WEBVTT - Part Two: The Modern School & Francisco Ferrer: School Shouldn't Be Terrible 0:00:00.360 --> 0:00:02.800 Hello, and welcome to cool People did cool stuff. I'm 0:00:02.800 --> 0:00:05.680 your host, Margaret Kiljoy. The only Margaret Killjoy in the 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:09.160 world with me today is the one and only James 0:00:09.200 --> 0:00:14.480 Stout sadly not the case. Actually, what there's other? Yeah, 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:18.720 old old race horse jockey. Oh wait, I thought you 0:00:18.720 --> 0:00:21.560 wanted race. How can there be more than one race horse? 0:00:22.160 --> 0:00:26.000 James Stout? Well, I see, it's in the genes. It's 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:29.479 it's in the I raced bicycles, whereas he raised both 0:00:29.560 --> 0:00:33.159 just generally underweight dude sitting on things, going fast and 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:36.159 falling off and breaking themselves. But there are differences with 0:00:36.520 --> 0:00:38.720 the spandex. They're the silk. That's that's how you can 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:44.000 tell it. Okay, okay, although silk bike Okay anyway, Um, 0:00:44.200 --> 0:00:47.400 well I would ride bike and silk now yeah yeah, 0:00:47.440 --> 0:00:50.040 someone someone send me a cape. I'll do it. Yeah. 0:00:50.479 --> 0:00:53.600 Um look that way you get the wind resistance to 0:00:53.640 --> 0:00:57.800 help keep the whole thing more stable. Yep. And you're 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:02.400 a badass, James. How are how are you doing well? 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:06.000 I'm good and it's been ten minutes since our last episode. 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:11.200 I've been thriving throughout them. Oh excellent. Who who are you? Who? 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:14.000 That's a good question, isn't it. I am a podcaster, 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:17.520 part of the team. It could happen here. Cool zone 0:01:17.560 --> 0:01:23.959 media journalist who writes about Nazis and cops and Nazis 0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:28.240 who are cops and conflict. And I'm a historian. I 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:32.360 have PhD in the history of anti fascist physical culture, 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:37.319 which is cool. Our producer is the one and only 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:41.119 Sophie Lichtman, who was also the only Sophie Licterman. I think, so, 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:42.600 why did you check out the curse word that you 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:44.680 have in the script? I like that that's true. I'm true. 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:46.840 I'm sorry. In the script it says our producer is 0:01:46.880 --> 0:01:50.560 Sophie fucking Lictorman. And you know, I feel like I 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:55.000 really defanged you in a way I shouldn't have. She 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:57.480 had to go through a lot of ship to get 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:00.360 that added to her government name. I know, I know. 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:07.400 It's retty fine every time she entity country. Yeah, and 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:10.560 sometimes you call Sophie just Sophie instead of Sophie fucking Lectman, 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:13.800 and Sophie gets really upset, like you all just went 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:18.440 to fairy dies. Yeah, furious. Our audio editor is ian 0:02:18.760 --> 0:02:21.280 legally distinct from the entity that is currently battering the 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:24.760 west coast of Florida. And it's always funny to make 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:28.399 fun of people's names because it's something that is always original, 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:34.280 like before I think before recording I accidentally anyway, and 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:38.280 our theme music is written by a woman. Today we're 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:41.320 talking about education. That's where you take podcast hosts and 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:43.640 you say making fun of people's names isn't as funny 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:45.320 as you think, and then they learn and then they 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:47.480 don't do it again. And that's what we all need 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:50.799 in this world. Education that thing that you added. When 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:53.000 you advocate for it, you might get murdered by the 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:58.160 Spanish crown. Last week we talked to Last week we 0:02:58.200 --> 0:03:00.880 talked about Paul Robin and his orphanage and the creepily 0:03:01.040 --> 0:03:04.640 named but actually cool the Hive. And today we're going 0:03:04.720 --> 0:03:08.639 to talk about the modern school, which is kind of 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:11.320 a meaningless name. Right, Like whenever people are like modern 0:03:11.360 --> 0:03:13.880 and then people are like modern means fifty years ago, 0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:17.519 and you're like, that doesn't make any sense. I don't 0:03:17.520 --> 0:03:21.040 get it anyway. That's the context in which the modern 