number of the Bulletin (No. 6, second year) the
distinguished geographer Elisée Reclus wrote, at my request, a lengthy
article on the teaching of geography. In a letter which Reclus
afterwards wrote me from the Geographical Institute at Brussels,
replying to my request that he should recommend a text-book, he said
that there was “no text-book for the teaching of geography in
elementary schools”; he “did not know one that was not tainted with
religious or patriotic poison, or, what is worse, administrative
routine.” He recommended that the teachers should use no manual in the
Modern School, which he cordially commended (February 26, 1903).
In the following number (7) of the Bulletin I published the following
note on the origin of Christianity:—
The older pædagogy, the real, if unavowed, aim of which was to
impress children with the uselessness of knowledge, in order that
they might be reconciled to their hard conditions and seek
consolation in a supposed future life, used reading-books in the
elementary school which swarmed with stories, anecdotes, accounts
of travels, gems of classical literature, etc. There was a good
deal of error mixed with what was sound and useful in this, and the
aim was not just. The mystical idea predominated, representing that
a relation could be established between a Supreme Being and men by
means of priests, and this priesthood was the chief foundation of
the existence of both the privileged and the disinherited, and the
cause of much of the evil that they endured.
Among other books of this class, all tainted with the same evil, we
remember one which inserted an academic discourse, a marvel of
Spanish eloquence, in praise of the Bible. The gist of it is
expressed in the barbarous declaration of Omar when he condemned
the Library of Alexandria to the flames: “The whole truth is
contained in the sacred book. If those other books are true, they
are superfluous; if they are not true, they should be burned.”
The Modern School, which seeks to form free minds, with a sense of
responsibility, fitted to experience a complete development of
their powers, which is the one aim of life, must necessarily adopt
a very different kind of reading-book, in harmony with its method
of teaching. For this reason, as it teaches established truth and
is interested in the struggle between light and darkness, it has
deemed it necessary to produce a critical work which will enlighten
the mind of the child with positive facts. These may not be
appreciated in childhood, but will later, in manhood, when the
child takes its place in social life and in the struggle against
the errors, conventions, hypocrisies, and infamies which conceal
themselves under the cloak of mysticism. This work reminds us that
our books are not merely intended for children; they are destined
also for the use of the Adult Schools which are being founded on
every side by associations of workers, Freethinkers, Co-operators,
social students, and other progressive bodies who are eager to
correct the illiteracy of our nation, and remove that great
obstacle to progress.
We believe that the section of Malvert’s work (Science and
Religion) which we have entitled “The Origin of Christianity” will
be useful for this purpose. It shows the myths, dogmas, and
ceremonies of the Christian religion in their original form;
sometimes as exoteric symbols concealing a truth known to the
initiated, sometimes as adaptations of earlier beliefs, imposed by
sheer routine and preserved by malice. As we are convinced and have
ample evidence of the usefulness of our work, we offer it to the
public with the hope that it will bear the fruit which we
anticipate. We have only to add that certain passages which are
unsuitable for children have been omitted; the omissions are
indicated, and adults may consult the passages in the complete
edition.
CHAPTER XII.
SUNDAY LECTURES
The Modern School did not confine itself to the instruction of
children. Without for a moment sacrificing its predominant character
and its chief object, it also undertook the instruction of the people.
We arranged a series of public lectures on Sundays, and they were
attended by the pupils and other members of their families, and a large
number of workers who were anxious to learn.
The earlier lectures were wanting in method and continuity, as we had
to employ lecturers who were quite competent in regard to their own
subjects, but gave each lecture without regard to what preceded or
followed. On other occasions, when we had no lecturer, we substituted
useful readings. The general public attended assiduously, and our
advertisements in the Liberal press of the district were eagerly
scanned.
In view of these results, and in order to encourage the disposition of
the general public, I held a consultation with Dr. Andrés Martínez
Vargas and Dr. Odón de Buen, Professors at the Barcelona University, on
the subject of creating a popular university in the Modern School. In
this the science which is given—or, rather, sold—by the State to a
privileged few in the universities should be given gratuitously to the
general public, by way of restitution, as every human being has a right
to know, and science, which is produced by observers and workers of all
ages and countries, ought not to be restricted to a class.
From that time the lectures became continuous and regular, having
regard to the different branches of knowledge of the two lecturers. Dr.
Martínez Vargas expounded physiology and hygiene, and Dr. Odón de Buen
geography and natural science, on alternate Sundays, until we began to
be persecuted. Their teaching was eagerly welcomed by the pupils of the
Modern School, and the large audiences of mixed children and adults.
One of the Liberal journals of Barcelona, in giving an account of the
work, spoke of the function as “the scientific Mass.”
The eternal light-haters, who maintain their privileges on the
ignorance of the people, were greatly exasperated to see this centre of
enlightenment shining so vigorously, and did not delay long to urge the
authorities, who were at their disposal, to extinguish it brutally. For
my part, I resolved to put the work on the firmest foundation I could
conceive.
I recall with the greatest pleasure that hour we devoted once a week to
the confraternity of culture. I inaugurated the lectures on December
15, 1901, when Don Ernesto Vendrell spoke of Hypatia as a martyr to the
ideals of science and beauty, the victim of the fanatical Bishop Cyril
of Alexandria. Other lectures were given on subsequent Sundays, as I
said, until, on October 5, 1902, the lectures were organised in regular
courses of science. On that day Dr. Andrés Martínez Vargas, Professor
of the Faculty of Medicine (child diseases) at Barcelona University,
gave his first lecture. He dealt with the hygiene of the school, and
expounded its principles in plain terms adapted to the minds of his
hearers. Dr. Odón de Buen, Professor of the Faculty of Science, dealt
with the usefulness of the study of natural history.
