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81-487: Active Defunct Publications Works The Ferrer Center and Stelton Colony were an anarchist social center and colony, respectively, organized to honor the memory of anarchist pedagogue Francisco Ferrer and to build a school based on his model, Escuela Moderna , in the United States. In the widespread outcry following Ferrer's execution in 1909 and the international movement that sprung in its wake,

162-523: A Spanish Republic in late 1886, Ferrer was himself forced to flee to France with his wife and three daughters, where they would stay for 16 years. While in France, Ferrer kept up his masonic activities with the Grand Orient de France . In Paris, Ferrer taught Spanish, sold wine on commission, volunteered as Ruíz's secretary (until his 1895 death), and pursued radical efforts. He was a Dreyfusard ,

243-530: A show trial by a kangaroo court , resulted in Ferrer's execution and triggered international outcry, as Ferrer was widely believed to be innocent at the time of his death. He was prominently memorialized in writing, monuments, and demonstrations across three continents. The protest became a movement to propagate his educational ideas, and Modern Schools in his name sprouted across the United States and Europe, reaching into Brazil and Asia. Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia

324-552: A "cultural center and evening school", which expanded into an "experimental day school" and, ultimately, a colony outside New Brunswick, New Jersey. The association lasted over 40 years and had three goals: to promote Ferrer's writings, to organize meetings on the anniversary of his death, and to establish schools by his model throughout the United States. Outside the United States, the Americans had no explicit connection with international Ferrer groups. The Association's headquarters,

405-593: A delegate to the London 1896 Congress of the Second International , and a teacher at the Masonic school. Ferrer began to explore anarchism following Ruíz's death. He met Louise Michel , Elisée Reclus , Sébastien Faure , befriended Charles Malato and Jean Grave , and bonded with Spanish anarchists Anselmo Lorenzo and Fernando Tarrida del Mármol . Their personalities and ideas impressed him, and by

486-431: A farm near Barcelona, where he developed republican and anti-clerical convictions. As a train conductor, he transmitted messages for the republican leader Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla , exiled in France. Following a failed republican uprising in 1885, Ferrer, too, moved to Paris with his family, where they stayed for 16 years. Ferrer began to explore anarchism and education. At the turn of the century, Ferrer had resolved to open

567-464: A fervent atheist, became prominent in these conversations and advocated for a rational school as an alternative to the religious dogma and compulsory lessons common within Spanish schools. As a speaker, he was unpretentious and uncharismatic, but his sincerity and capacity for organization inspired others. Ferrer followed in a rough and ready Spanish tradition of extragovernment, rationalist education:

648-533: A force to propel cultural and political revolution. The Association found little agreement on school policy apart from that education was a process of educing a children's latent talents rather than a process of imposing dogma. The founders had little experience with education or parenting, apart from some having taught in the Workmen's Circle radical Sunday Schools, and trusting no authority, would hold long debates with no effect. Some Association members interfered in

729-444: A front for insurrectionary sentiment. Ferrer represented peril to many social institutions—the church, the state, the military, the family, gender segregation, property—and the conservatives who wished to preserve them. During the school's early years, Ferrer adopted principles of anarcho-syndicalism , a philosophy of worker co-ownership that grew in prominence during this period. He published La Huelga General (The General Strike),

810-639: A group of New York anarchists convened as the Ferrer Association in 1910. Their headquarters, the Ferrer Center, hosted a variety of cultural events in the avant-garde arts and radical politics, including lectures, discussions, and performances. It was also home to the Ferrer Modern School , a libertarian, day school that emphasized unplanned, undogmatic curriculum. The Center moved several times throughout Manhattan to establish

891-510: A libertarian school modeled on Paul Robin 's Prévost orphanage school. A large inheritance from a Parisian tutee provided the means to do so. Upon returning to Barcelona in 1901, Ferrer founded the Barcelona Modern School, Escuela Moderna , which sought to provide a secular, libertarian curriculum as an alternative to the religious dogma and compulsory lessons common within Spanish schools. Ferrer's pedagogy borrowed from