0:03:21.080 --> 0:03:24.799 school is modern. This is not modern anymore. I'm really 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:27.600 stretching this out. I forge if I do it long enough, 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:33.040 Sophie laugh. Okay, it worked, Um, I was telling my 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:34.800 friend that I was going to write about for Their 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:38.480 Francisco for the person we're gonna be talking about who 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:42.080 helped found the modern school, and they summed up like this, 0:03:42.880 --> 0:03:45.200 There once was a guy in Spain named Francisco for Their, 0:03:45.520 --> 0:03:47.080 and he was like, what if we teach kids in 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:49.440 a reasonable way? So the government shot him and left 0:03:49.520 --> 0:03:57.880 him in a ditch. Yeah, funk, that's Javis jay Z that. Yeah. Yeah, 0:03:58.240 --> 0:04:04.520 there's no there's or to it, but they're not fundamentally wrong. No, 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:07.520 it's pretty much see and the narrative arc that we've 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:10.400 got for you today, isn't it. Yeah, yeah, with some 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:12.480 like you know, the whole cool thing about being a 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:14.640 murdyr as your ideas live longer than you and we're 0:04:14.640 --> 0:04:16.640 all going to die one day anyway, so you know, 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:20.560 mm hmm. So let's talk about Francisco FIDN. And actually 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:22.480 I think you know some of the stuff that we're 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:24.800 gonna get into. I feel like you maybe wrote a 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:28.279 PhD about in terms of the time period and stuff, 0:04:28.279 --> 0:04:29.880 and so please feel free to well I guess you 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:32.120 do that anyway, but I'm particularly excited about anything you 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:35.080 might have to say about early nineteenth century Spain or 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:38.440 early twentieth century Spain. So Francisco FDN was born on 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:41.760 January tenth, eighteen fifty nine, on a farm outside Barcelona, 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:44.719 to devout Catholic parents. Like all of the rest of 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:47.520 the heroes this week, well, they weren't all born on 0:04:47.520 --> 0:04:49.960 a farm outside of Barcelona. They might have been that, 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:54.440 but that's not information I have. So Francisco did not 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:57.920 grow up excited about religion. At the very least. I 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:00.440 think he had um like some free finger some stuff, 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:01.960 and his family, like one of his uncles, was a 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:04.040 free thinker, and at the very least, by the time 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:06.680 he was twenty four in eighteen eighty four, he was 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:09.680 a Freemason, which is an incredibly complex topic that I'm 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:11.520 not going to talk about today, which is when you 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:13.880 say it now and people are like, oh, some weird person, 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:16.920 you know, conservative or something, but at the time meant 0:05:17.000 --> 0:05:20.240 often the opposite of that. He was a radical Republican, 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:23.120 again in the we don't like King's way, and he 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:25.440 was anti clerical, and not in that he doesn't like 0:05:25.480 --> 0:05:27.760 the D and D class cleric. I don't know his 0:05:27.800 --> 0:05:29.360 thoughts one way or the other about the dungeons and 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:32.640 dragons class cleric, but instead referring to a society that 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:36.120 is not run by monolithic church organization called the Church. 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:39.520 It's important to understand the Catholic Church in Spain during 0:05:39.600 --> 0:05:43.440 this time because it wasn't like like now, like you know, okay, 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:45.800 actually Catholicism continued continue to do a lot of ship, 0:05:46.000 --> 0:05:49.320 but you know, it's like Catholicism in nine at this 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:51.000 time period in Spain is not like just the fun 0:05:51.040 --> 0:05:53.159 religion where you drink blood and there's incense and you 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:55.000 say you're sorry for doing all the sins or whatever. 0:05:55.760 --> 0:05:58.120 The Church was a force of oppression in a country 0:05:58.200 --> 0:06:01.520 that was usually some kind of monor key, and Francisco 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:05.479 did not like what was happening there. It's my long 0:06:05.480 --> 0:06:08.640 way of yeah, I'm actually curious. I think that's pretty 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:13.159 the Spanish Church sucked to a degree that is sort 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:15.520 of hard for us to fathom. Now. I think like 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:20.280 the Spain, Spain doesn't have like a this argument that 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:22.160 gets made right. They like, Spain is not a nation. 