The press was generally in sympathy with the Modern School, but when
the programme of the third scholastic year appeared some of the local
journals, the Noticiero Universal and the Diario de Barcelona, broke
out. Here is a passage that deserves recording as an illustration of
the way in which conservative journals dealt with progressive
subjects:—
We have seen the prospectus of an educational centre established in
this city, which professes to have nothing to do with “dogmas and
systems.” It proposes to liberate everybody from “authoritarian
dogmas, venerable sophisms, and ridiculous conventions.” It seems
to us that this means that the first thing to do is to tell the
boys and girls—it is a mixed school—that there is no God, an
admirable way of forming good children, especially young women who
are destined to be wives and mothers.
The writer continues in this ironical manner for some time, and ends as
follows:—
This school has the support of a professor of Natural Science (Dr.
Odón de Buen) and another of the Faculty of Medicine. We do not
name the latter, as there may be some mistake in including him
among the men who lend their support to such a work.
These insidious clerical attacks were answered by the anti-clerical
journals of Barcelona at the time.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE RESULTS
At the beginning of the second scholastic year I once more drew up a
programme. Let us, I said, confirm our earlier programme; 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, we shall take the
utmost care in the training of the child that its intellectual
impressions are converted into the sap of sentiment. When this attains
a certain degree of intensity, it spreads through the whole being,
colouring and refining the individual character. And as the conduct of
the youth revolves entirely in the sphere of character, he must learn
to adopt science as the sole mistress of his life.
To complete our principle we must state that we are enthusiastically in
favour of mixed education, so that, having the same education, the
woman may become the real companion of man, and work with him for the
regeneration of society. This task has hitherto been confined to man;
it is time that the moral influence of woman was enlisted in it.
Science will illumine and guide her rich vein of sentiment, and utilise
her character for the welfare of the race. Knowing that the chief need
in this country is a knowledge of natural science and hygiene, the
Modern School intends to help to supply it. In this it has the support
of Dr. de Buen and Dr. Vargas, who lecture, alternately, on their
respective subjects.
On June 30, 1903, I published in the Bulletin the following
declaration:—
We have now passed two years in expounding our principles,
justifying them by our practice, and enjoying the esteem of all who
have co-operated in our work. We do not see in this any other
triumph than that we are able to confirm confidently all that we
have proclaimed. We have overcome the obstacles which were put in
our way by interest and prejudice, and we intend to persevere in
it, counting always on that progressive comradeship which dispels
the darkness of ignorance with its strong light. We resume work
next September, after the autumn vacation. We are delighted to be
able to repeat what we said last year. The Modern School and its
Bulletin renew their life, for they have filled, with some measure
of satisfaction, a deeply-felt need. Without making promises or
programmes, we will persevere to the limit of our powers.
In the same number of the Bulletin was published the following list of
the pupils who had attended the school during the first two years:—
------------+------------------+----------------+-----------------
| GIRLS. | BOYS. | TOTAL.
MONTHS. | | |
| 1901-2. 1902-3. | 1901-2. 1902-3.| 1st Yr. 2nd Yr.
------------+------------------+----------------+-----------------
Opening day | 12 — | 18 — | 30 —
September | 16 23 | 23 40 | 39 63
October | 18 28 | 25 40 | 43 68
November | 21 31 | 29 40 | 50 71
December | 22 31 | 30 40 | 52 71
January | 22 31 | 32 44 | 54 75
February | 23 31 | 32 48 | 55 79
March | 25 33 | 34 47 | 59 80
April | 26 32 | 37 48 | 63 80
May | 30 33 | 38 48 | 68 81
June | 32 34 | 38 48 | 70 82
------------+------------------+----------------+-----------------
At the beginning of the third year I published with special pleasure
the following article in the Bulletin on the progress of the School:—
On the eighth of the present month we opened the new scholastic
year. A large number of pupils, their relatives, and members of the
general public who were in sympathy with our work and lectures,
filled the recently enlarged rooms, and, before the commencement of
the function, inspected the collections which give the school the
appearance of a museum of science. The function began with a short
address from the director, who formally declared the opening of the
third year of school life, and said that, as they now had more
experience and were encouraged by success, they would carry out
energetically the ideal of the Modern School.
Dr. de Buen congratulated us on the enlargement of the School, and
supported its aims. Education should, he said, reflect nature, as
knowledge can only consist in our perception of what actually
exists. On the part of his children, who study at the School and
live in the neighbourhood, he paid a tribute to the
good-comradeship among the pupils, with whom they played and
studied in a perfectly natural way. He said that even in orthodox
education, or rather on the part of the professors engaged in it,
there were, for all its archaic features, certain tendencies
similar to those embodied in the Modern School. This might be
gathered from his own presence, and that of Dr. Vargas and other
professors. He announced that there was already a similar school at
Guadalajara, or that one would shortly be opened there, built by
means of a legacy left for the purpose by a humanitarian. He wished
to contribute to the redemption of children and their liberation
from ignorance and superstition; and he expressed a hope and very
strong wish that wealthy people would, at their death, restore
their goods in this way to the social body, instead of leaving them
to secure an imaginary happiness beyond the grave.
Dr. Martínez Vargas maintained, against all who thought otherwise,
that the purely scientific and rational education given in the
Modern School is the proper basis of instruction; no better can be
conceived for maintaining the relations of the children with their
families and society, and it is the only way to form, morally and
intellectually, the men of the future. He was glad to hear that the
scholastic hygiene which had been practised in the Modern School
during the previous two years, involving a periodical examination
of the children, and expounded in the public lectures, had received
the solemn sanction of the Hygienic Congress lately held at
Brussels.