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972-425: A marble commemoration for Ferrer in its Grand-Place in mid-1910 and, separately, erected Ferrer's first honorary statue of a nude man holding the torch of enlightenment, in 1911. It was destroyed in 1915 under German occupation and restored by the international freethought movement in 1926. Public places in France and Italy adopted Ferrer's name in memorial. The international fallout from Ferrer's execution led to

1053-566: A martyr to the collusion of a vengeful church and traditionalist state. Protests in many of Europe's major cities coincided with hundreds of meetings across America, Europe, and Asia. A 15,000-person throng descended on Paris's Spanish embassy, and the anarchist black flag draped from the Milan Cathedral . British luminaries spoke in outrage, including George Bernard Shaw , H. G. Wells , and Arthur Conan Doyle alongside anarchists Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta , and Tarrida. Ferrer's death

1134-454: A military base adjacent to and with negative effects for the colony. Elizabeth Ferm died in 1944 and her husband retired four years later. The school had diminished to 15 pupils at the time. The school closed in 1953. Laurence Veysey described the association as "one of the most notable—though unremembered—attempts to create a counter-culture in America". Of its accomplishments, Veysey counted

1215-540: A renewed colonial war in Morocco . The general strike called by Solidaridad Obrera culminated in a week of riots, which killed hundreds in and around Barcelona, and mass arrests, which led to torture, deportation, and execution. Ferrer was charged with orchestrating the rebellion and became its most famous casualty. Although Ferrer participated in the events of the Catalan Tragic Week, he did not mastermind

1296-701: A similar libertarian school, which became plausible when he inherited around a million francs from a middle-aged French woman whom he had tutored in Spanish and convinced of his ideas. With a large inheritance from a Parisian tutee, Ferrer returned to Spain in 1901, where he would open the Barcelona Modern School, Escuela Moderna . Spain was in a time of self-reflection after losing the Spanish–American War , particularly regarding their national education. Liberals and radicals wanted more secular curriculum, with new scientific, historical, and sociological content and teachers not beholden to diocesan inspectors. Ferrer,

1377-566: A space conducive to children's play. Following a bomb plot and police infiltration, several anarchists from the association decided to take the school out to the country. The school moved to what would become the Ferrer Colony in Stelton, New Jersey , 30 miles outside New York City, in 1914. The colony was based around the school and land was individually parceled such that, in the spirit of anarchist volunteerism, anyone could sell and exit

1458-479: A stronger immigrant population and rested three blocks from Central Park . The three-story building included an unusable ground level floor, a large room on the second floor where two classes occurred at once, and a small office and kitchen on the third floor, where the adult anarchists congregated. Enrollment rose despite the school's conditions. By 1914, the school taught 30 children and turned away half its applicants. Historian Laurence Veysey attributes this rise to

1539-791: A syndicalist journal, between 1901 and 1903, and worked to organize the Catalonian revolutionary labor movement and promote direct action . Ferrer led a parade of 1,700 children for secular education on Good Friday in April 1906. Ferrer was intimidated and vilified for his work in Barcelona. Police raided his house and tailed his movements. He was subject to slanderous public rumors to tarnish his reputation, including intonations of gambling, financial speculation, and hedonism. Ferrer's various romantic relations with women were presented as indications of his school's moral lessons. In 1905, Ferrer and

1620-431: A tradition of 18th century rationalism and 19th century romanticism . He held that children should wield freewheeling liberties at the expense of conformity , regulation, and discipline. His school eschewed punishments, rewards, and exams, and encouraged practical experience over academic study. The school hosted lectures for adults, a school for teacher training , and a radical printing press, which printed textbooks and

