WEBVTT - Part One: The Modern School & Francisco Ferrer: School Shouldn't Be Terrible 0:00:00.440 --> 0:00:02.880 Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, the 0:00:02.960 --> 0:00:05.520 podcast that does what it says and the inside all. 0:00:06.120 --> 0:00:08.320 I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and every week I tell 0:00:08.320 --> 0:00:12.720 you about rebels and revolutionaries and school teachers. This week 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:17.119 it's school teachers. Actually it's all three rebels, revolutionaries and 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:20.560 school teachers. But anyway, our guest today is James Stout. 0:00:20.640 --> 0:00:23.160 How are you doing, James? I'm doing very well. Thank you. 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:25.840 I'm very excited to learn about someone who is all 0:00:25.880 --> 0:00:32.000 those three things. James. Have you ever been in a school? Yes, yeah, 0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:35.559 I have multiple times. Actually, how did how did that 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:39.760 go for you? Well? Mixed experiences. To be honest, I've 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:43.639 found it difficult both in their teaching and learning role, 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:46.600 a lot of a lot of discipline. What would you 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:49.120 say that you're a teacher? Sometimes? Yeah? I can. I 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:52.440 can sometimes be a teacher. That's a thing I can be. Okay, Okay, 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:55.880 just just taking notes, okay. And our producer is Sophie. 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:58.360 How are you doing today, Sophie? I'm doing well. Margaret, 0:00:58.440 --> 0:01:02.040 thank you for asking. How are you? I'm doing okay. 0:01:02.280 --> 0:01:06.679 I I'm completely wired on caffeine because I'm drinking a 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:09.600 sparkling water that has a tiny amount of black tea 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:13.880 in it, And are you drinking carbonation while podcasting? Oh fuck, 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:16.960 you've told me that I'm not supposed to do this. Okay, 0:01:17.000 --> 0:01:20.680 but anyway, I basically don't drink caffeine, so this is 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:25.400 gonna be extra fun. I'm personally very excited about it. 0:01:28.040 --> 0:01:30.880 Ian edits our audio and on women wrote the theme music. 0:01:31.560 --> 0:01:33.520 So okay, there's this movie that I think rules and 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:35.280 is not the subject of what we're talking about. Is 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:38.400 also not Night Riders. It's called The Trotsky. Have you 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:43.759 ever seen The Trotsky? Either of you? Trotsky? Does it? 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:47.120 Does it have any ice pick scenes? Know? What it is? Is? 0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:49.400 It's It's from two tho nine. It's Canadian. It's about 0:01:49.400 --> 0:01:52.920 a rich kid who thinks he's the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky. Amazing. 0:01:53.160 --> 0:01:55.480 He pisces off his dad by organizing his workers, so 0:01:55.520 --> 0:01:57.880 his dad sends him to public school as like punishment, 0:01:58.240 --> 0:02:00.920 and so he starts organizing the students. And the point 0:02:00.920 --> 0:02:03.280 of me telling you about this movie that I quite like, 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:06.200 there's a part at the end where, um, some wild 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:08.480 shifts happening and a character is forced to make a 0:02:08.520 --> 0:02:11.120 speech to rile up the students and His speech is 0:02:11.160 --> 0:02:15.800 really simple. He's like school sucks. Right. People are like, yeah, 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:19.240 I'm paraphrasing, but you know whatever, He's like, should it should? 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:24.960 Should school fucking suck? No? And okay, that's a really 0:02:25.000 --> 0:02:27.080 simple part of a movie, right. But I think about 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:32.919 this all the time, like school shouldn't suck? Yeah, yeah, 0:02:33.240 --> 0:02:39.480 there's When I was a kid, I hated school. I 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:42.440 dreaded school. I developed an anxiety disorder in order to 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:44.480 make myself actually sick in order to not go to 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:47.880 school whenever possible. But kids needn't need in education, and 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:50.800 parents need childcare, and school should exist. They just need 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:53.960 to be really different. So there have been tons of 0:02:54.000 --> 0:02:56.320 people throughout time who have worked on that, and there 0:02:56.320 --> 0:02:59.799 have been experiments that have lasted generations, some continue to 0:02:59.840 --> 0:03:02.760 the day. But today I'm going to talk about some 0:03:02.800 --> 0:03:06.200 of my favorite I'm watching James get excitedly be talking 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:09.840 about He's gonna be great. I'm gonna talk about some 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:14.119 of my favorite such experiments, including the modern school, popular education, 