Going on to resume his lectures, and as a means of enforcing oral
instruction by visual perception, he exhibited a series of
lantern-slides illustrating various hygienic exercises, certain
types of disease, unhealthy organs, etc., which the speaker
explained in detail. An accident to the lantern interrupted the
pictures; but the professor continued his explanations, speaking of
the mischievous effects of corsets, the danger of microbic
infection by trailing dresses or by children playing with soil,
insanitary houses and workshops, etc., and promised to continue his
medical explanations during the coming year.
The audience expressed its pleasure at the close of the meeting,
and the sight of the great joy of the pupils was some consolation
amid the hardships of the present, and a good augury for the
future.
CHAPTER XIV.
A DEFENSIVE CHAPTER
Our programme for the third scholastic year (1903–4) was as follows:—
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,
moulds 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 that the child may know what is happening
about it, that physical and natural science and hygiene should be
taught, the Modern School will continue to have the services of Dr.
de Buen and Dr. Vargas. They will lecture on alternate Sundays,
from eleven to twelve, on their respective subjects in the
school-room. These lectures will complete and further explain the
classes in science held during the week.
It remains only to say that, always solicitous for the success of
our work of reform, we have enriched our scholastic material by the
acquisition of new collections which will at once assist the
understanding and give an attractiveness to scientific knowledge;
and that, as our rooms are now not large enough for the pupils, we
have acquired other premises in order to have more room and give a
favourable reply to the petitions for admission which we have
received.
The publication of this programme attracted the attention of the
reactionary press, as I said. In order to give them a proof of the
logical strength of the position of the Modern School, I inserted the
following article in the Bulletin:—
Modern pædagogy, relieved of traditions and conventions, must raise
itself to the height of the rational conception of man, the actual
state of knowledge, and the consequent ideal of mankind. If from
any cause whatever a different tendency is given to education, and
the master does not do his duty, it would be just to describe him
as an impostor; education must not be a means of dominating men for
the advantage of their rulers. Unhappily, this is exactly what
happens. Society is organised, not in response to a general need
and for the realisation of an ideal, but as an institution with a
strong determination to maintain its primitive forms, defending
them vigorously against every reform, however reasonable it may be.
This element of immobility gives the ancient errors the character
of sacred beliefs, invests them with great prestige and a dogmatic
authority, and arouses conflicts and disturbances which deprive
scientific truths of their due efficacy or keep them in suspense.
Instead of being enabled to illumine the minds of all and realise
themselves in institutions and customs of general utility, they are
unhappily restricted to the sphere of a privileged few. The effect
is that, as in the days of the Egyptian theocracy, there is an
esoteric doctrine for the cultivated and an exoteric doctrine for
the lower classes—the classes destined to labour, defence, and
misery.
On this account we set aside the mystic and mythical doctrine, the
domination and spread of which only befits the earlier ages of
human history, and embrace scientific teaching, according to its
evidence. This is at present restricted to the narrow sphere of the
intellectuals, or is at the most accepted in secret by certain
hypocrites who, so that their position may not be endangered, make
a public profession of the contrary. Nothing could make this absurd
antagonism clearer than the following parallel, in which we see the
contrast between the imaginative dreams of the ignorant believer
and the rational simplicity of the scientist:—
THE BIBLE. ANTHROPISM.
The Bible contains the annals of One of the main supports of the
the heavens, the earth, and the reactionary system is what we may
human race; like the Deity call “anthropism.” I designate by
himself, it contains all that was, this term that powerful and
is, and will be. On its first page world-wide group of erroneous
we read of the beginning of time opinions which opposes the human
and of things, and on its last organism to the whole of the rest
page the end of time and of of nature, and represents it as
things. It begins with Genesis, the preordained end of organic
which is an idyll, and ends with creation, an entity essentially
Revelation, which is a funeral distinct from it, a god-like
chant. Genesis is as beautiful as being. Closer examination of this
the fresh breeze which sweeps over group of ideas shows it to be made
the world; as the first dawn of up of three different dogmas,
light in the heavens; as the first which we may distinguish as the
flower that opens in the meadows; anthropocentric, the
as the first word of love spoken anthropomorphic, and the
by men; as the first appearance of anthropolatrous.
the sun in the east. Revelation is
as sad as the last palpitation of 1. The anthropocentric dogma
nature; as the last ray of the culminates in the idea that man is
sun; as the last breath of a dying the preordained centre and aim of
man. And between the funeral chant all terrestrial life—or, in a
and the idyll there pass in wider sense, of the whole
succession before the eyes of God universe. As this error is
all generations and all peoples. extremely conducive to man’s
The tribes and the patriarchs go interest, and as it is intimately
by; the republics and the connected with the creation-myth
magistrates; the monarchies and of the three great Mediterranean
their kings; the empires and their religions, and with the dogmas of
emperors. Babylon and all its the Mosaic, Christian, and
abominations go by; Nineveh and Mohammedan theologies, it still
all its pomps; Memphis and its dominates the greater part of the
priests; Jerusalem and its civilised world.
prophets and temple; Athens and
its arts and heroes; Rome and its 2. The anthropomorphic dogma,
diadem of conqueror of the world. also, is connected with the
Nothing lasts but God; all else creation-myth of the three
passes and dies, like the froth aforesaid religions and of many
that tips the wave. others. It likens the creation and
control of the world by God to the
artificial creation of an able
engineer or mechanic, and to the
A prodigious book, which mankind administration of a wise ruler.
