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.