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:16.799 and the ideas of a Spanish anarchist whose name is 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:20.480 Francisco Ferdair. But I'm gonna accidentally call him for our 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:22.359 over and over again because there's a bunch of people 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:24.919 in my family named for our and so every time 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:29.480 I see this, I think for our, but for their Anyway, 0:03:29.520 --> 0:03:32.800 that's not the important part. Francisco over threw assumptions about 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:36.920 popular education, and his ideas got him murdered by the 0:03:36.920 --> 0:03:40.120 Spanish state. But his ideas outlasted him, like all of 0:03:40.200 --> 0:03:45.400 the best ideas do. So. But before I talk about him, 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:48.520 we're gonna talk about nineteenth century education and some of 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:52.200 Francisco's precursors, who I like, maybe just as much, some 0:03:52.280 --> 0:03:55.280 of them, I maybe even like more. Um, how you 0:03:55.400 --> 0:03:58.440 how how much of I'm I'm curious because maybe people 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:00.240 know that I don't always tell the guests that they're 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:01.720 going to be on about, and I did not tell 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:04.040 James what we're gonna be talking about. Is this a 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:09.040 you heard all these folks? Yeah? Yeah, First of all, 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:12.160 this has complete surprise to me. It's a nice surprise. Um, 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:16.560 it's like Christmas without all the problematic baggage. Yeah, so 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:20.919 I have. I am. I wrote a decent amount about 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:26.039 like the chapter in my dissertation about how how the 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:28.440 Popular Front you want to call it the Popular Front right, 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:31.839 like how anti fascist organizing tried to reimagine education in 0:04:31.880 --> 0:04:37.159 an anti fascist way, and how anarchists sports groups specifically 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:40.800 tried to build physical education into education because they were 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:44.080 really bummed that working class kids kept dying of tuberculosis 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:47.760 or like engaging in child labor and then coming out 0:04:47.800 --> 0:04:50.840 like people can't see me because this is an audio medium, 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:55.320 but they come out like stunted or otherwise physically disabled, 0:04:55.560 --> 0:04:59.000 um from working in factories from a young age or drowning, 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:03.839 big big thing with teaching working class kids to swim, 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:08.159 So I'm familiar with that. And then do the history 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:13.760 of like anti fascist sports, so British nineteenth century education 0:05:13.800 --> 0:05:19.919 and ideas of like muscular Christianity and like using education 0:05:20.040 --> 0:05:23.360 to create young officers for the empire, using sport within 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:26.360 the education to like do violence but stick to the 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:28.400 rules and do as you're told. Like that that's why 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:30.640 sport exists and where we took play and made it 0:05:30.640 --> 0:05:34.239 into sport. If there's a different things, right, support has rules, 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:38.120 play doesn't. And so I'm very familiar with the discourse 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:42.839 on like Robert Arnold and the Rugby school and muscular Christianity. 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:45.760 But I'm excited about this. Awesome, Yeah, no, this is good. 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:48.600 You have. I was thinking, I was excited to have 0:05:48.680 --> 0:05:52.120 you as the guest for this one. So we're gonna 0:05:52.160 --> 0:05:53.600 lay our scene. Okay, wait, no, no no not. I keep 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:56.920 thinking about the players sport thing. Um, did you grow 0:05:56.960 --> 0:06:00.240 up in in Calvin and Habbs No, okay, don't know. 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:02.280 It's an American thing. There's this thing called Calvin Ball 0:06:02.360 --> 0:06:06.240 that they play. Okay, and Calvin plays Calvin Ball and 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:08.680 it Calvin Ball has rules. The rules change whenever you 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:11.880 want them to constantly, um, and it is just the 0:06:11.920 --> 0:06:14.000 most fun game. You just go out and with the 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:16.599 ball and your friends and you make up new rules 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:20.400 as you go. And everyone's like, no, but that's a touchdown, 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:23.080 Like no, it's a I don't know I know about sports, 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:28.560 Steven fake this right now and touchdown. Yeah