began to read three and thirty God, as creator, sustainer, and
centuries ago, and of which, if it ruler of the world, is thus
read all day and night, it would represented after a purely human
not exhaust the wealth. A fashion in his thought and work.
prodigious book in which all was Hence it follows that man in turn
calculated before the science of is god-like. “God made man to his
arithmetic was invented; in which own image and likeness.” The
the origin of language is told older, naive theology is pure
without any knowledge of “homotheism,” attributing human
philology; in which the shape, flesh, and blood to the
revolutions of the stars are gods. It is more intelligible than
described without any knowledge of the modern mystic theosophy which
astronomy; in which history is adores a personal God as an
recorded without any documents of invisible—properly speaking,
history; in which the laws of gaseous—being, yet makes him
nature are unveiled without any think, speak, and act in human
knowledge of physics. A prodigious fashion; it offers us the
book, that sees everything and paradoxical picture of a gaseous
knows everything; that knows the vertebrate.
thoughts hidden in the hearts of
men and those in the mind of God; 3. The anthropolatric dogma
that sees what is happening in the naturally results from this
abysses of the sea and in the comparison of the activity of God
bowels of the earth; that records and man; it ends in the apotheosis
or foretells all the catastrophes of human nature. A further result
of nations, and in which are is the belief in the personal
accumulated all the treasures of immortality of the soul, and the
mercy, of justice, and of dualistic dogma of the twofold
vengeance. A book, in fine, which, nature of man, whose “immortal”
when the heavens are folded like a soul is conceived as the temporary
gigantic fan, and the earth sinks, inhabitant of a mortal frame. Thus
and the sun withdraws its light, these three anthropistic dogmas,
and the stars are extinguished, variously adapted to the
will remain with God, because it respective professions of the
is his eternal word, echoing for different religions, came at
ever in the heights. [8] length to be vested with
extraordinary importance, and
proved to be the source of the
most dangerous errors. [9]
In face of this antagonism, maintained by ignorance and
self-interest, positive education, which proposes to teach truths
that issue in practical justice, must arrange and systematise the
established results of natural research, communicate them to
children, and thus prepare the way for a more equitable state of
society, in which, as an exact expression of sociology, it must
work for the benefit of all as well as of the individual. Moses, or
whoever was the author of Genesis, and all the dogmatisers, with
their six days of creation out of nothing after the Creator has
passed an eternity in doing nothing, must give place to Copernicus,
who showed the revolution of the planets round the sun; to Galileo,
who proclaimed that the sun, not the earth, is the centre of the
planetary universe; to Columbus and others who, believing the earth
to be a sphere, set out in search of other peoples, and gave a
practical basis to the doctrine of human brotherhood; to Linnæus
and Cuvier, the founders of natural history; to Laplace, the
inventor of the established cosmogony; to Darwin, the author of the
evolutionary doctrine, which explains the formation of species by
natural selection; and to all who, by means of observation and
experiment, have discredited the supposed revelation, and tell us
the real nature of the universe, the earth, and life.
Against the evils engendered by generations sunk in ignorance and
superstition, from which so many are now delivered, only to fall
into an anti-social scepticism, the best remedy, without excluding
others, is to instruct the rising generation in purely humanist
principles and in the positive and rational knowledge provided by
science. Women educated thus will be mothers in the true sense of
the word, not transmitters of traditional superstitions; they will
teach their children integrity of life, the dignity of life, social
solidarity, instead of a medley of outworn and sterile dogmas and
submission to illegitimate hierarchies. Men thus emancipated from
mystery, miracle, and distrust of themselves and their fellows, and
convinced that they were born, not to die, as the wretched teaching
of the mystics says, but to live, will hasten to bring about such
social conditions as will give to life its greatest possible
development. In this way, preserving the memory of former
generations and other frames of mind as a lesson and a warning, we
will once for all close the religious period, and enter definitely
into that of reason and nature.
In June, 1904, the Bulletin published the following figures in regard
to the attendance at school. At that time the publications of the
Modern School were in use in thirty-two other schools throughout the
country, and its influence was thus felt in Seville and Malaga,
Tarragona and Cordova, and other towns, as well as Barcelona and the
vicinity. The number of scholars in our schools was also steadily
rising, as the following table shows:—
LIST OF THE PUPILS IN THE MODERN SCHOOL DURING THE FIRST THREE YEARS.
------------+---------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------
| GIRLS. | BOYS. | TOTAL.
MONTHS. | | |
| 1901-2. 1902-3. 1903-4. | 1901-2. 1902-3. 1903-4.| 1st 2nd 3rd
| | | year. year. year.
------------+---------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------
Opening day | 12 – – | 18 – – | 30 – –
September | 16 23 24 | 23 40 40 | 39 63 64
October | 18 28 43 | 25 40 59 | 43 68 102
November | 21 31 44 | 29 40 59 | 50 71 103
December | 22 31 45 | 30 40 59 | 52 71 104
January | 22 31 47 | 32 44 60 | 54 75 107
February | 23 31 47 | 32 48 61 | 55 79 108
March | 25 33 49 | 34 47 61 | 59 80 110
April | 26 32 50 | 37 48 61 | 63 80 111
May | 30 33 51 | 38 48 62 | 68 81 113
June | 32 34 51 | 38 48 63 | 70 82 114
------------+---------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------
CHAPTER XV.
