A PRIMER OF LIBERTARIAN EDUCATION Copydght O 1975 by Joel H. Spring All rights reserved. Second Printing, July, 1977 Published 1975 by Free Life Editions, Inc., 41 Union Square, New York, N.Y. 10003. Library of Congress Catalog Number 75-10122 ISBN 0-914156-12-h8a rdcover 0-91415 6-13-6p aperback ............................. Introduction ........... ~aqufac\t uI red'int he United States of America 1 The Radical Critiqu.e. o.f .S.c.h.o.o.li.n.g. ........... 2 Ownership of Self / 3 The Growth of Consciousness: Mam to Freire . 4 Sexual Liberation and Summerhill: Reich and .............................. Neil1 ........... 6 Freeing the Child from Childhood ....... fj Present Realities and Future Prospects ................................... Notes ............................. Bibliography A NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS The illustration On the cover and those used inside this book are reproduced from linoleum cuts made by children of the k h k n School at the Stelton Colony, Stelton, New Jersey (1911-1953). 4 3 5-9 5e8 can function within the existing social structure. Radical lem is getting people to the point of truly owning their education would attempt to change the social attitudes minds. Another radical tradition has sought to achieve which support this social structure. The questions raised freedom from ideological control by raising levels of by radical education are very different from those raised consciousness and linking thought and learning to social by a reform-oriented education. The distinction is very change. This stream of thought has made the overcoming much like the one Wilhelm Reich made between radical of human alienation in the modem industrial world the and reactionary psychologists: a reactionary psychologist, first step in radical change. It has its origins in Marxist when confronted with poor people who are thieves, would thought and is best represented in the modern world by ask how one could end their stealing habits; a radical the work of Paulo Freire. A third tradition, that of the psychologist would ask why all poor people do not steal. Freudian left, including people like A.S. Neil1 and Wilhelm The first approach would emphasize changing behavior to Reich, has emphasized the necessity of changing character fit into the existing social structure while the second structure. All radical educators in the nineteenth and would try to identify those psychological characteristics of twentieth centuries, of course, have placed some emphasis the social structure which keep most poor people under on the necessity for changing the family structure and control. liberating women; for some, like Reich, the elimination of Public schooling and radical education are almost the traditional family and the development of free sexual contradictory notions. Public schools are supported by the relations were to be the first step in radical education. dominant social structure and in turn work to support that All of these groups and ideas have formed a tradition of structure. Public schools can reform and improve but they radical education in the nineteenth and twentieth cen- do not attempt to make basic structural changes. The turies. It is a tradition which has not necessarily been held rejection of the public school represents one of the together by common contacts, though this did occur, nor important themes in the historical development of radical by common institutional connections. Rather, its cohesion forms of education-from William Godwin in the derives largely from a common belief that power and eighteenth century to Ivan Illich in the twentieth-and has domination by social structures depend on child-rearing been premised on the idea that schools came into being as practices and ideological control, that the power of the a means of shaping the moral and social beliefs of the state and economy rests on a submissive population. population for the benefit of a dominant elite. Throughout Radicals within this tradition have not only a shared the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this tradition of critique but a shared alternative vision as well, emphasizing criticism has been interwoven with practical attempts by women's liberation, sexual freedom, new forms of family radical groups to create a system of education that would organization, and the importance of autonomy. free people from ideological control. This volume focuses on the major radical educational @ ideas flowing from anarchism, Marxism, and the Freudian left. Anarchism represents one important radical tradition which has attempted to develop techniques for making people free of all domination. As the anarchist Max Stimer emphasized in the nineteenth century, the primary prob- 10 THE RADICAL CRITIQUE OF SCHOOLING AN IMPORTANT ELEMENT of radical concern about education has been the reaction to the rise of mass schooling in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. During this period there was a steady trend toward universal compulsory schooling in state-supported and regulated schools. The purpose of mass schooling has been to train the citizen and worker for the modem industrial state. It is only natural for those who seek a radical transformation of society to have adopted a highly critical posture toward systems of schooling which are organized to maintain that society. The major themes of radical criticism have centered around the political, social, and economic power of the school. One concern has been that public schooling under the control of a national government inevitably leads to attempts by the educational system to produce citizens who will be blindly obedient to the dictates of that government, citizens who will uphold the authority of DURING THE LATE eighteenth and early nineteenth government even when it runs counter to personal interest centunes Western societies were feeling the tension of the and reason and who will adopt a nationalistic posture of shift from monarchical to republican forms of government. "my country, right or wrong." Another theme of radical During this period the close relationship between the criticism has been that systems of schooling have been political process and mass public schooling was