yeah, okay, 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:32.160 it's just I mean one of our friend Daniel, a 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:35.440 mutual friend, Daniel like went to Italy recently and discovered 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:39.200 some of these folk football traditions, which it's funny like 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:42.000 every couple of years they'll pop up on Twitter and 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:44.720 they'll be like, look at this crazy historical ship where 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:48.400 people like play this ancient form of a game and 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:53.080 like football, right, like what you guys call soccer, we 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:56.719 what we used to call soccer, right actually, because yeah, 0:06:56.760 --> 0:07:00.960 it's a contraction of association football. So a sock is 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:05.640 a contraction of association Yeah, idea about this, yes, because 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:09.920 it's it's it's football with rules as opposed to ship 0:07:10.520 --> 0:07:13.000 folk football where that you can find all these were 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:15.320 like two villages would have a competition, right, and they'd 0:07:15.320 --> 0:07:18.320 have inflated pigs bladder and it's like you get the 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:21.240 pigs bladder into the opposing village, you score a point 0:07:21.360 --> 0:07:23.600 or you win the game, and like you know, stabbing 0:07:23.680 --> 0:07:28.680 is frowned upon, Like you know, it's really not completely 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:31.840 like gentlemanly to use like both narrows or ranged weapons. 0:07:31.880 --> 0:07:34.520 But I know that you fucking send it, like you 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:36.360 get the balload, pick it up, you can get you 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:38.800 do what you need to do, like and that these 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:41.840 are the like these are the play routes which long 0:07:42.080 --> 0:07:46.560 predate sport, right, But there British imperialism takes that and 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:48.280 it's like, no, we need to make young men to 0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:50.200 beata rules so they can go to other countries and 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:54.360 do colonialism. And from there we get sports and we 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:56.960 get the rules, and we get this French aristocratic called 0:07:56.960 --> 0:07:59.840 Pierre the Kubita who codifies a lot of these things 0:07:59.840 --> 0:08:04.720 in Olympics, and okay, and then we continue to use 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:07.960 that to reinforce like fascism right like we're doing right 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:10.200 now in Italy and we did in ninety six. And 0:08:10.320 --> 0:08:13.400 it's great. There's no problems with it. Yeah, No, everything 0:08:13.480 --> 0:08:15.840 is going great. That is what people say about the 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:20.600 world right now. Um, nice and toasty the world right 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:23.800 now and getting toastier where it is cozy is what 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:26.960 everyone wants. Um. Yeah, anyone who's listening, if you listen 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:30.120 to my Spanish Civil War episode with Jimmy Loftus, all 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:32.760 of the stuff about the anti fascist Olympics came from 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:37.880 James James's dissertation that they sent me before, um, while 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:40.120 I was working on that episode. So all this stuff 0:08:40.160 --> 0:08:41.439 is going to come up a lot, and I'm really 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:43.160 excited about But I didn't know any of that ship. 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:45.520 But like this concept of like play and things like 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:49.679 that is relate to education, and so we're gonna lay 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:52.040 our scene in nineteenth century France where a lot of 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:54.040 it's going to start, even though it's a story about 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:56.880 twentieth century Spain. Later, but you know, whatever, in the 0:08:56.960 --> 0:08:59.760 late nineteenth century education of France was in turmoil. On 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:02.079 one hand, you had the Catholics. They wanted to teach 0:09:02.160 --> 0:09:05.480 without state interference. On the other hand, you had the liberals. 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:08.400 Basically they the secularists, and they wanted to teach without 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:12.959 church interference, but they wanted very much state interference, right, 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:15.000 And then you have the people who were like, well, 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:18.560 what if we teach without state interference and without church interference. 