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 civilised, a nation or State must be free from the
following—
Let me interrupt for a moment to point out that the young author
identifies “civilised” with “just,” and especially that, putting aside
prejudice, he describes certain evils as curable, and regards the
healing of them as an essential condition of justice. These evils are:—
1º. The co-existence of poor and rich, and the resultant
exploitation.
2º. Militarism, a means of destruction employed by one nation
against another, due to the bad organisation of society.
3º. Inequality, which allows some to rule and command, and obliges
others to humble themselves and obey.
This principle is fundamental and simple, as we should expect to find
in an imperfectly informed mind, and it would not enable one to solve a
complete sociological problem; but it has the advantage of keeping the
mind open to fresh knowledge. It is as if one asked: What does a sick
man need to recover health? And the reply is: His suffering must
disappear. This is a naive and natural reply, and would certainly not
be given by a child brought up in the ordinary way; such a child would
be taught first to consider the will of supposed supernatural beings.
It is clear that this simple way of putting the problem of life does
not shut out the hope of a reasonable solution; indeed, the one
logically demands the other, as the same child’s essay shows:—
I do not mean that, if there were no rich, or soldiers, or rulers,
or wages, people would abuse their liberty and welfare, but that,
with everybody enjoying a high degree of civilisation, there would
be universal cordiality and friendship, and science would make much
greater progress, not being interrupted by wars and political
stagnation.
A girl of nine made the following sensible observation, which we leave
in her own incorrect language:—
A criminal is condemned to death; if the murderer deserves this
punishment, the man who condemns him and the man who kills him are
also murderers; logically, they ought to die as well, and so
humanity would come to an end. It would be better, instead of
punishing a criminal by committing another crime, to give him good
advice, so that he will not do it again. Besides, if we are all
equal, there would be no thieves, or assassins, or rich people, or
poor, but all would be equal and love work and liberty.
The simplicity, clearness, and soundness of this observation need no
commentary. One can understand our astonishment to hear it from the
lips of a tender and very pretty little girl, who looked more like a
symbolical representation of truth and justice than a living reality.
A boy of twelve deals with sincerity, and says:—
The man who is not sincere does not live peacefully; he is always
afraid of being discovered: when one is sincere, if one has done
wrong, the sincere declaration relieves the conscience. If a man
begins to tell lies in childhood, he will tell bigger lies when he
grows up, and may do much harm. There are cases in which one need
not be sincere. For instance, if a man comes to our house, flying
from the police, and we are asked afterwards if we have seen him,
we must deny it; the contrary would be treachery and cowardice.
It is sad that the mind of a child who regards truth as an incomparable
good, “without which it is impossible to live,” is induced by certain
grave abuses to consider lying a virtue in some cases.
A girl of thirteen writes of fanaticism, and, regarding it as a
characteristic of backward countries, she goes on to seek the cause:—
Fanaticism is the outcome of the state of ignorance and
backwardness of women; on that account Catholics do not want to see
women educated, as they are the chief support of their system.
A profound observation on the causes of fanaticism, and the cause of
the causes. Another girl of thirteen indicates the best remedy of the
evil in the following lines:—
The mixed school, for both sexes, is supremely necessary. The boy
who studies, works, and plays in the society of girls learns
gradually to respect and help her, and the girl reciprocally;
whereas, if they are educated separately, and the boy is told that
the girl is not a good companion and she is worse than he, the boy
will not respect women when he is a man, and will regard her as a
subject or a slave, and that is the position in which we find
women. So we must all work for the foundation of mixed schools,
wherever it is possible, and where it is not possible we must try
to remove the difficulties.
A boy of twelve regards the school as worthy of all respect, because we
learn in it to read, write, and think, and it is the basis of morality
and science; he adds:—
If it were not for the school we should live like savages, walk
naked, eat herbs and raw flesh, and dwell in caves and trees; that
is to say, we should live a brutal life. In time, as a result of
the school, everybody will be more intelligent, and there will be
no wars or inflamed populations, and people will look back on war
with horror as a work of death and destruction. It is a great
disgrace that there are children who wander in the streets and do
not go to school, and when they become men it is more disgraceful.
So let us be grateful to our teachers for the patience they show in
instructing us, and let us regard the school with respect.
If that child preserves and develops the faculties it exhibits, it will
know how to harmonise egoism and altruism for its own good and that of
society. A girl of eleven deplores that nations destroy each other in
war, and laments the difference of social classes and that the rich
live on the work and privation of the poor. She ends:—
Why do not men, instead of killing each other in wars and hating
each other for class-differences, devote themselves cheerfully to
work and the discovery of things for the good of mankind? Men ought
to unite to love each other and live fraternally. [10]
A child of ten, in an essay which is so good that I would insert it
whole if space permitted, and if it were not for the identity in
sentiment with the previous passages, says of the school and the
pupil:—
Reunited under one roof, eager to learn what we do not know,
without distinction of classes [there were children of university
professors among them, it will be remembered], we are children of
one family guided to the same end.... The ignorant man is a
nullity; little or nothing can be expected of him. He is a warning
to us not to waste time; on the contrary, let us profit by it, and
in due course we will be rewarded. Let us not miss the fruits of a
good school, and, honouring our teachers, our family, and society,
we shall live happily.
A child of ten philosophises on the faults of mankind, which, in her
opinion, can be avoided by instruction and goodwill:—
Among the faults of mankind are lying, hypocrisy, and egoism. If
men, and especially women, were better instructed, and women were
entirely equal to men, these faults would disappear. Parents would
not send their children to religious schools, which inculcate false
ideas, but to rational schools, where there is no teaching of the
supernatural, which does not exist; nor to make war; but to live in
solidarity and work in common.