1701-597: A wealthy family, who worked at the school's press. While the attempt itself—the second in two years—was unsuccessful, it was successful as the pretense for deposing Ferrer. He was arrested in June 1906 on charges of planning the attempt and persuading Morral to perform it. Within two weeks, state authorities closed the school due to its association with Morral and Ferrer. Conservative members of lower house of Spain's legislature unsuccessfully proposed that all secular schools be closed for their promotion of antisocial behaviors. For

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1782-515: A year Ferrer awaited trial, where he was acquitted for lack of proof. Ferrer's role in the Morral affair remains indeterminate, as of 1985. Ferrer was a militant anarchist, contrary to his proclamations otherwise, who believed in direct action and the usefulness of violence. The Spanish authorities attempted to connect Ferrer with two assassination attempts prior to Morral's. The Oxford historian Joaquín Romero Maura credits Ferrer with coordinating

1863-457: A year later. Ferrer traveled Europe as an advocate of the Spanish revolutionary cause, founded a libertarian education advocacy organization, and reopened his press. In mid-1909, Ferrer was arrested and accused of orchestrating a week of insurrection known as Barcelona's Tragic Week . Though Ferrer's involvement was likely not as blameless as intimated by his peers, he did not mastermind the events as charged. The ensuing court case, remembered as

1944-534: The Gran Oriente de España , under the leadership of Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla ), taking on the symbolic name, Brother "Cero", he reached the 32°. He used his position as a train conductor on a route between France and Barcelona to transmit messages for the exiled Republican leader Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla and shepherd republicans, radicals and freemasons to sanctuary. After supporting an attempted coup under General Manuel Villacampa del Castillo who intended to install

2025-658: The free-thinker , pedagogue, and anarchist Francisco Ferrer was executed in Barcelona and subsequently propelled into martyrdom. The resulting Ferrer movement led to the founding of anticlerical private schools in the model of his Escuela Moderna throughout the world. One such school was founded in New York. On June 12, 1910, a group of 22 anarchists and sympathizers began the Francisco Ferrer Association in New York City. Together they built

2106-579: The Association itself, early principals of the day school were native born, largely with degrees from Ivy League schools and not Jewish. They were possibly propelled by their interest in upending the status quo, altruism for the poor, and a curiosity for bohemian life in the ghetto, as juxtaposed against their urban, predictable upper-middle class lives. The school moved multiple times and ultimately closed in 1953. Students would "often" not learn to read until ten or twelve years old. Harry Kelly arranged

2187-605: The Center expanding his understanding of New York society beyond the knowledge he had received from books. Several anarchists from the association decided to take the school out to the country. The Center served as a model for schools across the United States in Chicago, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and Seattle. But while these schools mostly closed within several years, the schools in Stelton and Mohegan would last for decades. As

2268-609: The Center included Max Weber , Jack London , Upton Sinclair , and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn . The folklorist Moritz Jagendorf started a "Free Theatre" at the Center in late 1914. The group performed new manuscripts, including a world premiere of a Lord Dunsany drama, as well as their own original plays, which had social themes. The theater had a very limited budget and some of its performers struggled to speak English. They also hosted Floyd Dell 's troupe and others from Greenwich Village. The Center had an air of radical affability and cosmopolitanism. Historian Laurence Veysey described

2349-470: The Center's adult membership was in the hundreds and Jewish people formed the largest contingent of its many represented nationalities. The social foundation of the New York Ferrer movement was the relationship between Jewish immigrants, who valued education, and domestic Americans, who approached teaching with alacrity. The Association and Modern School leaders were mostly domestic Americans. Among

2430-422: The Center, with its unrestricted discussions on social subjects and wide representation of nationalities, as potentially the country's least inhibited and most stimulating small venue at the time. The Center's radical politics made it a haven for anti-capitalist revolutionaries, anarchists, and libertarians. It hosted children from the 1912 Lawrence textile strike , supported Frank Tannenbaum 's 1914 mobilization of

