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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Origin and Ideals of the Modern School,
-by Francisco Ferrer
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: The Origin and Ideals of the Modern School
-
-Author: Francisco Ferrer
-
-Translator: Joseph McCabe
-
-Release Date: November 1, 2021 [eBook #66644]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-Produced by: Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed Proofreading
-             Team at https://www.pgdp.net/ for Project Gutenberg (This file
-             was produced from images generously made available by The
-             Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
-
-*** 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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