We will close with the following essay, written by a young lady of
sixteen, which is correct enough in form and substance to quote in
entirety:—
What inequality there is in the present social order! Some working
from morning to night without more profit than enough to buy their
insufficient food; others receiving the products of the workers in
order to enjoy themselves with the superfluous. Why is this so? Are
we not all equal? Undoubtedly we are; but society does not
recognise it, while some are destined to work and suffering, and
others to idleness and enjoyment. If a worker shows that he
realises the exploitation to which he is subject, he is blamed and
cruelly punished, while others suffer the inequality with patience.
The worker must educate himself; and in order to do this it is
necessary to found free schools, maintained by the wages which the
rich give. In this way the worker will advance more and more, until
he is regarded as he deserves, since the most useful mission of
society depends on him.
Whatever be the logical value of these ideas, this collection shows the
chief aim of the Modern School—namely, that the mind of the child,
influenced by what it sees and informed by the positive knowledge it
acquires, shall work freely, without prejudice or submission to any
kind of sect, with perfect autonomy and no other guide but reason,
equal in all, and sanctioned by the cogency of evidence, before which
the darkness of sophistry and dogmatic imposition is dispelled.
In December, 1903, the Congress of Railway Workers, which was then held
at Barcelona, informed us that, as a part of its programme, the
delegates would visit the Modern School. The pupils were delighted, and
we invited them to write essays to be read on the occasion of the
visit. The visit was prevented by unforeseen circumstances; but we
published in the Bulletin the children’s essays, which exhaled a
delicate perfume of sincerity and unbiassed judgment, graced by the
naive ingenuousness of the writers. No suggestion was made to them, and
they did not compare notes, yet there was a remarkable agreement in
their sentiments. At another time the pupils of the Workers’ School at
Badalona sent a greeting to our pupils, and they again wrote essays,
from which we compiled a return letter of greeting. [11]
CHAPTER XVI.
THE BULLETIN
The Modern School needed and found its organ in the Press. The
political and ordinary press, which at one time favoured 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 programme 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 library.
One of the most successful sections of the Bulletin was that devoted to
the publication of the ideas of the pupils. Besides showing their
individual ideas it revealed the spontaneous manifestation of common
sense. Girls and boys, with no appreciable difference in intellect
according to sex, in contact with the realities of life as indicated by
the teachers, expressed themselves in simple essays which, though
sometimes immature in judgment, more often showed the clear logic with
which they conceived philosophical, political, or social questions of
some importance. The journal was at first distributed without charge
among the pupils, and was exchanged with other periodicals; but there
was soon a demand for it, and a public subscription had to be opened.
When this was done, the Bulletin became a philosophical review, as well
as organ of the Modern School; and it retained this character until the
persecution began and the school was closed. An instance of the
important mission of the Bulletin will be found in the following
article, which I wrote in No. 5 of the fourth year, in order to correct
certain secular teachers who had gone astray:—
A certain Workers’ School has introduced the novelty of
establishing a savings-bank, administered by the pupils. This piece
of information, reproduced in terms of great praise by the press as
a thing to be imitated, induces us to express our opinion on the
subject. While others have their own right to decide and act, we
have the same right to criticise, and thus to create a rational
public opinion.
In the first place we would observe that the word economy is very
different from, if not the opposite of, the idea of saving. One may
teach children the knowledge and practice of economy without
necessarily teaching them to save. Economy means a prudent and
methodical use of one’s goods: saving means a restriction of one’s
use of one’s goods. By economising, we avoid waste; by saving, the
man who has nothing superfluous deprives himself of what is
necessary.
Have the children who are taught to save any superfluous property?
The very name of the society in question assures us that they have
not. The workers who send their children to this school live on
their wages, the minimum sum, determined by the laws of supply and
demand, which is paid for their work by the employers; and as this
wage gives them nothing superfluous, and the social wealth is
monopolised by the privileged classes, the workers are far from
obtaining enough to live a life in harmony with the progress of
civilisation. Hence, when these children of workers, and future
workers themselves, are taught to save—which is a voluntary
privation under the appearance of interest—they are taught to
prepare themselves to submit to privilege. While the intention is
to initiate them to the practice of economy, what is really done is
to convert them into victims and accomplices of the present unjust
order.
The working-class child is a human child, and, as such, it has a
right to the development of all its faculties, the satisfaction of
all its needs, moral and physical. For that purpose society was
instituted. It is not its function to repress or subject the
individual, as is selfishly pretended by the privileged and
reactionary class, and all who enjoy what others produce; it has to
hold the balance justly between the rights and duties of all
members of the commonwealth.
As it is, the individual is asked to sacrifice his rights, needs,
and pleasures to society; and, as this disorder demands patience,
suffering, and sophistical reasoning, let us commend economy and
blame saving. We do not think it right to teach children to look
forward to being workers in a social order in which the average
mortality of the poor, who live without freedom, instruction, or
joy, reaches an appalling figure in comparison with that of the
class which lives in triumph on their labour. Those who, from
sociolatry, would derogate in the least from the rights of man,
should read the fine and vigorous words of Pi y Margall: “Who art
thou to prevent my use of my human rights? Perfidious and
tyrannical society, thou wert created to defend, not to coerce us.
Go back to the abyss whence thou came.”
Starting from these principles, and applying them to pædagogy, we
think it necessary to teach children that to waste any class of
objects is contrary to the general welfare; that if a child spoils
paper, loses pens, or destroys books, it does an injustice to its
parents and the school. Assuredly one may impress on the child the
need of prudence in order to avoid getting imperfect things, and
remind it of lack of employment, illness, or age; but it is not
right to insist that a provision be made out of a salary which does
not suffice to meet the needs of life. That is bad arithmetic.
