Hence the terms of the first announcement of the Modern School that was issued to the public. It ran as follows:—
Programme.
The mission of the Modern School is to secure that the boys and girls who are entrusted to it shall become well-instructed, truthful, just, and free from all prejudice.
To that end the rational method of the natural sciences will be substituted for the old dogmatic teaching. It will stimulate, develop, and direct the natural ability of each pupil, so that he or she will not only become a useful member of society, with his individual value fully developed, but will contribute, as a necessary consequence, to the uplifting of the whole community.
It will instruct the young in sound social duties, in conformity with the just principle that “there are no duties without rights, and no rights without duties.”
In view of the good results that have been obtained abroad by mixed education, and especially in order to realise the great aim of the Modern School—the [[16]]formation of an entirely fraternal body of men and women, without distinction of sex or class—children of both sexes, from the age of five upward, will be received.
For the further development of its work, the Modern School will be opened on Sunday mornings, when there will be classes on the sufferings of mankind throughout the course of history, and on the men and women who have distinguished themselves in science, art, or the fight for progress. The parents of the children may attend these classes.
In the hope that the intellectual work of the Modern School will be fruitful, we have, besides securing hygienic conditions in the institution and its dependencies, arranged to have a medical inspection of children at their entrance into the school. The result of this will be communicated to the parents if it is deemed necessary; and others will be held periodically, in order to prevent the spread of contagious diseases during the school hours.
During the week which preceded the opening of the Modern School I invited the representatives of the press to visit the institution and make it known, and some of the journals inserted appreciative notices of the work. It may be of historical interest to quote a few paragraphs from El Diluvio:—
The future is budding in the school. To build on any other foundation is to build on sand. Unhappily, the school may serve either the purposes of tyranny or the cause of liberty, and may thus serve either barbarism or civilisation.
We are therefore pleased to see certain patriots and humanitarians, who grasp the transcendent importance of this social function, which our Government [[17]]systematically overlooks, hasten to meet this pressing need by founding a Modern School; a school which will not seek to promote the interests of sect and to move in the old ruts, as has been done hitherto, but will create an intellectual environment in which the new generation will absorb the ideas and the impulses which the stream of progress unceasingly brings.
This end can only be attained by private enterprise. Our existing institutions, tainted with all the vices of the past and weakened by all the trivialities of the present, cannot discharge this useful function. It is reserved for men of noble mind and unselfish feeling to open up the new path by which succeeding generations will rise to higher destinies.
This has been done, or will be done, by the founders of the modest Modern School which we have visited at the courteous invitation of its directors and those who are interested in its development. This school is not a commercial enterprise, like most scholastic institutions, but a pædagogical experiment, of which only one other specimen exists in Spain (the Free Institution of Education at Madrid).
Sr. Salas Antón brilliantly expounded the programme of the school to the small audience of journalists and others who attended the modest opening-festival, and descanted on the design of educating children in the whole truth and nothing but the truth, or what is proved to be such. His chief theme was that the founders do not propose to add one more to the number of what are known as “Lay Schools,” with their impassioned dogmatism, but a serene observatory, open to the four winds of heaven, with no cloud darkening the horizon and interposing between the light and the mind of man.
[[18]]
[1] Mlle. Meunier died, leaving about £30,000 unconditionally to Ferrer, before he returned to Spain in 1900.—J. M. [↑]