developed. used to produce workers who are trained by the process of It was at this time that William Godwin wrote his schooling to accept work which is monotonous, boring and trenchant critique of mass schooling. The French and without personal satisfaction. These workers accept the American revolutions symbolized the eighteenth-century authority of the industrial system and do not seek any faith in individual reason and its ability to guide govern- fundamental changes in that system. Still another concern ment. But there were certain inherent contradictions in has been the myth of social mobility through education these political changes. Faith in individual reason could that has accompanied the development of mass schooling. lead to an argument for no government at all rather than a This myth has led to the acceptance of educational republican form of government. For William Godwin, born credentials as a just measure of social worth and as a basis in 1756, the reduction in the power of monarchies seemed for social rewards, and yet these credentials have been to be followed by the increased power of a new ruling distributed according to existing social class divisions. elite. To change the form of government meant very little Rather than increasing mobility, education has added more as long as any government existed which could be used in cement to the divisions between social classes.' the interests of a controlling group. For Godwin faith in These themes are illustrated by the work of three major the power of human reason implied a society where each critics of education: William Godwin, Francisco Ferrer, person could be sovereign rather than a republican society and Ivan Illich. Godwin was one of the first critics of with periodic changes in the ruling class. education to argue against the political power the state Godwin was born into a family of non-conformist would derive from its ability to spread its particular ministers in England. He was trained for the church, but ideology in the schools. Francisco Ferrer directed his rejected the ministry and in 1783 attempted to open a concern toward mass public schooling and its role in school. When his school did not succeed, he tried his hand producing well-trained and well-controlled workers for the at writing. In 1793 he published an Enquiry Concerning new industrial economies of the nineteenth century. Ivan Political Justice which is considered the first modern Illich represents one of the most recent critics of the anarchist attack on the concept of the state. Four years relationship between schooling and the social system. All later he published the first modern libertarian text on of these themes will take on added meaning in later educatian, the Enquirer. In 1796 he married Mary Woll- chapters because in one sense radical theories of education stonecraft whose book The Vindication of the Rights of have been attempts to produce the opposite of the very Women is still a classic treatise on women's liberation and things these critics are attacking. Radicals have searched the method by which education is used to enslave women for an educational system and a process of child rearing to men.' that will create a non-authoritarian person who will not Godwin's ideas must be understood within the frame- obediently accept the dicatates of the political and social work of the Enlightenment's faith in progress as a product system and who will demand greater personal control and of the unfolding of human reason. He feared that the1 t5w o choice. 14 most striking phenomena of his time-the rise of the translating it into social and political power. Second, modern state and the development of national systems of Godwin believed that the growth of large centralized states education to produce citizens for that state--would have would result in the promotion of values, such as a quest the effect of dogmatically controlling and stifling human for national glory, patriotism, and international economic reason. In the pamphlet he issued at the opening of his and cultural competition, which would be of little benefit school in 1783, he argued that the two main objects of to the individual: human power were government and education. The most powerful of the two was education because "government The desire to gain a more extensive territory, to must always depend upon the opinion of the governed. Let conquer or hold in awe our neighbouring states, to the most oppressed people under heaven once change their surpass them in arts or arms, is a desire founded in mode of thinking, and they are free."3 Any mode of prejudice and error. . . . Security and peace are more to be desired than a name at which nations tremble.5 government gains its legitimacy from the recognition and acceptance of people. Control of public opinion through National education would be used to support chauvinistic education means continued support. Despotism and injus- patriotism and the political and economic power of the tice can therefore continue to exist in any society in which state. the full development of human reason has been denied Godwin had other objections to national education. He within the walls of the schoolhouse. wrote, The power of national education was clearly defined in Godwin's study of government, Enquiry Concerning Polit- It is not true that our youth ought to be instructed to ical Justice. He warned that "before we put so powerful a venerate the constitution, however excellent; they machine under the direction of so ambiguous an agent, it should be led to venerate truth; and the constitution behooves us to consider well what it is that we do. only so far as it corresponds with their uninfluenced Government will not fail to employ it, to strengthen its deductions of truth.6 hands, and perpetuate its institutions." Godwin believed that the content of national education would be shaped to Godwin was convinced that a just society could only be conform to the dictates of political power. He argued that the result of all people freely exercising their reason. Since "the data upon which their conduct as statesmen is people were constantly improving their reasoning powers vindicated, will be the data upon which their instructions and their understanding