The workers have no university training; they do not go to the
theatre or to concerts; they never go into ecstasies before the
marvels of art, industry, or nature; they have no holiday in which
to fill their lungs with life-giving oxygen; they are never
uplifted by reading books or reviews. On the contrary, they suffer
all kinds of privations, and may have to endure crises due to
excessive production. It is not the place of teachers to hide these
sad truths from the children, and to tell them that a smaller
quantity is equal to, if not better than, a larger. In order that
the power of science and industry be shared by all, and all be
invited to partake of the banquet of life, we must not teach in the
school, in the interest of privilege, that the poor should organise
the advantages of crumbs and leavings. We must not prostitute
education.
On another occasion I had to censure a different departure from our
principles:—
We were distressed and indignant on reading the list of
contributions voted by the Council of Barcelona for certain popular
societies which are interested in education. We read of sums
offered to Republican Fraternities and similar societies; and we
find that, instead of rejecting them, they forwarded votes of
thanks to the Council.
The meaning of these things in a Catholic and ultra-conservative
nation is clear. The Church and the capitalist system only maintain
their ascendency by a judicious system of charity and protection.
With this they gratify the disinherited class, and continue to
enjoy its respect. But we cannot see republicans acting as if they
were humble Christians without raising a cry of alarm.
Beware, we repeat, beware! You are educating your children badly,
and taking the wrong path towards reform, in accepting alms. You
will neither emancipate yourselves nor your children if you trust
in the strength of others, and rely on official or private support.
Let the Catholics, ignorant of the realities of life, expect
everything of God, or St. Joseph, or some similar being, and, as
they have no security that their prayers will be heard in this
life, trust to receive a reward after death. Let gamblers in the
lottery fail to see that they are morally and materially victimised
by their rulers, and trust to receive by chance what they do not
earn by energy. But it is sad to see men hold out the hand of a
beggar who are united in a revolutionary protest against the
present system; to see them admitting and giving thanks for
humiliating gifts, instead of trusting their own energy, intellect,
and ability.
Beware, then, all men of good faith! That is not the way to set up
a true education of children, but the way to enslave them.
CHAPTER XVII.
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 on 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 civilised
country, and in meetings and other popular manifestations.
It proved in the end that the mortal enemies of our work were its most
effective supporters, as they led to the establishment of international
Rationalism.
I felt my own littleness in face of this mighty manifestation. Led
always by the light of the ideal, I conceived and carried out the
International League for the Rational Education of Children, in the
various branches of which, scattered over the world, are found men in
the front ranks of culture [Anatole France, Ernst Haeckel, etc.]. It
has three organs, L’École Renovée in France, the Bulletin in Barcelona,
and La Scuola Laica at Rome, which expound, discuss, and spread all the
latest efforts of pædagogy to purify science from all defilement of
error, to dispel all credulity, to bring about a perfect harmony
between belief and knowledge, and to destroy that privileged esoteric
system which has always left an exoteric doctrine to the masses.
This great concentration of knowledge and research must lead to a
vigorous action which will give to the future revolution the character
of practical manifestation of applied sociology, without passion or
demand of revenge, with no terrible tragedies or heroic sacrifices, no
sterile movements, no disillusion of zealots, no treacherous returns to
reaction. For scientific and rational education will have pervaded the
masses, making each man and woman a self-conscious, active, and
responsible being, guiding his will according to his judgment, free for
ever from the passions inspired by those who exploit respect for
tradition and for the charlatanry of the modern framers of political
programmes.
If progress thus loses this dramatic character of revolution, it will
gain in firmness, stability, and continuity, as evolution. The vision
of a rational society, which revolutionaries foresaw in all ages, and
which sociologists confidently promise, will rise before the eyes of
our successors, not as the mirage of dreamy utopians, but as the
positive and merited triumph won by the revolutionary power of reason
and science.
The new repute of the educational work of the Modern School attracted
the attention of all who appreciated the value of sound instruction.
There was a general demand for knowledge of the system. There were
numbers of private secular schools, or similar institutions supported
by societies, and their directors made inquiry concerning the
difference of our methods from theirs. There were constant requests to
visit the school and consult me. I gladly satisfied them, removed their
doubts, and pressed them to enter on the new way; and at once efforts
were made to reform the existing schools, and to create others on the
model of the Modern School.
There was great enthusiasm and the promise of mighty things; but one
serious difficulty stood in the way: we were short of teachers, and had
no means of creating them. Professional teachers had two
disadvantages—traditional habits and dread of the contingencies of the
future. There were very few who, in an unselfish love of the ideal,
would devote themselves to the progressive cause. Instructed young men
and women might be found to fill the gap; but how were we to train them
? Where could they pass their apprenticeship? Now and again I heard
from workers’ or political societies that they had decided to open a
school; they would find rooms and appliances, and we could count upon
their using our school manuals. But whenever I asked if they had
teachers, they replied in the negative, and thought it would be easy to
supply the want. I had to give in.
Circumstances had made me the director of rationalist education, and I
had constant consultations and demands on the part of aspirants for the
position of teacher. This made me realise the defect, and I endeavoured
to meet it by private advice and by admitting young assistants in the
Modern School. The result was naturally mixed. There are now worthy
teachers who will carry on the work of rational education elsewhere;
others failed from moral or intellectual incapacity.
