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.