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:23.360 And you have this idea of popular education, which means 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:26.560 education of the people, not like people like it, or 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:30.439 pop education and popular as a million meanings, and basically 0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:32.760 popular education was like, hey, what if the working class 0:09:32.760 --> 0:09:37.080 got to be educated too? And in Nordic countries you 0:09:37.120 --> 0:09:40.280 get this thing called folk high school. It's really interesting 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:41.839 to me that, um, what you're talking about about, like 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:46.320 folk football and stuff like I hate The only reason 0:09:46.360 --> 0:09:48.400 I'm ad at the Nazis is that they took the 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:51.839 term folk and made it a bad thing. Well, I 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:53.520 guess I have these have to be mad at the 0:09:53.559 --> 0:09:57.160 Nazis for more than that. If I'm mad about them 0:09:57.160 --> 0:10:00.240 taking the word in the first place, it done to 0:10:00.280 --> 0:10:02.040 my other unfortunate stuff you have. But that's one of 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:04.920 the bad things yeah, totally. Actually they're responsible for why 0:10:04.960 --> 0:10:07.360 airship travel is not popular, but that is a story 0:10:07.400 --> 0:10:10.040 for another time. Yeah, they've pready let it down. Um 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:15.040 so all right, it was about okay, so you have 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:17.319 full high schools. They start in Denmark, and except the 0:10:17.360 --> 0:10:20.079 airship chaining is true, but they started Denmark in the 0:10:20.120 --> 0:10:22.760 eighteen forties, not the airships, the full high schools, and 0:10:23.360 --> 0:10:25.480 the and full high schools were different everywhere. They actually 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:27.840 still exist there. But the idea is basically like fuck 0:10:27.920 --> 0:10:30.840 degrees fun, only rich people learning ship, Let's just teach kids. 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:34.920 And especially at first, this meant like teach kids about 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:38.600 democracy and ship like that in a boarding school environment. Um. 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:42.000 And it's kind of interesting because I feel like it's 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:44.000 not reversed now, but it's a little bit different now. 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:46.280 In the nineteenth century, at least in at least in 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:49.480 the European context or the Western context or whatever, people 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:52.120 who were obsessed with book learning and formal education were 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:54.599 the more of the conservatives and progressive types at the 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:57.440 time thought books were swell, but they cared about hands 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:00.360 on instruction and they cared about integrating words. And it 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:02.400 was this thing that we'll talk to about more called 0:11:02.440 --> 0:11:06.120 integrated education, um, where the body and the mind are 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:10.520 not so fucking separate. Meanwhile, in Western countries you get 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:15.679 leftists and Marxists and anarchists, um, especially the anarcho syndicalists, 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:18.080 and they're all talking about how to teach the working class. 0:11:18.280 --> 0:11:23.079 And the Republicans again um, not the Republican Party, but 0:11:23.240 --> 0:11:26.400 people who are like, let's not have kings anymore. They 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:29.600 were on this too. And the third Republican France, which 0:11:29.640 --> 0:11:32.240 gets touched on in the Paris Commune episode, gets called 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:35.520 the Republic of Teachers France. In particular, one of the 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:37.920 main goals of the popular education movement was actually to 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:40.160 teach people to not be anti Semites anymore. I didn't 0:11:40.200 --> 0:11:42.600 realize this, but the the drey Fist affair, which we'll 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:44.760 get to a little bit later in this basically they 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:48.320 were like, oh, we should probably teach people about there's 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:50.320 like other people in the world and that other people 0:11:50.360 --> 0:11:55.560 are people, and uh you know, um, so yeah, one 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:59.400 of the goals of it. And in this environment we 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:03.679 get our our first named hero for today. You get 0:12:03.720 --> 0:12:06.760 Paul Robin. Have you ever heard of Paul Robin? I 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:10.319 think I have no. Well, Paul Robin is a Frenchman, 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:12.959 despite his name not sounding French at all to me. 