Sep 15, 2026 · 53 min · 12 segments
Historian Mark Bray joins the podcast to discuss Spanish anarchist and educator Francisco Ferrer, the Modern School that he helped start in Barcelona in the early 1900s, and the way Ferrer's work…
Mark BrayGuestEliHostPodcast Co-HostHostThanks.
Thanks.
Yeah.
Can you say a bit more of that? Like how did this, this rationalist and scientific education differ from the kinds of education in conventional schools at the time, like both the lay and religious varieties? And also, yeah, just like thinking about the details of how the modern school operated, like it had a kind of co-education across the sexes and across social classes.
They emphasized the importance of hygiene.
They rejected rewards and punishments, exams and grades.
Can you talk about what that looked like more concretely? and practice and how the sort of pedagogical principles of rationalist education related with those pedagogical practices and also thinking organizationally, how is the school organized and were the pedagogical principles aligned with the school's organization or is there some tension there?
I feel like a real Debbie Downer when I talk about this subject, particularly to left wing audiences.
The way that Ferrer and his school have been written about, particularly in English language work, which prior to the publication of our book, Anarchist Education in the Modern School, was usually really very vague and basically took Ferrer's words at face value.
You dig into it more, and it was much more of a traditional school than I think people would like it to have been.
But I think it's important to be accurate and to understand what the actual history was.
A lot of what people have understood about the modern school was based on Ferrer's own book.
It was published after his death, but he wrote it several years after the school shut down.
He emphasizes all of these values, which eventually he came to and eventually the school came to.
Not only did it have grades, it published the grades in the school newspaper for everyone who picked up a copy to see, along with commentary on the behavior of the children.
which children couldn't keep their hands to themselves, which children couldn't pay attention.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Yeah.
Can you say a bit more of that? Like how did this, this rationalist and scientific education differ from the kinds of education in conventional schools at the time, like both the lay and religious varieties? And also, yeah, just like thinking about the details of how the modern school operated, like it had a kind of co-education across the sexes and across social classes.
They emphasized the importance of hygiene.
They rejected rewards and punishments, exams and grades.
Can you talk about what that looked like more concretely? and practice and how the sort of pedagogical principles of rationalist education related with those pedagogical practices and also thinking organizationally, how is the school organized and were the pedagogical principles aligned with the school's organization or is there some tension there?
I feel like a real Debbie Downer when I talk about this subject, particularly to left wing audiences.
The way that Ferrer and his school have been written about, particularly in English language work, which prior to the publication of our book, Anarchist Education in the Modern School, was usually really very vague and basically took Ferrer's words at face value.
You dig into it more, and it was much more of a traditional school than I think people would like it to have been.
But I think it's important to be accurate and to understand what the actual history was.
A lot of what people have understood about the modern school was based on Ferrer's own book.
It was published after his death, but he wrote it several years after the school shut down.
He emphasizes all of these values, which eventually he came to and eventually the school came to.
Not only did it have grades, it published the grades in the school newspaper for everyone who picked up a copy to see, along with commentary on the behavior of the children.
which children couldn't keep their hands to themselves, which children couldn't pay attention.
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