2511-639: The Ferrer Center, hosted a variety of cultural events: literary lectures, debates on current affairs, avant-garde arts and performance, social dances, and classes for the inquisitive masses. And when the Center crossed genres, its spirit of experimentalism was unpretentious. Though many of its teachers were hostile to formal academic manner, classes addressed standard subjects. Some were taught by distinguished individuals: painters Robert Henri and George Bellows taught figure drawing , Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen 's son taught comparative literature, Robert La Follette 's law partner taught government, and Will Durant taught

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2592-610: The Free Theatre, was director of the Children's Playhouse, and was active in the following organizations: Mohegan Colony Association , Story League, Green Room Club, The International Composers' Guild (he was Edgard Varèse's dentist), Overseas Press and the New York Folktale Society. He also wrote a book on making wines and other beverages: Folk Wines, Cordials & Brandies: How to Make Them, Along with

2673-469: The Modern School voiced their opposition to bullfighting , cautioning against using abolition of the practice as a means to stoke political nationalism . He was held in association with the 1906 assassination attempt on Spanish King Alfonso XIII , but ultimately released under international pressure the next year. The assassin, Mateo Morral, was a 25-year-old anarchist, well-educated and from

2754-493: The Morral affair. His last words before the firing squad of Montjuïc Castle on October 13, 1909, were, "Aim well, my friends. You are not responsible. I am innocent. Long live the Modern School!" Ferrer's execution became known as "martyrdom" to the causes of free thought and rational education. Ferrer was widely believed to be innocent at the time of his death. His execution sparked worldwide protest and indignation. Beyond anarchism, liberals across society viewed Ferrer as

2835-442: The Morral assassination attempt and a similar attempt a year earlier. Based on papers from French and Spanish authorities, Maura argues that Ferrer supplied the bombs and funds for the attempt to provoke insurrection. These types of official records from this period, however, were famous for their partiality and, even before some evidence from the case went missing, were altogether insufficient for conviction in Ferrer's time. Ferrer

2916-517: The Pleasures of Their Lore, Publisher: Vanguard Pr Date Published: 6/1/1963 ISBN   978-0-8149-0125-0 ISBN   0814901255 He was mentioned at the end of S01E06 (originally broadcast 22 March 1998) of the British comedy series This Morning With Richard Not Judy in an installment of the running joke Men of Achievement 1974. This article about a cultural anthropologist from

2997-439: The United States, including the long-lived colony at Stelton, New Jersey, but most did not last past the mid-1920s. Schools by his name reached as far as Argentina, Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico, Poland, and Yugoslavia. His methods were invoked by Gustav Landauer ( Bavarian Revolution of 1919 ) and Nestor Makhno ( Russian Revolution of 1917 ). Groups erected and named public memorials to Ferrer across Europe. Brussels displayed

3078-595: The age of 15. He earned his doctoral dental studies degree in 1916 from Columbia University . He helped revitalize the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity by founding the NY Alpha chapter. While practicing as a dentist, Jagendorf's interests remained in the folklore of Europe , Asia , and the United States . He wrote several stories for children based on folktales he had heard from these various cultures. He

3159-488: The association of (1) college-educated native Americans with recent, Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe, and of (2) intellectuals with laborers. Veysey called the Ferrer Modern School one of the few "truly advanced" American progressive schools of the 1920s. The Friends of the Modern School was founded in 1973. It was incorporated as a not-for-profit organization in around 2005 with the mission of preserving

3240-406: The basis of freedom and justice" and accordingly, the founders wanted their school to let children develop freely and through this freedom, develop a sense of social justice. The Association was essentially anarchist, unwedded to a particular ideal, but to the free expression of opinion and exchange of ideas. The school would be both a protected island against the influence of middle-class America, and