of nature, their understanding of are f~unded."T~h e concern about national education was the natural laws of conduct was constantly changing. a reflection of his own suspicions about the nature of Constitutions and other political institutions which tended government. First, Godwin felt that political institutions to make laws permanent could only hinder the unfolding favored the usurpation of power by the rich and tended to of people's understanding of how life should be regulated. aggravate the differences between the rich and the poor. It was for this reason that Godwin objected to a Legislation protected the property of the rich by unfair national education which taught the laws of the land. Most laws and systems of taxation. Law was administered by the people, he argued, could understand that certain crimes government to the advantage of those with economic were injurious to the public. Those laws which stood power, and government enhanced the power of wealth by outside the realm of reason and had to be taught rather than understood were usually laws which gave advantages women. Godwin's critique was borne out by the facts: to some particular group in society. Godwin wrote, as an most government plans for education were directed at example, "It has been alleged, that 'mere reason may teach maintaining political and social order by instilling partic- me not to strike my neighbour; but will never forbid my ular conceptions of law and morality; most of them did sending a sack of wool from England, or printing the place emphasis on building national spirit and patriotism French constitution in Spain.' He maintained that "all " and were viewed as the bulwark of government. Yet most crimes, that can be supposed to be the fit objects of reformers and revolutionaries of the period supported judicial administration, are capable of being discerned national education plans because of a belief that schooling without the teaching of law." He admitted that "my own would sustain individual freedom. understanding would never have told me that the exporta- Throughout Western society the modem national state tion of wool was a crime," but, he added, "neither do I instituted citizenship training in the school. In Prussia, believe it is a crime, now that a law has been made Johann Fichte argued that the state should expend as affirming it to be such."7 In this statement Godwin was much money on education as on national defense because, expressing his own revolutionary conviction that people should not obey laws which did not conform to individual The State which introduced universally the national reason. education proposed by us, from the moment that a Godwin warned, new generation of youths had passed through it, would need no special army at all, but would have in Had the scheme of a national education been adopted them an army such as no age has yet seen.9 when despotism was most triumphant, it is not to be believed that it could have for ever stifled the voice of Fichte believed that the school would not only be an truth. But it would have been the most formidable instrument for instilling the law of the land but would and profound contrivance for that purpose, that prepare individuals to sacrifice themselves for the good of imagination can suggest. the community. In the United States the prophets of the common school Even in countries where liberty tended to prevail, he movement argued that a common school would create a argued, people should be wary of national education consensus of political and social values and effectively because of its tendency to perpetuate error. In one of the reduce political and social unrest. They exhibited an most striking expressions of the case against modem almost limitless faith that the school, regardless of its schooling, Godwin declared: "Destroy us if you please; but political control, would become a great engine for freedom do not endeavor, by a national education, to destroy in and human progress. For example, Henry Bamard, one of our understandings the discernment of justice and in- the great American common school reformers of the ju~tice."~ nineteenth century, expressed awareness of the problems Godwin, however, was unique in raising such strong caused by state control of the schools, but dismissed them objections during a time when national education was arguing that in the end education always led to freedom. considered one of the most advanced social causes. Even In poetic terms he expressed the faith of the Mary Wollstonecraft favored a national education as a nineteenth-century schoolman in the power of leaming means of eliminating the social advantages of men over once it is set loose in a society. "It would be easier," he 19 wrote in reference to the government stopping the well-schooled individual, "to return the rain to the clouds, philosophy opposed to unionization. Upton Sinclair, after from which it is falling, before it has freshened hill-top and touring the public schools in the 1920's, complained that valley, mingled with the waters of every rising spring, and they were not furthering the welfare of humanity but were reached the roots of every growing plant."' designed merely to keep the capitalists in power. One of O The faith of the nineteenth-century schoolman was the directors of a radical education program in New Jersey certainly crushed in the twentieth century with the rise of in 1925 declared that Nazi Germany. Schooling in Germany during this period exemplified all the evils Godwin had foreseen in the the public school system is a powerful instrument for the perpetuation of the present social order with all eighteenth century. Schools were used to spread a par- its injustices and inequality . . . and that, quite ticular ideology and a brand of nationalism linked to naturally, whatever is likely to disturb the existing territorial expansion and to the glorification of the arrangement is regarded unfavorably by those in country's leaders. The Nazis implemented changes in the control of the public schools. school curriculum, with compulsory training in racial biology and increased emphasis upon German history and Radicals argued that in each community, elected school literature. Five hours a day of