‘How to cultivate freedom through coercion’ : Defining discipline in anarchist education

Anja Heikkinen, Jenni Pätäri & Gabriele Molzberger (eds), Disciplinary Struggles in Education Tampere University Press 2019, 41–60 http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-359-002-1 ‘How to cultivate freedom through coercion’ Defining discipline in anarchist education Ivan Zamotkin Abstract At the beginning of the chapter a case of anarchist education is examined with the aim of justifying the relevance of anarchism to contemporary educational debates concerning the notion of discipline and the task of reclaiming it as both an educational and political concept. Then, in the light of the problem of pedagogical paradox, two opposite views of discipline in education, those of Durkheim and Foucault, are presented. Based on Foucault’s critique, the connection between two meanings of the word ‘discipline’ referred to in education is explored. In conclusion, it is demonstrated how rethinking both discipline in education and education as discipline from the anarchist perspective can inform educational research. Keywords: discipline, anarchist education, pedagogical paradox, Durkheim, Foucault. Ivan Zamotkin 42 Introduction Among the many contexts in which the word ‘discipline’ can be used (for example, discipline in the military or labour discipline), the most widespread context refers to the field of education, especially school education. The very usage of this term has become commonplace both in educational theory and in various pedagogical systems as well as in the everyday speech of many educators, for whom maintaining discipline in a classroom is one of the most urgent tasks. In both cases, this concept is often given opposing evaluations ranging from criticism of discipline as a normalising practice to attempts to rehabilitate it, related to the proposals of the new, ‘positive’ connotations of the term. The recent works of the contemporary scholar James MacAllister, devoted to a detailed analysis of the concept of discipline at its present stage, provide an argument against the currently dominant use of this concept in the context of ‘behaviour management’ as conflicting with the freedom and agency of students. According to him, discipline needs to be reclaimed as an educational concept (see MacAllister, 2014). Considering the notion of discipline from the anarchist perspective at first glance may seem a controversial task as it is believed that anarchism fundamentally denies any notion of discipline as well as notions of authority, coercion and power. This is especially significant when referring to anarchism as an educational theory, as anarchist education is often naïvely defined as giving children the opportunity to do whatever they want, so any form of discipline is considered an attempt on their freedom. A closer examination of the rich and often undeservedly forgotten history of anarchist education, together with a more detailed analysis of the political theory of anarchism, will allow, firstly, to demonstrate that this is simply not true, and secondly, to address the more fundamental, titular question: how does one cultivate freedom through coercion? In a similar formulation this question was first identified by I. Kant; later in the literature it was called the pedagogical paradox. Kant himself believed that discipline is a negative but nonetheless necessary element of education, which allows a person through this process to make the transition from immaturity to maturity and to become free in the sense in which Kant understood freedom (see Kant, 2007). It is worth noting here that Kant’s solution to this paradox (like any other one) takes us beyond the bounds of the traditional, mere pedagogical set of questions as it represents the 43 Defining discipline in anarchist education connection between education and freedom as a political term. In other words, one finds it hard to answer questions such as when a child becomes independent and ready for adult life when appealing only to the understanding of the child’s development provided by pedagogy and psychology. This question has a clear social and political dimension, which requires a different attitude in consideration of this problem. In this sense, the task of examining discipline in education could be seen as reclaiming it not only as an educational but also as a political concept. The other side of this issue that is relevant to education is the ambiguity of the concept of discipline, which was noted in Foucault’s critical works and expressed in his concept of ‘power-knowledge’ (see Foucault, 1991). Disciplinary mechanisms can be found not only in how the process of education works but also in what constitutes its content. Moreover, education itself could be seen as a distinct discipline uniting various research approaches and practices. Referring to anarchism as an alternative perspective from which to look at education opens up opportunities not only to consider some specific elements of education (for example, discipline) but also to rethink the entire disciplinary field. A confirming example here can be the work of the contemporary scholar Judith Suissa, who solves this problem for the discipline of the philosophy of education (see Suissa, 2014). At the beginning of the chapter, a case of anarchist education is examined with the aim of justifying the relevance of anarchism to contemporary educational debates concerning the notion of discipline and the possible task outlined