The Origin and Ideals of the Modern School

FRANCISCO FERRER.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH REPRODUCED FROM “THE LITERARY GUIDE.”
THE ORIGIN AND IDEALS OF THE MODERN SCHOOL
BY FRANCISCO FERRER TRANSLATED BY JOSEPH McCABE
J. M.
The experience I acquired during my fifteen years’ residence at Paris, in which I witnessed the crises of Boulangism, Dreyfusism, and Nationalism, and the menace they offered to the Republic, convinced me that the problem of popular education was not solved; and, if it were not solved in France, there was little hope of Spanish republicanism settling it, especially as the party had always betrayed a lamentable inappreciation of the need of a system of general education.
My position as professor of Spanish at the Philotechnic Association and in the Grand Orient of France brought me into touch with people of every class, both in regard to character and social position; and, when I considered them from the point of view of their possible influence on the race, I found that they were all bent upon making the best they could of life in a purely individualist sense. Some studied Spanish with a view to advancing in their profession, others in order to master Spanish literature and promote their careers, and others for the purpose of obtaining further pleasure by travelling in countries where Spanish was spoken.
I spoke constantly to those whom I met with a view to proselytism, seeking to ascertain the use of each of them for the purpose of my ideal, and soon realised that nothing was to be expected of the politicians who surrounded Ruiz Zorrilla; they were, in my opinion, with a few honourable exceptions, impenitent adventurers. This gave rise to a certain expression which the judicial authorities sought to use to my disadvantage in circumstances of great gravity and peril. Zorrilla, a man of lofty views and not sufficiently on his guard against human malice, used to call me an “anarchist” when he heard me put forward a logical solution of a problem; at all times he regarded me as a deep radical, opposed to the opportunist views and the showy radicalism of the Spanish revolutionaries who surrounded and even exploited him, as well as the French republicans, who held a policy of middle-class government and avoided what might benefit the disinherited proletariate, on the pretext of distrusting Utopias.