Teaching Revolution through Art? Anarchism, the Avant-garde and Education Critically Revisited

An examination of anarchist educational initiatives may provide a fresh look into anarchism’s intense and, at the same time, problematic relation to the avant-gardes. This chapter analyzes key concepts of a libertarian education – harmony, creation and social milieu – to confront them with anarchist political militancy on the one hand and the avant-gardes on the other. One of the central questions of the anarchist and avant-garde movements, namely how to integrate education and art into the life praxis, may be answered by either the attempt to liberate the creative potential of manual and physical labor, or the revolutionary negation mediated – in the case of the avant-gardes – via an artistic gesture. Although the majority of anarchist activists rejected the idea of a “revolution carried out by artists and steered by novelists and poets” (Proudhon), some libertarian educators considered art as the sphere of unconstrained creation. Their position towards art was influenced by their differing opinions regarding the purposes of education which was supposed either to liberate the child’s individual will, or to provide a universal, shareable cognition of the world. Amongst all the libertarian schools, the Ferrer Center in New York was exceptional insofar as it brought together ‘rebels and artists’ who managed to create a place that became both a unique anarchist educational enterprise and a seminal avant-garde milieu. The examination of journals published at the school (The Modern School, Looking Forward, The Stelton Appendix) will further the understanding of the specific relation between an avant-garde, libertarian education and anarchist militancy, as well as to trace the evolution of this outstanding vanguard milieu.