Politics and Culture in Anarchist Education: The Modern School of New York and Stelton, 1911–1915

ABSTRACT

The Modern School of New York and Stelton was the first anarchist working- class alternative school for children in the United States. The school was influenced by Leo Tolstoy's school at Yasnaya Polyana in Russia and Francisco Ferrer's Escuela Moderna in Barcelona. The Escuela Moderna served as the model for a pedagogy committed to the direct teaching of revolutionary politics while Tolstoy's school at Yasnaya Polyana served as the model for a pedagogy committed to a rebel culture that fostered individual creativity and imagination. Historically it had been difficult to reconcile these two strands of radical education. A history of the New York years of the Modern School (1911–1915) offers an understanding of the interaction between a pedagogy concerned with rebel culture and a pedagogy committed to revolutionary politics. This interaction was positive when the libertarian classroom experiences emphasizing freedom, creativity and imagination were given political direction by the adult movement housed in the same building. The adult center provided the possibility for interchange between movement speakers, artists and organizers like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman and the daily play of the children. However, when the political activities of the adult movement adversely affected the children's school and forced the school to move to the country a growing separation developed between movement politics and the children's activities. This separation was exacerbated by the shifting political and historical climate of the times forcing the separation of rebel culture from revolutionary politics. By 1920 rebel culture emerged as the dominant pedagogical model. The Modern School became more like the other experimental schools that flourished during the Progressive Era and revolutionary politics would only surface periodically in the next thirty years of the school's existence at Stelton, New Jersey.