3321-671: The boarding house. Nellie and James Dick operated the boarding house for children, known as the Living House. The couple had formerly opened Ferrer schools in their original England and elsewhere in the United States. They promoted freedom and spontaneity in education. In their dorms, the Dicks taught personal responsibility. In 1920, Elizabeth and Alexis Ferm became Stelton's co-principals. The couple had previously run schools in New York City. Their methods emphasized manual work and crafts—e.g., pottery, gardening, carpentry, dance—held in

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3402-447: The books, which covered topics from math and grammar to natural and social sciences to religious mythology and the iniquities of patriotism and conquest, for upending social order. The press's monthly journal hosted the school's news and articles from prominent libertarian writers. Aside from the school's purpose of fostering self-development, Ferrer believed it had an additional function: prefigurative social regeneration . The school

3483-480: The children's physical and intellectual capacities without coercion. He believed that social and economic environment played a larger role in a child's development than heredity, and so his school aimed to provide nature, exercise, love, and understanding, especially towards children normally subject to stigma. Ferrer corresponded with but never visited Robin in Cempuis. Around 1900, Ferrer declared his intention to open

3564-494: The classroom to the objection of other members. The day school teacher was not expected to uphold a religious or social dogma but instead to "have the libertarian spirit" and answer children's questions truthfully. The teachers had low salaries and high turnover, including multiple scrambles for staffing. No principal stayed longer than a year between 1911 and 1916. The Ferrer Modern School also suffered its environmental conditions. The Center's original location at 6 St. Mark's Place

3645-419: The colony at their prerogative. They intended for the colony to form the center of a national libertarian education movement. The school floundered in its first years and passed through multiple administrations, the longest of which with co-principals Elizabeth and Alexis Ferm . The school closed in 1953. It had been a model for short-lived Ferrer schools across the country and lasted among the longest. In 1909,

3726-735: The creation of the syndicalist labor federation Solidaridad Obrera and its journal. In April 1908, Ferrer founded the International League for the Rational Education of Children, which would advocate for libertarian education across Europe. Its primary of three journals, L'Ecole Renovée , included articles by major anarchists and figures in libertarian education. Through its first year, the League led to libertarian schools in Amsterdam, Brussels, and Milan and worked with

3807-522: The demise of the Antonio Maura administration. Ferrer separated from his wife, Teresa Sanmartí, and later had relations with a friend of the woman whose inheritance funded the Barcelona school. He then fell in love with a teacher at his Escuela Moderna, Soledad Villafranca . Moritz Jagendorf Jagendorf was born in Czernowitz , Austria-Hungary . He moved to New York City around

3888-532: The dilapidated children's dormitories, resurrected the children-run periodical, and added a range of adult activities. The Dicks left in 1933 to pursue their longtime wish of opening their own Modern School in Lakewood, New Jersey . The Ferms were recruited to return in the mid-1930s, when the school population declined as the Great Depression depleted family incomes. The American government established

3969-431: The early leaders, only Joseph J. Cohen was an immigrant, and he arrived three years after the Center's founding. The rest were not immigrants: the early spokesperson and first Association president Leonard Abbott , Harry Kelly , and early financier Alden Freeman. Journalist Hutchins Hapgood, who lectured at the Center, came to write about Yiddish culture following his interactions there. Gallerist Carl Zigrosser wrote of

4050-566: The end of 1905, Ferrer schools in the image of his Escuela Moderna, for both children and adults, grew across eastern Spain: 14 in Barcelona and 34 across Catalonia, Valencia, and Andalusia. The Spanish Republicans and the secular League of Freethinkers organized their own classes using materials from the school press, with around 120 such rationalist schools in all. The rapidity of Ferrer's rise in influence troubled Spanish authorities. His monetary inheritance and organizing ability amplified his subversive efforts, and authorities viewed his school as

4131-439: The events as charged. Reliable retellings of the insurrection credit spontaneous forces rather than anarchist premeditation. Ferrer likely participated in the week's events, though historian of anarchism Paul Avrich considered Ferrer's role marginal. The evidence presented at Ferrer's military court trial included testimony from his political enemies and Ferrer's prior subversive writings, but no evidence of his having orchestrated