physical education were boards were controlled by a business and professional elite. required for buildinf character and discipline and as Studies throughout the century tended to support this preparation for mili ary training. Highly propagandized conclusion.' textbook material was introduced. An order from the Whether in Nazi Germany or in the United States, Minister of Education in 1935 gave specific instructions to clearly the school by its very nature had become an begin racial instruction at the age of six years, to institution for political control. Since it was an institution emphasize the importance of race and heredity for the consciously designed to change and shape people, it was future of the German people and to awaken in the continually being sought as a weapon by different political students a pride in their membership in the German race as factions. By the twentieth century all political groups the bearer of Nordic values. The instructions stated, wanted to use the school to spread their particular "World history is to be portrayed as the history of ' ideology and mold their ideal of the modern individual. raciallydetermined peoples."' The problem for radicals was that they usually lacked the While Nazi Germany might represent an extreme power to compete for control of the schools; hence, the example of what Godwin had warned against, his criticisms schools tended to become bastions of conservatism. also proved prophetic in the case of the United States-the system of schooling that Leo Tolstoy referred to as the "least bad." Patriotic exercises in U. S. schools reached a fever pitch during the 1920's under pressure from such groups as the American Legion and the Daughters of the BY THE END of the nineteenth century it seemed that the American Revolution. Radical labor unions complained schools were also beginning to function as appendages to about their inability to get union information into the the new industrial economies. It was charged that the schools and about the schools' emphasis on an economic schools produced obedient servants of both the state and the corporation. One of the leading critics to make this 21 argument was the Spanish anarchist and educator Fran- and monotony of factory work and to conform obediently cisco Ferrer, who founded the Modern School in Barcelona to the organization of the factory. Workers needed to be in 1901. Ferrer's work gained international recognition in punctual, obedient, passive, and willing to accept their 1909 when he was accused by the Spanish government of work and position. leading an insurrection in Barcelona and was executed. His In Ferrer's mind the schools had accomplished exactly execution elicited a cry against injustice from many groups the things Godwin had warned of in the previous century. in Europe and the United States and sparked interest in his In becoming the focal points for maintaining existing career and ideas. In the United States a Ferrer Society was institutions, schools came to depend on a system and organized and a Modern School established in Stelton, method which conditioned the student for obedience and New Jersey as well as in other places. In Europe the docility. This, of course, was a charge leveled at the International League for the Rational Education of schools by a variety of critics; from Ferrer's point of view, Children, which had been founded by Ferrer, was reorgan- however, it was an inevitable result of a school controlled ized after his death with Anatole France as its Honorary by the state. "Children must be accustomed," Ferrer President. The International League attempted to continue wrote, "to obey, to believe, to think, according to the the publication of Ferrer's review, L'Ecole Renovee, and social dogmas which govern us. Hence, education cannot ' distributed information and manuals on the Modern be other than such as it is today." For Ferrer one of the School. In the United States the Ferrer Society published a central problems was to break government's power over journal called The Modern School which became a vehicle education. Reform movements that tried to work within for radical criticism of the schools. the system could accomplish nothing toward the goal of "They know, better than anyone else," Ferrer wrote in human emancipation. Those who organized the national reference to government support of schooling, "that their schools, Ferrer claimed, "have never wanted the uplift of power is based almost entirely on the school."' In the the individual; but his enslavement; and it is perfect'l y past, governments had controlled the masses by keeping useless to hope for anything from the school of to-day." them in a state of ignorance. With the rise of industrialism For Ferrer it was inconceivable that a government in the nineteenth century, governments found themselves would create a system of education which would lead to involved in an international economic competition which any radical changes in society. It was therefore unrealistic required trained industrial workers. Schools triumphed in to believe that national schooling would be a means of the nineteenth century not because of a general desire to significantly changing the conditions of the lower classes. reform society but because of economic requirements. Since it was the existing social structure which produced Ferrer wrote that governments wanted schools "not the poor, education could eliminate poverty only by because they hope for the renovation of society through freeing people to change the social structure in a radical education, but because they need individuals, workmen, direction. Writing in a bulletin of the Modern School about perfected instruments of labor to make their industrial the mixing of rich and poor in the schools of Belgium, enterprises and the capital employed in them profit- Ferrer stressed that "the instruction that is given in [the able."' Ferrer recognized that the hierarchical structure schools] is based on the supposed eternal necessity for a of capitalism required certain types of character traits in division of rich and poor, and on the principle that social ' workers. They had to be trained to accept the boredom harmony consists in the fulfilment of the laws."' What