above. Then in the light of the problem of the pedagogical paradox, two opposite views of discipline in education (by Durkheim and by Foucault) are presented. Based on Foucault’s critique, it is proposed how two meanings of the word ‘discipline’ referred to in education are connected. In conclusion it is shown how rethinking both discipline in education and education as a discipline from the anarchist perspective can inform educational research. ‘Fragments’ of an anarchist pedagogy ‘The anarchist approach has been more influential in education than in most other fields of life’, writes the well-known anarchist thinker C. Ward in his Ivan Zamotkin 44 2004 book Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction (p. 61). He offers to reclaim the undeservedly forgotten history of the anarchist movement in education, uniting those who oppose compulsory state education. Ward emphasises that it is necessary to draw a line between this movement and the movement for progressive education, but he offers a very narrow understanding of the difference between them: ‘around the issue of compulsory or voluntary attendance at lesson’ (Ward, 2004, p. 59). Ward thus follows the same false path that many anarchists have taken when they have been drawn into the ‘trap’ of the misconception of education presented as ‘anarchist’. It could be seen in the conflation of ‘anarchist’ and ‘libertarian’ positions on education, where the latter is strongly associated with the ideas of ‘free’ education, such as a laissez-faire attitude to children’s upbringings. To confirm this, it might be added that among those works whom Ward sees as examples of anarchist education are both F. Ferrer’s ‘Modern School’ and A. Neill’s ‘Summerhill’. In this section, we will show what is a fundamental difference between them as what distinguishes the anarchist perspective on education from both proposals of state education and projects that are other alternatives to state schooling. Our main thesis is that in anarchist education there is a special understanding of discipline that distinguishes it from other non-authoritarian pedagogies. However, to understand what is special about this understanding, firstly we should briefly clarify the main ideas behind anarchist pedagogy. Although some anarchist ideas about unlimited freedom in a free society without authority could be found throughout human history (for instance, Kropotkin believed that such ideas could be traced all the way back to ancient philosophy, both Western and Eastern (Kropotkin, 1910), political anarchism as a distinct theory and ideology emerged in particular historical circumstances. It is believed that under the influence of the French Revolution, anarchism appeared firstly as an ideological trend and later as a political movement, becoming a sort of reaction to its achievements and failures. Thus, anarchism occupied a special niche in the ideological struggle of two, also produced by the Revolution, theories – liberalism and state socialism – criticising both positions. The main contradiction that anarchism was intended to solve was the contradiction between freedom and equality (as the basic values of the above ideologies, respectively). For anarchists, there has been no choice between them; as M.A. Bakunin puts it; ‘liberty without 45 Defining discipline in anarchist education socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality’ (Bakunin in Dolgoff, 1973). It is believed that in the history of anarchist thought, one can notice a certain spread among the authors in the spectrum of ‘personality-society’, manifested in either the principle of individual freedom or the principle of equality within the community; on this basis anarchists are usually divided into individualists and socialists. Nevertheless, this division is very conditional, and between these authors there is not so much difference as they themselves present it: ‘the anarchist socialist is also an individualist and the individualist anarchist may well be a partisan of the social approach who fears to declare himself’ (Guérin, 1970). The combination of equality and freedom has become not just a slogan for generations of anarchists around the world but the key idea of anarchism, its important distinctive feature that creates a unique perspective for addressing many issues, including those in education. Being ‘the only modern social doctrine that unequivocally rejects the concept of the state’ (Reichert, 1969, p. 139), anarchism has always deliberately approached its criticism of authority, rejecting a priori constructed proposals for social change. That said, it should be emphasised that nowadays, when the system of public education especially needs protection against proposals for its privatisation and other neoliberal reforms, anarchist criticism must be very careful while remaining uncompromising. From a philosophical point of view, it is necessary to articulate what understanding of authority will correspond to anarchist ideas of freedom and equality. One of the first attempts to systematically apply anarchist ideas to education belongs to Francisco Ferrer, a Spanish anarchist and prominent figure of libertarian pedagogy. His interest in anarchism and education began in France, where he met the theorists of libertarian communism Jean Grave and Élisée Reclus and libertarian educator Paul Robin. From the mid-1890s, under their influence, Ferrer had become an anarchist, imbued with the ideas of the concept of revolutionary syndicalism. According to