Transforming education to change the world: the Modern School of Ferrer Guardia.

Abstract

A historiographic investigation and new conversations about a relevant teaching-learning experience in the history of an education considered alternative, promoting internationalist transformative ideals and methodologies, is the purpose of this paper. It offers a tour of the history of the Modern School for the benefit of historians of education, presents the value of creating a revolutionary school in a dystopian place, and recounts some of its great themes and concepts, as well as its expansion for a new world. Despite a very poor social situation, and the power of religion, the Modern School emerged compiling ideas of progressive educational ideals, with an eagerness to go beyond borders, thanks to its creator, Francisco Ferrer Guardia, which means that more than a century later, both an institution and a human being are objects of study. The history of the Modern School has not been strongly represented in educational history research as a revolutionary, interdisciplinary, and even intersectional subject, as the history of those who were defeated and repressed often is not. Beyond a set of historical facts, its ideals expanded, as they still exist today for whom utopia is not just a dream, but a reality to be achieved.