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4212-507: The expense of conformity, regulation, and discipline. It combined play and crafts alongside academic work and championed traits of reason, dignity, self-reliance, and scientific observation over that of piety and obedience. It advocated for learning through experience rather than drilled instruction by rote, and for treating children with love and warmth. This model's adherents, in seeking a school that eschewed religious and political authority, thought that changes in mass education would circumvent

4293-442: The expressiveness and love shared between students and their teachers, and to a cultural "union of enthusiasms" in the Ferrer movement, in which new Jewish immigrants, whose families tended towards warm affection and interest in education, met a body of Americans who equally wanted to be their teachers. The day school's students were predominantly from immigrant, garment industry worker families with radical or anarchist politics. Like

4374-585: The history of philosophy. The Center held an evening English class, whose topics often included proletarian history and current affairs. One group studied Esperanto . Lectures discussed free thought, religion, sex, and hygiene. Margaret Sanger proposed mothers' meetings on birth control . On the weekends, the Center hosted speakers for discussion including journalist Hutchins Hapgood , poet Edwin Markham , and reporter Lincoln Steffens . A lecture by lawyer Clarence Darrow attracted hundreds. Others associated with

4455-613: The late 1890s, he considered them kindred spirits. While Ferrer would later deny involvement in the anarchist movement, especially when government scrutiny was strongest against him, historian of anarchism Paul Avrich wrote that Ferrer's anarchist affiliation was indisputable, despite his portrayal by former historians as a pacifist or idealist rather than revolutionary. Throughout his entire life and across multiple countries, Ferrer worked for anarchist causes, funded other anarchist work, and published anarchist books. Many major and minor anarchist figures from Barcelona worked in affiliation with

4536-748: The legacy of the Stelton Modern School. Regular reunions of former students continued until the late 2010s and were recorded and are available at the Rutgers archives. The records of the Friends, as well as the Modern School itself, can be found at Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers. Francisco Ferrer Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia ( Catalan pronunciation: [fɾənˈsɛsk fəˈrej ˈɣwaɾði.ə] ; January 14, 1859 – October 13, 1909), widely known as Francisco Ferrer ( Spanish pronunciation: [fɾanˈθisko feˈreɾ] ),

4617-420: The libertarian schools of Sébastien Faure and Madeleine Vernet . But Ferrer would not see a second year with the League. Ferrer was arrested at the end of August 1909 following the previous month's civil unrest and week of outright insurrection in Barcelona known as Tragic Week . Citizens, wary from a prior war and governmental corruption, originally demonstrated against a call for military reserves to fight

4698-496: The move to Stelton, New Jersey, about 30 miles from New York City. The anarchist printer and Association member selected the site, a farm within two miles of a railroad station. The group bought the land and resold plots to colonists at fair market value while setting aside land for the school. As anarchists, the colonists did not uphold a common doctrine towards property, and disagreed on whether private property should be preserved or abolished. Plots were individually owned such that, in

4779-421: The objects of the lesson could be experienced firsthand. Pupils planned their own work and were trusted and free to attend as they pleased. The Escuela Moderna additionally hosted a school to train teachers and a radical publishing press, which translated and created more than 40 textbooks adequate for Ferrer's purposes, written in accessible language on recent scientific concepts. The Spanish authorities abhorred

4860-404: The quality of guest intellectual lecturers, had impressed even middle-class liberal reformers. Anarchist Emma Goldman credited the success of the school's expansion to Ferrer's methodical administrative ability. Other schools and centers in his model spread across Spain and to South America. By the time Ferrer opened a satellite school in the nearby textile center Vilanova i la Geltrú towards

