Free schools
Free schools
A free school (or free skool) is a decentralized network in which skills, information, and knowledge are shared without hierarchy and the institutional environment of formal schooling. Free schools promote self-reliance, critical consciousness, and personal development, helping students make living connections between themselves, their community, and the Earth. Free schools aim to give people skills not just to survive within the institutional framework imposed but to thrive without and beyond it. (Adapted from the Free Skool Santa Cruz website)
A Free School is neither a public school, nor a private school. Free Schools have their roots in the anarchist Modern Schools of Spain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A more recent revival grew out of the democratic school movement. It is, at-heart, non-institutional and non-authoritarian. Generally, it is a grassroots effort, a collection of individuals acting collectively and autonomously to create educational opportunities and skill-sharing within their communities. As with all grassroots work, free schooling is about ordinary people doing extraordinary work for the public good. It is about recruiting, training and mobilizing people to raise awareness and advocate for positive change.
Free schools often operate outside of the market economy in favor of the gift economy. Nevertheless, the meaning of the “free” of free schools is not restricted to monetary cost, and can refer to the emphasis on free speech and open learning.
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History
Free School Tradition in Anarchist Spain
Spanish anarchist Francisco Ferrer (1859-1909) established “modern” or progressive schools in Spain in defiance of an educational system controlled by the church. Fiercely anti-clerical, he believed in “freedom in education,” education free from the authority of church and state. Murray Bookchin wrote: “This period [1890s] was the heyday of libertarian schools and pedagogical projects in all areas of the country where Anarchists exercised some degree of influence. Perhaps the best-known effort in this field was Francisco Ferrer’s Modern School (Escuela Moderna), a project which exercised a considerable influence on Catalan education and on experimental techniques of teaching generally.” (Murray Bookchin, Anarchosyndicalism, The New Ferment)
Free Schools in the UK
The most famous free school is Summerhill School, a boarding school in Suffolk which was founded in 1921 by the Scottish teacher A. S. Neill, whose ideas had been radicalised through teaching in conventional schools. Despite many travails with school-oriented government inspectors, Summerhill survives to this day, although with very few pupils. The school’s website describes it thus:
“Summerhill School is a progressive, co-educational, residential school, founded by A. S. Neill in 1921; in his own words, it is a ‘free school’ though this does not mean, alas, that it is state funded. The freedom Neill was referring to was the personal freedom of the children in his charge. Summerhill is first and foremost a place where children can discover who they are and where their interests lie in the safety of a self-governing, democratic community.
“There are two features of the school which people usually single out as being particularly unusual. The first is that all lessons are optional. Teachers and classes are available at timetabled times, but the children can decide whether to attend or not. This gives them the freedom to make choices about their own lives and means that those children attending lessons are motivated to learn.”
“The second particularly unusual feature of the school is the school meeting, at which the school Laws are made or changed. These laws are the rules of the school, made by majority vote in the community meetings; pupils and staff alike having equal votes.” [1]
An institution founded on similar principles was Kilquhanity School in the Scottish Borders, founded by John Aitkenhead, which closed during the 1990s.
During the 1970s other short-lived free schools were established in the British inner cities.
Currently Active Free Schools in North America
Currently Active Free Schools in the UK
See also
Democratic Schools, Grassroots, Grassroots democracy, Community, Sharing