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:25.479 People don't conceive of themselves of Spanish and Catholicism takes 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:28.719 over instead so that their identity is as Catholic and 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:31.560 that's what Franco manipulates, and it's why there's this debate 0:06:31.560 --> 0:06:33.719 about whether Franco is fascist or not right because he 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:36.880 has this whole national Catholic thing, whereas it's largely just 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:40.800 national race in other places. And so, yeah, the Spanish 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:43.480 Church are a lot of land it is. It goes 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:46.279 hand in hand with with landlords. It goes hand in 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:49.480 hand with the violent repression of working class movements, and 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:54.440 it is hated more than you can perhaps imagine, Like 0:06:54.480 --> 0:06:58.159 if you look at uh, like anti clerical violence and 0:06:58.279 --> 0:07:00.279 violence by the church at the start of the econod 0:07:00.360 --> 0:07:02.200 wor and I'm sure we'll talk about like the tragic 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:06.719 week today and you will see, like you give anyone 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:09.000 half a fucking chance and like a mag dick, and 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:14.280 they will burn the funk out of a church often. 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:18.520 Actually it's really interesting because sometimes they they object to 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:23.000 like the institution of the church and that the bad 0:07:23.000 --> 0:07:25.520 ship that it does. Sometimes you will get priests who 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:29.280 are not total pieces of ship, who are also willing 0:07:29.280 --> 0:07:33.280 to help poor people in their parish right, So sometimes 0:07:33.360 --> 0:07:37.840 they go next door and burn the church instead of 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:40.240 instead of the church nearest to their house, they burned 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:43.920 the other church. But yeah, the church, like in when 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:48.000 you in the July start of the Spanish Civil War 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:51.640 in Barcelona, like all the bell towers have snipers in them, 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:54.720 when the when the military does a coup, right, because 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:57.120 the church goes hand in hand with the people who 0:07:57.120 --> 0:08:01.040 are killing the working class in the street. Yeah, yeah, 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:04.480 not best friends, church and the people. Yeah, it's someone 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:07.120 presented it to me and as this idea that like, 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:09.560 imagine if the Christian nationalists are currently trying to take 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:12.880 over the United States had already taken over the United States, 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:15.880 you know, and obviously that's not they're not Catholics, right, 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:20.120 they often hate Catholics, but that same religious framework, that 0:08:20.240 --> 0:08:26.200 same religious cultural and perical domination, church and state go 0:08:26.360 --> 0:08:29.600 hand in hand, like yeah, and there they notice scent 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:33.840 could be tolerated. So Francisco for there, he doesn't like 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:37.280 any of this stuff. And so in his job, he's 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:40.400 a railroad conductor, which is objectively cool because trains are cool. 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:42.040 I don't know if you knew this, but trains are cool. 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:45.520 And he used that position to help exiled revolutionists, which 0:08:45.520 --> 0:08:49.120 is even cooler. There was this radical Republican guy named 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:52.000 Manuel ruiz Zodiya, who had been prime minister for a 0:08:52.000 --> 0:08:54.360 hot minute about fifteen minutes earlier, and at this point 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:56.760 was an exile in France, trying to foment revolution in 0:08:56.800 --> 0:08:58.679 Spain so that Spain could be a republican instead of 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:01.280 a monarchy, which they had later pull off for less 0:09:01.280 --> 0:09:02.960 than two years in eighteen seventies. This is not a 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:06.439 we're not gonna go two into that, but our man 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:10.600 Francisco he couriered letters to Zodia and he helps smuggle 0:09:10.600 --> 0:09:13.280 people across the border. And then in eighteen eighty six, 