4941-421: The rebellion. Ferrer maintained his innocence and was barred from presenting complementary testimony. The court case, which would culminate in Ferrer's death by firing squad , is remembered as being quickly decided. Historian Paul Avrich later summarized the case as "judicial murder", a successful attempt to quell an agitator whose ideas were dangerous to the status quo, as retribution for not convicting him in

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5022-452: The republicans and Fourierists schools (1840–50s), the anarchist and secularist schools (1870–80s), Paul Robin's Cempuis orphanage, Joan Puig i Elias (Catalonia), and José Sánchez Rosa (Andalusia). Ferrer's libertarian pedagogy also borrowed from 18th century rationalism, 19th century romanticism, and pedagogues including Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Kropotkin , and Tolstoy . This tradition pursued freewheeling liberties for children at

5103-514: The school Ferrer later opened, and Europe's most prominent anarchist leaders advised and wrote for him. While in Paris, Ferrer became interested in education, which was a hot topic in anarchist and rationalist circles. Ferrer was captivated by Paul Robin 's Prévost orphanage school in Cempuis , which modeled the school Ferrer would open. Robin's' co-educational "integral" program sought to develop

5184-404: The school had no discipline or set curriculum, same as it was in New York City. Students joined in craft and outdoor activities. In addition to students from colonist families, between 30 and 40 children boarded at the school in what was formerly a farmhouse. Next to the farmhouse, Stelton built an open-air dormitory. Their winters were cold. Margaret Sanger's daughter died of pneumonia contracted in

5265-502: The school's journal. Around 120 offshoots of the school spread throughout Spain. The rapidity of Ferrer's rise troubled Spanish church and state authorities, who viewed the school as a front for insurrectionary activity. Ferrer was held in association with the 1906 assassination attempt on the Spanish King , which was used as a pretext for closing the school, but was ultimately released without conviction under international pressure

5346-459: The schoolhouse's workshops. Alternatively, students could study in the library with James Dick. Following disagreement with some parents, who wanted the school to put more emphasis on reading and class-struggle politics, the Ferms left the school in 1925 rather than compromise their technique. The school briefly floundered between 1925 and 1928, when the Dicks returned as co-principals. They renovated

5427-434: The spirit of anarchist volunteerism, anyone could sell and exit the colony at their prerogative. ... They hoped the colony could form the center of a national libertarian education movement. The school at Stelton was founded in 1914. It floundered in its first years. In 1916, the socialist William Thurston Brown, who had experience operating modern schools, became Stelton's principal. Stelton's lessons were non-compulsory and

5508-681: The state shuttered the school. The Escuela Moderna charged sliding scale tuition based on parental capacity to pay, and divided students into three curricular levels. Ferrer's pedagogy sought to strip dogma from education and instead help children direct their own powers. Ferrer's school eschewed punishments and rewards, which he felt incentivized deception over sincerity. Similarly, he did not adopt grades or exams, whose propensity to flatter, deflate, and torture Ferrer considered injurious. Ferrer prioritized practical knowledge over theory and encouraged children to experience rather than read. Lessons entailed visits to local factories, museums, and parks where

5589-466: The state, and the military. This education extended to adults, as well. The school invited parents to participate in the school's operation and the public to attend evening and Sunday afternoon lessons. Ferrer also advocated for a Spanish popular university that never came to fruition. Ferrer was the center of Barcelonian libertarian education for the decade between his return and his death. The Escuela Moderna's program, from Ferrer's anticlericalism to

5670-563: The stunted public enlightenment and preservation of status quo that they blamed on the influence of both church and state. Free education, to Ferrer, entailed educators who would use improvised experimentation to arouse the child's will and autodidactic drive rather than impose their own dogmatic ideas through formal curriculum. The Escuela Moderna opened on Barcelona's Carrer de les Corts with thirty students in September 1901. More than 126 students were enrolled five years later, in 1906, when