Not feeling that the pupils of the Modern School who devoted themselves
to teaching would find time for their work, I established a Normal
School, of which I have already spoken. I was convinced that, if the
key of the social problem is in the scientific and rational school, it
is essential, to make a proper use of the key, that fitting teachers be
trained for so great a destiny.
As the practical and positive result of my work, I may say that the
Modern School of Barcelona was a most successful experiment, and that
it was distinguished for two characters:—
1º. While open to successive improvements, it set up a standard of
what education should be in a reformed state of society.
2º. It gave an impulse to the spread of this kind of education.
There was up to that time no education in the true sense of the word.
There were, for the privileged few in the universities, traditional
errors and prejudices, authoritarian dogmas, mixed up with the truths
which modern research has brought to light. For the people there was
primary instruction, which was, and is, a method of taming children.
The school was a sort of riding-school, where natural energies were
subdued in order that the poor might suffer their hard lot in silence.
Real education, separated from faith—education that illumines the mind
with the light of evidence—is the creation of the Modern School.
During its ephemeral existence [12] it did a marvellous amount of good.
The child admitted to the school and kept in contact with its
companions rapidly changed its habits, as I have observed. It
cultivated cleanliness, avoided quarrels, ceased to be cruel to
animals, took no notice in its games of the barbarous spectacle which
we call the national entertainment [bull-fight], and, as its mind was
uplifted and its sentiments purified, it deplored the social injustices
which abound on the very face of life. It detested war, and would not
admit that national glory, instead of consisting in the highest
possible moral development and happiness of a people, should be placed
in conquest and violence.
The influence of the Modern School, extended to other schools which had
been founded on its model and were maintained by various working-men
societies, penetrated the families by means of the children. Once they
were touched by the influence of reason and science they were
unconsciously converted into teachers of their own parents, and these
in turn diffused the better standards among their friends and
relatives.
This spread of our influence drew on us the hatred of Jesuitism of all
kinds and in all places, and this hatred inspired the design which
ended in the closing of the Modern School. It is closed; but in reality
it is concentrating its forces, defining and improving its plan, and
gathering the strength for a fresh attempt to promote the true cause of
progress.
That is the story of what the Modern School was, is, and ought to be.
EPILOGUE
By J. M.
“That is the story of what the Modern 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 religious traditions and social inequalities; he
wished children to become as resentful of poverty and superstition as
he. There is no law of Spain, or of any other country, that forbids
such enterprise as his. He might be shot in Russia, of course; for the
law has been suspended there for more than a decade. In Spain men had
to lie in order to take his life.
With the particular value of his scheme of education I am not
concerned. He was well acquainted with pædagogical literature, and
there were few elementary schools in Spain to equal his. Writers who
have spoken slightingly of his school, apart from its social dogmas,
know little or nothing about it. Ferrer was in close and constant
association with two of the ablest professors in the university of
Barcelona, one of whom sent his children to the school, and with
distinguished scholars in other lands. There was more stimulating work
done in the Modern School than, probably, in any other elementary
school in Spain, if not elsewhere. All that can be questioned is the
teaching of an explicit social creed to the children. Ferrer would have
rejoined that there was not a school in Europe that does not teach an
explicit social creed. But, however we may differ from his creed, we
cannot fail to recognise the elevated and unselfish idealism of the
man, and deplore the brutality and illegality with which his genial
life was prematurely brought to a close.
NOTES
[1] This was in the early eighties, when Ferrer, then in his early
twenties, was secretary to the republican leader Ruiz Zorrilla. To this
phase of his career, which he rapidly outgrew, belongs the
revolutionary document which was malignantly and dishonestly used
against him twenty-five years afterwards.—J. M.
[2] Mlle. Meunier died, leaving about £30,000 unconditionally to
Ferrer, before he returned to Spain in 1900.—J. M.
[3] These societies are particularly numerous in Spain, where the
government system of education is deplorable, and schools are often
established in connection with them.—J. M.
[4] It is especially commended in the life of Benedict J. Labré and
others that they deliberately cultivated filthiness of person.—J. M.
[5] These articles are reproduced in the Spanish edition. As they are
not from Ferrer’s pen, I omit them.—J. M.
[6] £20 a year is a not uncommon salary of masters and mistresses in
Spain, and many cannot obtain even that.—J. M.
[7] It should be stated that both the writers are Anarchists, in the
sense I have indicated in the Preface. Except on special subjects—the
famous geographer Odón de Buen, for instance, co-operated with Ferrer
in regard to geography—no other writers were likely to embody Ferrer’s
ideals. All, however, were as opposed to violence as Ferrer himself,
and Mr. W. Archer has shown in his life of Ferrer that the charges
brought against Mme. Jacquinet by Ferrer’s persecutors at his trial are
officially denied by our Egyptian authorities.—J. M.
[8] Extract from a speech delivered by Donoso Cortés at his admission
into the Academy.
[9] Haeckel’s Riddle of the Universe, Chap. I.
[10] I omit some of Ferrer’s short comments on these specimens of
reasoning and sentiment, as he regards them. One can recognise the echo
of the teacher’s words. The children were repeating their catechism.
But (1) this is no catechism of violence and class-hatred, and (2)
there is a distinct appreciation of the ideas and sentiments on the
part of the children. I translate the passages as literally as
possible.—J. M.
[11] This letter and the preceding essays are given in the Spanish
edition. As they are a repetition of the sentiments expressed in the
extracts already given, it is unnecessary to reproduce them here.
Except that I have omitted papers incorporated by Ferrer, but not
written by him, this is the only modification I have allowed myself.—J.
M.
[12] The Modern School was closed after Ferrer’s arrest in 1906.—J. M.
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