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:16.000 But what do I know. He was from the middle 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:19.280 class and he wound up being at least called by 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:22.120 some historians or the storian that I read anyway, specifically 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:25.640 about this quote the greatest socialist educator of the nineteenth century. 0:12:26.600 --> 0:12:30.800 And yeah, I don't know. I after reading this, I 0:12:31.040 --> 0:12:33.400 I have no particular doubts that he might have been 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:36.920 the greatest socialist educator of the nineteenth century. He was 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:40.600 born in eighteen thirty seven in Toulon, Mediterranean city in France. 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:44.520 His family was devoutly Catholic in military and he went 0:12:44.559 --> 0:12:46.559 off to school. And once he went up to school, 0:12:46.600 --> 0:12:48.800 he was like, actually, I don't know about this stuff 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:50.640 I was raised with. I'm gonna become a free thinker. 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.400 Um specifically, he became something known as a positivist, which 0:12:54.440 --> 0:12:57.079 I never run across before. You know, this positivism thing. 0:12:58.000 --> 0:12:59.560 I might have vaguely head of it, but it doesn't 0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:02.720 ring any like, I can't have a care and concept 0:13:02.760 --> 0:13:05.440 of what that means. Yeah, totally. And you know there's 0:13:05.440 --> 0:13:07.760 always like, you know, one day someone's going to look 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:09.480 back and be like and then they were you know, 0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:11.800 they'll look at all the weird demarcations we have about 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:14.000 ourselves in the early twenty one century and be like, huh, 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:16.920 they were on some weird ship. Um, yes, I think 0:13:16.960 --> 0:13:21.440 they will access to the Twitter arc I've will make 0:13:21.480 --> 0:13:27.080 it very clear that we're on some weird ship. And yeah, sorry, 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:29.839 sometimes I think about that. They think about like if 0:13:29.880 --> 0:13:32.920 I was doing my dissertation but they had Twitter, like 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:37.120 I would just be like fuck, like, like what to 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:39.600 do with all this? You know, like when they look 0:13:39.679 --> 0:13:41.800 back at our history, and especially the history of the left, 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:46.920 maybe they'll be like as I don't know, maybe as 0:13:46.960 --> 0:13:48.599 bamboo still as I am when I look at the 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:51.199 left in seven in Spain when they keep shooting each 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:53.839 other and I'm like why, Yeah, it'll be like and 0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:55.959 then the cat Boys got into a fight with the 0:13:56.000 --> 0:14:00.120 Primitivest and You're like, what I thought they were all 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:03.720 on the same side. I don't get it. Bedroom discourse 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:08.240 completely at bed time discourse divided the left and yeah, yeah, 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:09.959 what a good future we have to look for. No, 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:11.679 it's all gonna We're gonna learn from the lessons of 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:13.880 the past. That's why we have shows like mine and 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:16.120 shows like yours. I didn't actually introduce that you also 0:14:16.200 --> 0:14:18.439 have a podcast. You have a podcast? What is your podcast? 0:14:18.559 --> 0:14:21.280 I do do it Could Happen Here, which is a 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:23.680 podcast where we talk about things that could happen here 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:27.720 or have already happened, or already increasingly things that are 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:34.360 already happening, which is quite disturbing to listen. Drinking disturbed. Yeah, 0:14:34.440 --> 0:14:38.880 so if maybe you maybe you should listen. Yeah, that's 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:41.640 the list. Yeah, but I put that on the schedule 0:14:42.280 --> 0:14:45.480 and you don't have yeah, so if he doesn't have 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:49.200 much to do, so it's good to day with podcasts. 0:14:49.400 --> 0:14:52.640 I need more podcasts in my life immediately. I've been 0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:55.280 not listening as many podcasts because I haven't been I'm 0:14:55.320 --> 0:14:58.720 on book tour and I haven't been um working around 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:02.560 the house like cleaning and making stuff and like painting 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:05.960 the wall or whatever it is wanting. Anyway, whatever, you 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:09.200 listen to podcast, dear listener, I appreciate that you listen 0:15:09.280 --> 0:15:13.040 to it. Okay, positivism and okay, so free finkers. First 0:15:13.080 --> 0:15:15.800 of all, free thinkers are basically like kind of like 0:15:15.880 --> 0:15:18.000 early atheists. I mean, obviously there's people didn't believe in 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:20.320 God going back whenever, right, But free thinking was basically 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:22.560 like it's a little bit less like we are atheists, 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:24.280 and it's a little bit different than like we are 0:15:24.360 --> 0:15:26.920 agnostic and we kind of don't know. Freethinking was like, 0:15:27.320 --> 0:15:29.200 we believe that people should be able to think about 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:33.000 the ship themselves without like just following church doctrine um. 