5751-412: The unemployed, and fed protesters. The Center's formation coincided with a resurgence of interest in radical politics: the rise of syndicalism, multiple revolutions (including Russia ), and strike actions. While assimilation had eroded immigrant interest in radical politics for several decades, with this optimistic turn, anarchism had begun to escape the stigma of the 1901 McKinley assassination . By 1914,

5832-401: Was a Spanish radical freethinker , anarchist , and educationist behind a network of secular, private, libertarian schools in and around Barcelona . His execution, following a revolt in Barcelona, propelled Ferrer into martyrdom and grew an international movement of radicals and libertarians , who established schools in his model and promoted his schooling approach. Ferrer was raised on

5913-536: Was a more likely influence on the New York founders' interest in starting a school, as was the importance put upon education in Jewish culture. New York anarchists believed in the liberatory role of the school partly because, as European anarchist émigrés, they believed in the power of ideas to change the future and wanted their children to share their values. The school's early character was unplanned and undogmatic. The Association sought "the reconstruction of society upon

5994-421: Was a noted anarchist . He wrote for Hippolyte Havel 's Revolt and co-edited The Road to Freedom with Harry Kelly . In an interview in 1978 he said, "The only progress is in the individual, in you yourself; and through progress you better the whole world. And that is as far as you can go. I said that in 1914 to Leonard Abbott and again in the 1920s and 1930s, and I still say it today." He helped to found

6075-475: Was a quality to be instilled in children, as children brought to love freedom and see their dignity as shared with others would become good adults. The lessons of this education in social justice, equality, and liberty included capitalism as evil, government as slavery, war as crime against humanity , freedom as fundamental to human development, and suffering produced through patriotism, exploitation, and superstition. Their textbooks took positions against capitalism,

6156-470: Was an embryonic version of the future libertarian society Ferrer hoped to see. Propaganda and agitation were central to the Escuela Moderna's aims, as Ferrer dreamt of a society in which people constantly renewed themselves and their environment through experimentation. To this end, students received dogmatic instruction in the form of moral indoctrination. Ferrer believed that respect for fellow men

6237-568: Was born January 10 or 14, 1859, on a farm near Barcelona in Alella, Spain . He became a republican and freethinker in his youth. While his parents were pious Catholics, he grew independent and anti-clerical convictions from his freethinker uncle and militant atheist first employer. During his mid-20s, Ferrer had become a radical Republican. In 1883, he was initiated into the Masonic Lodge Verdad in Barcelona (Lodge Number 146 of

6318-447: Was covered widely, from the front page of The New York Times to a number of books. The worldwide protest became the Ferrer educational movement in his honor. The fact of his execution accelerated Ferrer's renown as the most famous libertarian educator, over Sébastian Faure and Paul Robin. His works were translated into multiple languages as a rationalist education movement spread worldwide. Modern Schools sprouted across Europe and

6399-602: Was established in haste and could not house a day school for lack of outdoor play space and park access. It moved several blocks north to 104 East Twelfth Street just before the school opened for the school year in 1911. This location had an outdoor play space but the building continued to lack standard school equipment and was less accessible to radical families, so the school moved farther north in October 1912 to an older building in East Harlem , 63 East 107th Street, which had

6480-644: Was originally intended, the Ferrer Association established a day school for children within the Ferrer Center in October 1911. In practice, the New York Ferrer Modern School was based less on Ferrer's method than his memory. The New York school's founders were propelled by their sense of injustice at Ferrer's execution and their belief in the liberatory prospect of his approach, but they made no concerted effort to replicate his example. The American movement for progressive education

6561-548: Was released from prison in June 1907, backed by an international coalition of anarchist and rationalist organizations who presented Ferrer's case as another iniquitous Spanish inquisition. The next month, Ferrer toured the European capitals as an advocate of the Spanish revolutionary cause. When he returned to Barcelona in September, though Ferrer was prohibited from reopening his school, he reopened his press, where he published new textbooks and translations. He additionally helped

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