• DOI:10.2307/368893
• Corpus ID: 147119437

The Escuela Moderna Movement of Francisco Ferrer: “Por la Verdad y la Justicia”

@article{Fidler1985TheEM,
  title={The Escuela Moderna Movement of Francisco Ferrer: “Por la Verdad y la Justicia”},
  author={Geoffrey C. Fidler},
  journal={History of Education Quarterly},
  year={1985},
  volume={25},
  pages={103 - 132}
}

• Geoffrey C. Fidler
• Published 21 January 1985
• Art
• History of Education Quarterly

Ferrer's modern school movement has recently been brought to the attention of English-speaking educational historians in the scholarly work of Paul Avrich on American Anarchism and (in a somewhat more popular vein) in the writings of Joel Spring. However, apart from a considerable range of contemporary and near-contemporary biographical accounts, the majority of which are either uncritically sympathetic or overtly hostile, there still exists no “definitive” and scholarly biography of the martyred Spanish libertarian or “philosophic Anarchist,” Francisco Ferrer y Guardia. Several good critical studies dealing both with Ferrer and Ferrer's Spain have now thrown new light on certain aspects of Ferrer's work and influence, notably the Escuela Moderna of Barcelona and its significant antecedents in turn-of-the-century Spain; the activities of Ferrer's International League for the Rational Education of Children during 1908–9; and the Ferrer-inspired schools and colonies in the United States, especially those at New York and Stelton. It is questionable whether any complete synthesis or comprehensive analysis of the Modern School movement and of Ferrer's career could ever be accomplished. There are considerable lacunae in the scattered sources directly pertinent to the activities of the Modern Schools, which were established in places as diverse as Milan, São Paulo, Liverpool and New York; moreover, the Anarchist, libertarian or Socialist groups and personalities in various ways identified with them in many cases remain obscure.