this concept, organisations created in the process of the struggle for the interests of the people (self-governing trade unions, cooperatives, etc.) could be seen as some kind of hotbeds of the future free socialist community. Ferrer believed that the education of the younger generation should also occur in the same way so that they will be able to carry out a social revolution and create a free and just society. Ferrer was convinced that the school should Ivan Zamotkin 46 not be subordinate to the state and the church and that coercion that hinders the free development of the child’s personality should cease to be the main method of education. Ferrer managed to put his ideas into practice; on his return to Spain, on October 8, 1901, he founded the Modern School in Barcelona (La escuela moderna). The aims of the Modern School Ferrer considered to ‘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’ (Ferrer, 1913). In the content of education, there was a rejection of teaching dogmas in favour of studying the natural sciences, which he called ‘rational education’. By the end of the first year, 30 children were attending school, and by 1907 their number had risen to 126. Very quickly, Ferrer had followers all over Spain, and then all over the world; he promoted the ideas of rational education and helped new schools with educational literature and teacher training. At the beginning the Spanish authorities did not interfere with the emergence of such schools because they themselves could not cope with the illiteracy of the population, but then with the increasing influence of the Modern School and Ferrer’s efforts to promote rational education, the government saw significant dangers in it. According to the fabricated case, Ferrer was removed from teaching, he was forced to go abroad, but he did not stop promoting his ideas. To do so, in April 1908 together with other people in the movement he founded the International League for the Rational Education of Children in Paris, which included teachers from a dozen countries, prominent cultural and scientific figures. The attacks on Ferrer did not stop there; he was again falsely accused and illegally brought to trial, which eventually resulted his vicious murder; despite the international campaign launched in his defence, on October 13, 1909 he was sentenced to death and executed. Ferrer’s death caused an unprecedented protest around the world and only strengthened the anarchists’ interest in education; many other libertarian pedagogy projects inspired by the Modern School began to appear after that. The programme of rational education proposed by Ferrer fits into the overall picture of the projects of progressive and libertarian education inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment, and for its time it was very radical. In Ferrer’s school, the principle of equality was manifested not only in the fact that learning was mixed but also in the pedagogical approaches chosen at school: 47 Defining discipline in anarchist education Having admitted and practised the co-education of boys and girls, of rich and poor – having that is to say started from the principle of solidarity and inequality – we are not prepared to create a new inequality. Hence in the Modern School there will be no rewards and no punishments; there will be no examinations to puff up some children with the flattering title of excellent, to give others the vulgar title of ‘good’, and make others unhappy with a consciousness of incapacity and failure. (Ferrer, 1913) At the same time, according to Ferrer, pedagogical technology as such was not rejected; rather he noted the excessive role that it was assigned in traditional school education, turning it into a set of rituals and useless conventions, the purpose of which is to control students. Regarding the content of education, Ferrer consistently implemented the conception of ‘integral education’ that has been central for anarchism and was firstly formulated by Kropotkin in his work Fields, Factories and Workshops: ‘to the division of society into brain workers and manual workers we oppose the combination of both kinds of activities; and instead of “technical education”, which means the maintenance of the present division between brain work and manual work, we advocate the education integrale, or complete education, which means the disappearance of that pernicious distinction’ (Kropotkin, 1913). According to Kropotkin the specialisation of labour must be preceded by general education, which combines both the study of sciences and the teaching of crafts (such kinds of education were at the Modern School). M.A. Bakunin went further on this issue; he believed that the division between brain and manual work itself is artificial, thus formulating the principle of integral education in a very broad way, stating ‘everyone must work, and everyone must receive education’: The science of the sage will become more fruitful, more useful and more expansive when the sage is no longer a stranger to manual labour, and the labours of the workmen, when he is educated, will be more intelligent and thus more productive than those of an ignorant workman. From which it follows that, for work’s sake as much as for the sake of science, there must no longer be this division into workers and scholars and henceforth there must be only men. (Bakunin, 1869) Ivan Zamotkin 48 For Bakunin, fixing science and science education with a certain social group is one of the main reasons for the exploitation of the ‘uneducated majority’, so he strongly rejected liberal projects of state education as he claimed that the people did not need such science and such education. Moreover, Bakunin believed that it was very cynical to talk about the purpose of science in the education of the people, ignoring the social unfairness and inequality that exists in society, which in many respects was maintained by this science. Ferrer thought that it is very important to draw the attention of his students to it when they were on a factory tour. For example, some boys and girls did not want to go into one of the workshops because of the heat and smell of toxic materials, which gave Ferrer the opportunity to discuss with them the history of the workers’ factories, how they learned this craft as children, how they also did not like the heat and unpleasant smell, but that they had no other life options, and how science and industry, having reached such heights together, can coexist with such glaring facts of social unfairness. Both for Kropotkin and Bakunin this component of political education imbued with the ideal of a society based on mutual help and solidarity was significant in the process of integral education. As mentioned earlier, the history of libertarian pedagogy is marked by many other extremely interesting educational projects; however, not all of them should be attributed to anarchism. For J. Suissa, a clear counter-example here is the famous school created by A. Neill in 1921, ‘Summerhill’. Based only on external features (lack of a strict timetable, informal learning, children’s free behaviour), this school looked like Ferrer’s and other anarchist schools, but for Suissa it is important to show what the fundamental differences are. According to Suissa, one of the fairly clear differences is how in the Summerhill school democratic decision-making procedures regarding all issues had been narrowly understood as being reduced to simple voting. Anarchist thinkers have rejected such an ‘electoral’ understanding of democracy and have had fair doubts about the validity of the majority principle as the basis of the political system. She notes that ‘more significant, though, are the subtle differences that derive from the philosophical and ideological commitments behind each of these educational approaches’. She continues: Crucially, Neill conceived of freedom in an individual, psychological sense. His chief intellectual influences were those of the psychoanalytical tradition 49 Defining discipline in anarchist education especially the work of Wilhelm Reich. So, although critical of existing society, he believed that the way forward to a better world lay in reform at the individual level a sort of mass therapy by which we would gradually achieve a society of self-aware, uninhibited, emotionally stable individuals. In contrast, the notion of freedom behind the anarchist position is one that carries “concrete political connotations”. (Suissa, 2001) This individualistic and psychological understanding of freedom, which is based on Rousseau’s claim about originally good human nature, should not be assigned to anarchism. On the contrary, a human being in anarchism is presented as a creature with a dual nature, in which not only altruistic but also egoistic characteristics are inherent. In this regard, neither Kropotkin nor even Bakunin were naïve, as they are often presented; anarchism implies that human nature is contextual. Outside the context of society, in addition to other individuals, the question of human nature, according to Bakunin, does not make any sense at all – in this regard, he criticises the theory of the social contract and the natural state of men: ‘primitive men enjoying absolute liberty only in isolation are antisocial by nature and when forced to associate they destroy each other’s freedom’ (Bakunin in Dolgoff, 1973, p. 128). Contrary to this, Bakunin sees it the following way: after concluding the contract, unfree man, who is in the slavery of his animal state, becomes a slave of the state, thus, denial of the state and animality for people is possible only in the gradual self-awareness in society, and not outside it, with other people. This remark makes clear why Kropotkin saw education as one of the main means for achieving the necessary moral level for establishing and maintaining anarchist ideal in human society (see Kropotkin, 1970). It seems that education might become a space in which the ability to share anarchist values arises among people even before the establishment of anarchy, thus becoming the prerequisites for an anarchist revolution. This view was also in the programme of integral education implemented in the ‘Modern School’: Ferrer saw his school as a microcosm of the future anarchist society. Education in the Modern School was far from the political neutrality that Neill talked about: ‘politics, life, religion is a matter for personal choice to be made later on in life as the child grows up’ (Neill, 1962, p. 354). Children, according to Neill, being originally good by nature, should themselves determine their own values in their individual development. Moral relativism in relation to education here comes Ivan Zamotkin 56 to Suissa, is an alternative way to study education, which, in turn, requires a new notion of the discipline. As John Dewey put it: Even the theoretical anarchist, whose philosophy commits him to the idea that state or government control is an evil, believes that with abolition of the political state other forms of