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:15.480 which is the cool thing to do with the train conductor, right, 0:09:15.480 --> 0:09:17.120 like I don't know, I just I like this idea 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:19.400 of being like, oh, I'm just the whatever, I'm the 0:09:19.400 --> 0:09:23.680 train guy. In six all the Republicans tried to overthrow 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:26.560 the monarchy and they failed. They had actually tried two 0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:30.800 years earlier too. There's a lot of various Uh, there's 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:33.920 a lot of revolutions that Spain tries in all kinds 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:38.800 of directions. Yeah, and so they failed pretty spectacular in 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:41.760 eighteen eighty six. So Fair and his wife and his 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:44.079 three daughters they funk off to Paris and self imposed 0:09:44.120 --> 0:09:47.840 exile because they know what's up right, And he spent 0:09:47.920 --> 0:09:50.880 sixteen years in France, and he's working unpaid for most 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:52.679 of that, for a good chunk of that for Zodia, 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:55.920 and as a secretary, and he's teaching Spanish as his 0:09:56.000 --> 0:09:58.720 day job. And he's selling wine, not as like a 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:00.800 wine merchant, but as like a wine in vendor, like 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:03.959 he's on commission. I think, okay, um, he's just doing 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:07.000 whatever the funk he can. He's working class guy. Yeah, 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:09.439 and he's involved in everything cool and lefty in Paris 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:12.080 at the time, including the free thought movement, which is, 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:17.040 you know, the freethinkers, not quite atheists and like all 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:19.600 people value In the eighteen nineties France, he was involved 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:22.640 in the Dreyfist campaign trying to stop anti Semitism in France, 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:28.160 and then Zodia died and so Francisco in Francisco is like, well, 0:10:28.240 --> 0:10:30.080 well fuck, that was like my things. I was trying 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:33.760 to help this prime minister guy. It's like Francisco Freday, 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:36.120 he's like a Bernie guy, right, He's like, I'm going 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:38.520 to fucking help Bernie if Bernie was trying to overthrow 0:10:38.520 --> 0:10:43.640 the United States America, and well, which he is. Oh yeah, 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:45.240 that's true. So we're not supposed to stay that on 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:50.160 the podcast, right, Um, okay. So so he starts hanging 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:53.240 out with the anarchists now that Bernie's dead, and he 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:56.000 starts getting really into pedagogy because he's a teacher. He's 0:10:56.040 --> 0:10:59.319 teaching Spanish for most of his money, and and he's 0:10:59.360 --> 0:11:01.280 interested in how to teach things and how to develop 0:11:01.320 --> 0:11:05.360 freethinking individuals. So soon enough he's corresponding with our guy, 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:07.760 Paul Robin, the French guy from one of the two 0:11:07.800 --> 0:11:10.160 French guys from the last time the guy ran the orphanage, 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:13.120 and he starts dreaming of how he's going to found 0:11:13.160 --> 0:11:15.880 a liberal, a libertarian school with boys and girls learning 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:19.080 in the same classes, with lessons based on science instead 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:22.760 of the blood drinking cannibal cult. And Spanish folks have 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:24.920 been trying for years to get some decent education for 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:26.400 the working class, and he's like, I'm going to be 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:28.240 part of that dream. You know, he's not the only 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:31.199 guy who's like, I'm gonna fix the educational system in Spain, 0:11:31.240 --> 0:11:34.640 but he's he's thinking about it all the time. Education 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:37.000 in Spain in the nineteenth century was sucking awful. Most 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:38.840 people couldn't read. It was like about two thirds of 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:41.560 people couldn't read. Most towns didn't have a public school. 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:43.440 Once again, about two thirds of towns didn't have a 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:47.240 public school, and most teachers were sworn to uphold Catholic dogma, 0:11:47.280 --> 0:11:50.000 and there would be like diet in this or whatever. 