You would be forgiven for thinking the following description of a school was taken from mankind’s future, not its past:

[It] involved a shift from emphasis on instruction to emphasis on the process of learning, from teaching by rote and memorization to teaching by example and experience, from education as a preparation for life to education as life itself.  With “freedom in education” as its watchword, this tradition aimed to do away with the formality and discipline of the conventional classroom, the restrictions and regulations that suppressed individual development and divided education from play.  It cultivated physical as well as mental development, crafts and arts as well as books.  Hostile to dogma and superstition, it emphasised reason, observation, and science, as well as independence, autonomy, and self-reliance.  Anti-coercive and anti-authoritarian, it stressed the dignity and rights of the child, encouraging warmth, love and affection in place of conformity and regimentation.  Among the key words of its vocabulary were “freedom”, “spontaneity”, “creativity”, “individuality”, and “self-realization”.

“Accordingly, the true function of the teacher was to encourage self-learning, to allow each child to develop in his own way, rather than force a pre-determined program of study on him.  Nor should the teacher smother the pupils under the weight of formal instruction.  The emphasis, rather, must be on improvisation and experiment.  Rigid programmes, curricula and timetables must be banished from the classroom, and instruction given in a manner that will cause the least interference with the pupil’s freedom.  For if a child is not compelled to learn, his own curiosity will draw him to the subjects that interest him, and his education will be more natural and pleasant, more enduring and meaningful.”

The philosophy was that of Fransisco Ferrer at the dawn of the 20^th Century, realised in his Modern School, or La Escuela Moderna, in 1901, eight years before he was executed by the Spanish government.  This text is taken from the excellent book on the movement by Paul Avrich.

What strikes me is how this period coincides with the same period we were creating the opposite systems, systems of control and hierarchy, rigid programmes, curricula and timetables, pre-determined programs of study, and rolling out those systems to be nation-wide in the spirit of mass education.

Today we talk about trying to create learners that are self-starting, innovative, creative thinkers who are passionate and curious about the world, via “personalised learning” to allow the child to develop in their own way.  We are constrained and impinged because the structures and systems we have created in the 20^th Century, particularly those based around assessment and measurement of those rigid programmes, are big, unwieldy and difficult to change, backed up by political miscomprehension and media propaganda.