Anarchist institutions where students learn the importance of Liberty and Freedom on a very practical level. The FreeSchools movement was started by anarchists at the end of the 19th century under the name of Modern Schools (http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secJ5.html#secj513).
Section J6 of AnAnarchistFaq (http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secJ6.html) may prove enlightening:
J.6 What methods of child rearing do anarchists advocate?
- J.6.1 What are the main principles of raising free children and the main obstacles to implementing those principles?
- J.6.2 What are some examples of libertarian child-rearing methods applied to the care of newborn infants
- J.6.3 What are some examples of libertarian child-rearing methods applied to the care of young children?
- J.6.4 If children have nothing to fear, how can they be good?
- J.6.5 But how can children learn ethics if they are not given punishments, prohibitions, and religious instruction?
- J.6.6 But how will a free child ever learn unselfishness?
- J.6.7 Isn't what you call "libertarian child-rearing" just another name for spoiling the child?
- J.6.8 What is the anarchist position on teenage sexual liberation?
- J.6.9 But isn't this concern with teenage sexual liberation just a distraction from issues that should be of more concern to anarchists, like restructuring the economy?
Modern Schools have been a constant aspect of the anarchist movement since the later 1890s. The movement was started in France by Louise Michel and Sebastien Faure, where Franciso Ferrer became acquainted with them. He founded his Modern School in Barcelona in 1901, and by 1905 there were 50 similar schools in Spain (many of them funded by anarchist groups and trade unions and, from 1919 onward, by the C.N.T. - in all cases, the autonomy of the schools was respected).
In 1909, Ferrer was falsely accused by the Spanish government of leading an insurrection and executed in spite of world-wide protest and overwhelming proof of his innocence. His execution, however, gained him and his educational ideas international recognition and inspired a Modern School progressive education movement in Britain, France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, China, Japan and, on the greatest scale, in the USA.
CategoryEducation
Anarchist Schools