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:52.600 Like church people would be like walking around being like, 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:54.920 you better teach the right things, you know, because they 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:57.200 live in this like fucking weird dystopia that I didn't 0:11:57.280 --> 0:12:00.920 quite realize. Spain was such a fucking weird anyway, And 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:02.640 people are getting sick of all this ship right, and 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:05.400 they want change. And so for decades, Republicans and anarchists 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:08.600 and just not the church people had been starting schools, 0:12:08.720 --> 0:12:11.160 but they kept getting crushed by the state. And so 0:12:11.240 --> 0:12:13.079 for air, he's like, I want to give it a 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:16.920 shot to write. If only he had some money, and 0:12:16.960 --> 0:12:19.200 he got money in one of the classic ways that 0:12:19.840 --> 0:12:22.240 radicals get money. Have you heard of how he got 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:24.520 his money. I'm just curious, kind of curious, though I 0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:28.120 don't think I have. No, he's slightly before my time period, 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:31.280 Like he dies about twenty years before my stuff sted. No, 0:12:31.440 --> 0:12:34.480 that's a good point, okay, Or does he what if 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:37.960 he's in the blood drinking cult? Okay, so yeah, then 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:42.000 he comes back to life. Yeah, lady finds him. It's 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:45.160 the whole thing. Yeah, Easter eggs because of it. Yeah, yeah, 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:48.560 you're familiar. Yeah. So he's like, I need some money, 0:12:48.559 --> 0:12:52.440 and he's teaching Spanish to all of these people, including 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:54.720 a like the way that this is written in history, 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:59.520 um is and whatever. I always think there's something going 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:02.080 on beyond of the history when people are like and 0:13:02.120 --> 0:13:04.760 then this thing happened that the clearest obvious answers either 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:06.720 crime and or sex work or some sort of combination 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:09.559 of the too. Francisco for the is a Spanish teacher, 0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:11.120 and he has a student who is a rich, middle 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:17.600 aged lady and two quote historian Paul Average, she'd been 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:21.040 a woman of conventional outlook until Fredair, a persuasive teacher, 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:24.559 succeeded in converting her to his ideas, and when she died, 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:28.920 she left him half of her estate. Okay, yeah, he's 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:32.600 what the contemporary discourse we called a gold digg. Yeah. 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:34.720 I think he gold dig that money up, which is 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:40.160 a valid way to go and get a million. Yeah yeah, 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:43.880 proud of him. Yeah, so he gets his he gets 0:13:43.880 --> 0:13:46.120 his million francs and the nineteen O one he moves 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:48.240 back to Barcelona. I have literally no, I should have 0:13:48.320 --> 0:13:51.719 looked it up. I'm like Frank's to modern dollars. I 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:54.320 don't know, gets a bunch of money. Yeah, it takes 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:57.600 a long time to do those conversions I had. Yeah, 0:13:57.760 --> 0:13:59.880 I know, I always do them when I do like dollar, 0:14:00.480 --> 0:14:02.800 but when I do currencies that don't exist anymore, it's 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:06.480 really hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's yeah, it's you 0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:08.880 can sometimes find The quickest way I found was to 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:12.160 find the newspapers from that date, Like if you find 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:14.040 something in the New York Times archive and then you 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:17.240 look at the exchange rates that date, and then you 0:14:17.280 --> 0:14:21.120 go that day's dollars to today's dollars. That's how you 0:14:21.160 --> 0:14:24.720 gets give the euro. Yeah, that's how you got the PhD. 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:29.240 It was yeah, that was it. They were like that 0:14:30.600 --> 0:14:32.600 I had to give someone. Actually I didn't have to 0:14:32.600 --> 0:14:34.560 give him any money. Some money had to move around 0:14:34.600 --> 0:14:41.000 from a donor a donor to an institution that fundamentally sucks. Yeah, okay, 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:46.360 M sorry. So In he moves to Barcelona and he's 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:50.240 going to open a school, and he knows that UM 0:14:51.240 --> 0:14:54.000 wrote memorization isn't the same thing as learning. He wants 0:14:54.040 --> 0:14:56.600 to tear down the division between education and play, which 0:14:56.640 --> 0:14:58.280 is kind of some what you're talking about, like sport 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:01.760 and play, right, Yeah, And he wants to cultivate physical 0:15:01.920 --> 0:15:05.480 and mental development. He wants to foster self realization. He 0:15:05.520 --> 0:15:09.040 wants that teachers should help students discover things, not convince 0:15:09.120 --> 0:15:12.800 them of things. So he starts to school where he 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:15.000 wants a school where there's no discipline, no rewards, no 0:15:15.120 --> 0:15:18.720 yelling at kids, no arbitrary rules, no homework, no forced 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:22.640 working in silence. Uh, no teaching as competition through grades 0:15:22.640 --> 0:15:26.400 and ship. Everyone is only competing against them themselves. Right. 