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:34.840 And a lot of them ended up atheistic, and a 0:15:34.920 --> 0:15:38.360 lot of them ended up essentially heretical. As far as 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:41.840 I can tell, I don't know. UM. Positivism is a 0:15:41.880 --> 0:15:44.960 philosophy that holds basically, shit is either true or it isn't. 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:47.400 Science is the way that you find out if something 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:49.680 is true or not true. It's kind of just an 0:15:49.680 --> 0:15:53.240 anti superstition sort of thing if you can't prove that 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:57.600 something is true rejected. I'm not a positivist, but in 0:15:57.680 --> 0:15:59.840 a world ruled by the church, this sort of makes 0:16:00.200 --> 0:16:04.160 to me is a decent step of rejection. So our 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:06.720 guy Paul Robin, he's really into Darwin and he's really 0:16:06.840 --> 0:16:09.280 into not the church. He's like just not into the 0:16:09.320 --> 0:16:12.960 church at all. And he also gets into socialism. But interestingly, 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:15.360 it was this positivism that drew him to the radical 0:16:15.440 --> 0:16:18.120 left of the left, towards the anarchists or as they 0:16:18.120 --> 0:16:20.320 saw him, solve themselves at the time, like the Prude 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:22.120 hoist because he's in France at the time and there's 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:27.680 this whatever anyway, Um, because Marks my, your abenitycher to 0:16:27.800 --> 0:16:31.560 do that. That could have been an hour of podcasting 0:16:31.720 --> 0:16:33.880 right there. Yeah yeah no I um yeah no I 0:16:34.000 --> 0:16:36.640 I life is short yet if you want to hear 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:38.720 more about Prude on this of the Paris Commune episode. 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:41.560 So Marks and all the other socialists, they were not 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:43.760 all the other many of the other socialists, they're into 0:16:43.800 --> 0:16:46.840 political parties and political action, like action that happens to 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:48.640 the state, is what I mean by political action is 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:52.200 compared to direct action. Uh. But he was into direct action, 0:16:52.280 --> 0:16:55.120 and as he saw it, political action was kind of ephemeral. 0:16:55.560 --> 0:17:00.360 It was kind of superstitious because the state's not real. Yeah, 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:07.240 and so fun femeral things based yeah yeah, yeah. He 0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:11.840 scienced his way into being an at that's amazing. Yeah, 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:16.840 these rational scientific anarchism. Yeah. Uh. And he gets really 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:19.480 excited about teaching, so when he finishes school, he becomes 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:21.760 a teacher. Except they don't really let him do his 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:23.440 thing in France at the time. They can't they won't 0:17:23.480 --> 0:17:25.560 let him teach how he wants to teach, and because 0:17:25.600 --> 0:17:27.959 he wants to teach in a way that isn't academic, 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:31.840 because academia is not very positivist by this conception, because 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:35.920 it's this like ephemeral ivory tower. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:39.639 can identify strongly here, I mean joining this. Yeah, he 0:17:39.760 --> 0:17:41.480 wants to teach it a way that is practical and 0:17:41.640 --> 0:17:43.359 useful to his students, in a way that would be 0:17:43.440 --> 0:17:46.080 useful to the worker rather than to the state. Right, 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:48.919 And he's um, yeah, he's kind of into this idea 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:51.280 that the a lot of these people will be talking 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:53.800 about here, into this idea that school kind of like 0:17:53.880 --> 0:17:57.040 you're saying about how sport is training people to be soldiers. 0:17:57.440 --> 0:17:59.920 School is teaching people to be bureaucrats, is teaching people 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:02.800 to be like, you know, I would say workers, but 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:04.760 I mean like the working classesn't even go into school 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:08.520 most of this time. Yeah, very explicitly so right at 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:12.000 the end of the like a nineteenth century, certainly by 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:14.800 the nineteenth century, like it's teaching them to be citizens 0:18:14.840 --> 0:18:18.680 in a nation like Um, I'm sure you're familiar with 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:22.200 peasants into frenchmen, like the idea, Okay, I can get 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:24.600 this idea though. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a book, but 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:26.800 it's the idea that you take all these distinct regional 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:30.000 identities and then through like one of the things education 0:18:30.119 --> 0:18:32.720 are the ones like roads, trains, military service. You take 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:36.240 them from being like oh I I am Catlan, I 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:42.359 am Breton, mask whatever wherever you're from, and turn them 0:18:42.400 --> 0:18:44.480 into French people by like no, like all French people 0:18:44.480 --> 0:18:47.399 shared is common education and they read and write French, 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:53.600 not not Breton or Catlan. Or make them acceptable to capitalism, 0:18:53.720 --> 0:18:56.320 or make them useful cogs in the machine that produces 0:18:56.400 --> 0:19:00.320 stuff and people who have money. Yeah, so this is 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:02.359 the stuff that Paul Robin is like, I'm not as 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:06.639 excited about this um. So he quits, and I like 0:19:06.720 --> 0:19:09.520 this because I've never run this across this like fuck 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:12.440 lofty fake things like the church, the state, in academia, 0:19:13.359 --> 0:19:16.320 you know, I only like science. And so he starts 0:19:16.359 --> 0:19:18.480 throwing down with the International Labor Movement, which is the 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:22.480 time mostly called in in Europe, the International and he's 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:24.480 he throws him with the anarchists, not because he's like 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:27.440 I am an anarchist, right, but because they're more excited 0:19:27.440 --> 0:19:29.600 about education at that time than Marxist, and they're like 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:33.320 more willing to kind of listen to him. Who I 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:37.040 only learned this recently at the Marxists weren't getting called 0:19:37.080 --> 0:19:40.199 Marxist yet. Marxist was first used as a pejorative by 0:19:40.240 --> 0:19:43.320 the anarchists against the Marxists because they're like, oh, you're 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:45.399 just listening to the Secretary of the International. You just 0:19:45.520 --> 0:19:49.000 keep doing whatever he says, you damn Marxist. And to 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:51.600 be fair, apparently anarchists, I mean, obviously they got some 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:54.320 of their name by calling themselves anarchists earlier, but they 0:19:54.359 --> 0:19:57.240 started like really getting called the anarchists as a pejorative 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:02.360 the Marxists really like when you look at like when 0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:04.040 you look at Spain, right, it's still a phrase I'd 0:20:04.040 --> 0:20:06.200 like to use, actually a phrase I wasn't allowed to 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:09.600 use my dissertation, which was another topic. That they call 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:13.800 themselves the libertarian left, and that fits like and also 0:20:13.920 --> 0:20:18.680 like it avoids the like a giant clusterfuck of identities 0:20:18.760 --> 0:20:22.119 that exist within the broad sphere of anarchism, like a 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:26.199 totally different diagonal flags yeah yeah, which is part of over, 0:20:26.280 --> 0:20:28.720 isn't them sadly lost the word libertarians and at least 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:30.840 in the United States context, because I'm like, I like 0:20:30.960 --> 0:20:34.760 to take it back. I think it's a really good 0:20:34.800 --> 0:20:39.480 way to appeal to people. I'm diverting the fire and 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:42.520 like I spent a lot of time in rural areas 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:44.520 here and grew up in a rural area, and like 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:48.040 I was been to a tenacious unicorn around specifically a 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:50.000 couple of times when we've spoken about this. How like 0:20:50.720 --> 0:20:53.159 most people in rural areas do a whole lot of 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:56.960 anarchists shit, but would hate the label anarchist. But like, 0:20:57.280 --> 0:20:59.639 I think like left libertarian is where we can sometimes 0:20:59.760 --> 0:21:02.240 meet their as people Like you want to have guns 0:21:02.280 --> 0:21:04.320 in of your neighbors truck falls in the ditch, you 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:09.439 pull it out for them, Like, actually, friend, you're doing anarchism. Yeah, totally. 0:21:10.280 --> 0:21:12.399 And you know who else will pull you out of 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:19.040 a ditch? Um, will they? Sophie. Now, one thing that 0:21:19.560 --> 0:21:24.280 sponsors tend not to have its tow trucks. Yeah, but 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:28.280 you know, yeah, I don't think if you buy enough 0:21:28.320 --> 0:21:30.639 for their products or services, they could buy like a 0:21:30.840 --> 0:21:32.879 big truck, one of those ones with four wheels, and 0:21:33.320 --> 0:21:36.879