social control would operate. (Dewey, 1938, p. 32) As was demonstrated above, anarchist pedagogy does not reject the idea of a direct intervention in the moral and intellectual development of a child, and therefore the idea of discipline as such. At the same time, the concept of discipline in anarchist education cannot be defined precisely for three reasons. Firstly, as anarchism is strongly opposed to any forms of dogmatism or predefined pictures of society, education is considered there as a space where alternative relationships take shape in a special way. Both Kropotkin and Bakunin highly appreciate human freedom and therefore renounce the right to ‘break human nature for the sake of a moral ideal’, realising that under capitalism the altruistic aspirations of people are suppressed by the social environment itself, therefore some intermediate stages are assumed. For instance, in the Ferrer school, despite the fact that its anarchist curriculum explicitly expressed such values as anti-capitalism and anti-statism, the process of education itself did not follow a plan prepared in advance or some kind of a blueprint but was a form of experimentation. According to the anarchists, this form of constant experimentation is transferred from the school to the whole future anarchist society, becoming the way to both form and maintain it. Secondly, anarchist education recognises the danger of authority and power relations, but they are not rejected outright. The same idea was developed by Foucault (for which he could be considered an anarchist). The line between an acceptable and an unacceptable form of discipline is not easy to draw because it is recognised that people are free and unpredictable in their actions. Nevertheless, at least two features of ‘good’ discipline for anarchism can be noted: disciplinary mechanisms must be explicit so that participants are aware of the power relations they give rise to, and discipline should not be understood as a preparatory step for a mature free state of a person but must assume equality from the very beginning. According to MacAllister, for discipline to be considered an educational concept, it is necessary to claim that ‘discipline is not something that happens to pupils 57 Defining discipline in anarchist education but something that pupils do’ (MacAllister, 2014, p. 443). In anarchist education, the political meaning of the concept is also added to this definition, which is expressed in the anarchist solution of the pedagogical paradox: one can only truly emancipate oneself. Thirdly, as was shown above, the normalising effect of discipline is manifested not only in actions but also in knowledge, which actually produces the norm. In the case of education, we are talking about the disciplines that create the content of education and those that determine education itself. Criticism of state schooling and propositions of alternative models of education often remain within the framework of a scheme in which education as such is equated to what happens in a state-controlled school. This may be called the ‘axiomatics’ of educational research, which can also be found in the philosophy of education. The development of its disciplinary field at the present stage (a shift towards a socio-political perspective) and the external danger associated with the negative effects of the domination of neoliberal policies in education are the reasons why doing philosophy of education from anarchist perspective could be considered a promising research strategy. As Suissa puts it in the preface of her book: ‘ideas matter, and at a time when we are surrounded by pronouncements about “the death of ideology” and politicians talking about “what works”, they matter more, not less, than ever’ (Suissa, 2006, p. vii). Traditional political ideologies dating back to the Enlightenment (primarily, liberalism and socialism) almost lose their ability to analyse social reality and therefore barely offer adequate ways for social change. This contributes to the general depoliticisation of society, a special case of which is the ‘depoliticization of educational debates’, which has been recognised in the philosophy of education for a long time (see Carr & Hartnett, 1996). The title of the second section of this chapter refers to the work Fragments of the Anarchist Anthropology by the famous anthropologist D. Graeber. In this book, he uses the resources of his discipline to justify the possibility of ‘another world’ without state and capitalism. For anthropology and other social sciences to be more susceptible to alternative models of social order, according to Graeber, it is necessary to reconceptualise the basic concepts and assumptions of these sciences (see Graeber, 2004). It seems that the project of an anarchist philosophy of education serves the same purpose, being engaged in the search for a pedagogy of alternative spaces and relationships. Moreover, education itself, understood in Ivan Zamotkin 58 the anarchist way, can provide ‘answers’ to the question of how this ‘other world’ might be arranged. In this chapter, an attempt to expand the ‘dictionary’ of the anarchist philosophy of education was made by incorporating the notion of discipline inspired by anarchist values and ideals. 59 Defining discipline in anarchist education References Bakunin, M. 1869. Integral education. http://www.revoltlib.com/anarchism/integraleducation-ii/view.php (accessed: 02.05.2017). Carr, W. & Hartnett, A. 1996. 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