0:15:27.600 --> 0:15:29.880 He's flush with cash, so he starts a school of 0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:33.720 moderna the modern School. It's based on these principles. He 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:36.160 starts with thirty eight students, but by five years later 0:15:36.520 --> 0:15:38.760 it has a hundred and twenty six students. And the 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:42.560 stated purpose was to educate the working class in a rational, secular, 0:15:42.680 --> 0:15:47.800 and non coercive setting. And I've read different ideas about 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:51.240 how this worked in practice. I've read that the tuition 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:53.640 was based on the parents ability to pay, so it's 0:15:53.680 --> 0:15:56.840 like super sliding scale. But other places I've read have 0:15:56.960 --> 0:15:59.200 claimed that only the leftist middle class was able to 0:15:59.240 --> 0:16:02.720 afford to send their it's there. I don't know further 0:16:02.920 --> 0:16:06.040 in all of those explanations, there's like a clear bias. 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:07.800 This is one of the things that really annoys me about. 0:16:08.560 --> 0:16:10.400 You know, there's clear biased where they're like it was 0:16:10.440 --> 0:16:14.160 perfect in every way and everyone you know, and you're like, 0:16:14.400 --> 0:16:16.560 was it And then on the other side you have like, 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:19.400 but it was just some elitea ship and fuck them 0:16:19.400 --> 0:16:24.040 and you know whatever. Um, And both of those histories 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:25.760 I read that claimed one thing or the other seemed 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:30.320 really fucking biased. Um. Yeah, these like hag geographies, Yeah, 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:33.960 totally well fortunately, um, I would never do a hagiography. 0:16:33.960 --> 0:16:36.960 I would never name my podcast of something like cool people. 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:41.560 And I will just say completely honestly and truthfully that 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:45.520 Francisco Ferrare not only umu was it sliding scale, but 0:16:45.560 --> 0:16:47.240 it was actually sliding scale. Bout how much money he 0:16:47.280 --> 0:16:52.160 gave to the parents for sending their kids there. Um no, wait, no, 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:55.960 that makes them buying children, Okay, So students would visit 0:16:56.280 --> 0:16:58.560 um okay, and so like and like field trips were 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:00.600 a big part of all of this, like popular education 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:04.000 and like libertarian schooling, and it always gets brought up 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:05.359 in this way where I'm like, Oh, I think that 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:07.840 maybe because I grew up with field trips in public 0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:09.959 school here in the United States. Um, it's like one 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:11.800 of the only things out of all of these things 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:15.000 that I experienced, right, Um, boys and girls taught in 0:17:15.000 --> 0:17:17.359 the same classroom and field trips. But the way it 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:19.080 talks about it, I get the feeling that field trips 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:23.520 were not a big part of nineteenth century public school. No, 0:17:23.600 --> 0:17:26.280 I don't think so. I think especially like when you 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:30.720 look at uh, like the British quote unquote public school, 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:35.840 which actually meets private school. Yeah, yeah, good stuff. It's 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:39.480 I think the idea was to like sequest to young 0:17:39.520 --> 0:17:45.560 men away from the corrupting influences of the city have 0:17:45.680 --> 0:17:48.399 been in these kind of semi rural of suburban schools 0:17:48.400 --> 0:17:52.080 where they could just like practice being soldiers. Oh is 0:17:52.080 --> 0:17:53.959 that what I guess because I've always been There's been 0:17:54.000 --> 0:17:55.600 a couple of things that confused me, and one of 0:17:55.640 --> 0:17:59.280 them is the private school means public school and in Britain, yeah, 0:17:59.440 --> 0:18:02.440 it's tod stinguish it from a I think it's to 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:06.560 from a grammar school, which is actually a school that 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:08.679 is free, but you have to pass an exam to 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:14.600 get into it when I think they also perhaps no, 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:17.679 I'm trying to remember, so, like some schools had like 0:18:17.760 --> 0:18:20.400 classical and modern curriculums, but I think that was within 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:25.760 public schools. Wait in public school means private Wait, public 0:18:25.760 --> 0:18:28.800 school is a is a specific class of private schools, 0:18:28.840 --> 0:18:36.400 a special kind of elite class of private boarding schools. Yeah. Yeah, 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:38.520 we are a country which has really made it as 0:18:38.520 --> 0:18:42.359 hard as possible to understand our ship. Yeah, it's the 0:18:42.480 --> 0:18:48.040 boarding schools. Like they're they're a kind of wide variety 0:18:48.200 --> 0:18:50.199 of them, or it's not a wide variety of them. 0:18:50.200 --> 0:18:52.760 They're pretty pretty consistently for wealthy people, right, But like 0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:55.280 eaton is the one that, like if you're thinking of one, 0:18:55.359 --> 0:18:58.120 like when all our fucking primate or a decent chunk 0:18:58.160 --> 0:19:00.000 of our prime ministers all went to the same school, 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:02.639 she's weird. And some people would think that is a problem, 0:19:02.760 --> 0:19:07.399 but not Britain, because we love class and that is 0:19:07.440 --> 0:19:09.879 that eaten? Is that like a thing that is eaten? 0:19:10.119 --> 0:19:13.680 Yet that's where the royal family go, It's where fucking 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:17.800 prime ministers go. Yeah. Yeah, and not a problematic system 0:19:17.800 --> 0:19:20.160 at all. It's a great one. It doesn't reward privilege. 0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:24.840 It's fine. Yeah, they do have a form of folk 0:19:24.840 --> 0:19:27.159 football that they play there, But I would argue that 0:19:27.200 --> 0:19:31.880 you have removed the folk element from anything more than 0:19:31.920 --> 0:19:34.480 most people earn in a year to go there. Yeah, 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:37.040 I mean there's the like, you know, the richer free 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:39.359 kind of thing. You know, you're like, oh, yeah, you 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:41.840 get to do all this, Like like there's a lot 0:19:41.880 --> 0:19:44.520 of a lot of the stuff that I'm reading about 0:19:44.520 --> 0:19:46.720 about the educational system. There's a lot of private schools 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:49.280 in the US that do this kind of thing, right, 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:52.160 and that rules, and I'm glad for that, but I'm like, 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:56.880 I'm bummed that it's not in the public schools, you know, yeah, yeah, 0:19:56.920 --> 0:19:58.600 it seems to be. I know, when I was like 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:01.120 applying for teaching jobs, this was a sort of ship. 0:20:01.200 --> 0:20:03.280 I really wanted to do them very I left the 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:08.040 outdoors and obviously like exercising and ship. And then you 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:09.920 look at these schools and you're like, it's not the 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:12.840 kind of thing I want to do, though, because you know, 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:16.280 we cost so much money, and like you're only getting 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:19.040 one the people who benefit from perhaps not the people 0:20:19.040 --> 0:20:22.000 who would benefit from most. And it's not a reasonable 0:20:22.000 --> 0:20:26.040 pross section of society. Yeah, it's a shame. I think 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:28.560 some of them still exist in Barcelona, writes some of 0:20:28.560 --> 0:20:31.480 these more modernist schools. I think. So I'm going to 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:33.200 talk a little bit at the end about what I've 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:37.240 learned about what still exists. Um, it's like weird versions 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:41.600 of different things. But but yeah, so we're not there. Yeah. 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:44.440 So at the modern school, kids get field trips, this 0:20:44.600 --> 0:20:47.080 wild crazy idea where they're like, what if we learned 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:49.200 things by going to the places where those things are done? 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:51.080 And so they'll they'll go to like and this is 0:20:51.080 --> 0:20:55.280 such a like workers like nineteenth century or twenties century 0:20:55.320 --> 0:20:59.440 Spain thing. It's like they visit factories and also laboratories 0:20:59.480 --> 0:21:01.439 and museum m and nature and all of that. But 0:21:01.480 --> 0:21:03.200 I just love that they like to go visit factories 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:08.679 and shipp too. Yeah, and parents were invited to to 0:21:08.800 --> 0:21:11.679 come to lectures at the school because basically, like at 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:14.840 night and at the in the evenings, parents could come 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:16.879 and learn about things. And one of the things that 0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:20.679 they could learn about is the products and services that 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:25.240 support this podcast. Really yeah, they there was like a 0:21:25.280 --> 0:21:29.280