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Talking Schools
Ten lectures which highlight the essentials of libertarian thought and practice concerning schooling and education more widely, provide vivid illustrations of the effects of the important state legislation in Britain on education since 1945 and pose a serious challenge to contemporary educational orthodoxy.
141 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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About the author
Colin Ward
64 books90 followersColin Ward was born in Wanstead, Essex. He became an anarchist while in the British Army during World War II. As a subscriber to War Commentary, the war-time equivalent of Freedom, he was called in 1945 from Orkney, where he was serving, to give evidence at the London trial of the editors for publishing an article allegedly intended to seduce soldiers from their duty or allegiance. Ward robustly repudiated any seduction, but the three editors (Philip Sansom, Vernon Richards and John Hewetson) were convicted and sentenced to nine months imprisonment.
He was an editor of the British anarchist newspaper Freedom from 1947 to 1960, and the founder and editor of the monthly libertarian journal Anarchy from 1961 to 1970.
From 1952 to 1961, Ward worked as an architect. In 1971, he became the Education Officer for the Town and Country Planning Association. He published widely on education, architecture and town planning. His most influential book was The Child In The City (1978), about children's street culture.
In 2001, Colin Ward was made an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy at Anglia Ruskin University.
Most of Ward's works deal with the issue of rural housing and the problems of overpopulation and planning regulations in Britain to which he proposes anarchistic solutions. He is a keen admirer of architect Walter Segal who set up a ‘build it yourself’ system in Lewisham meaning that land that was too small or difficult to build on conventionally was given to people who with Segal’s help would build their own homes. Ward is very keen on the idea of ‘build it yourself’ having said in response to the proposition of removing all planning laws, ‘I don't believe in just letting it rip, the rich get away with murder when that happens. But I do want the planning system to be flexible enough to give homeless people a chance’. In his book Cotters and Squatters, Ward describes the historical development of informal customs to appropriate land for housing which frequently grew up in opposition to legally constituted systems of land ownership. Ward describes folkways in many cultures which parallel the Welsh tradition of the Tŷ unnos or 'one night house' erected on common land.
Ward includes a passage from one of his anarchist forebears, Peter Kropotkin, who said of the empty and overgrown landscape of Surrey and Sussex at the end of the 19th century, ‘in every direction I see abandoned cottages and orchards going to ruin, a whole population has disappeared.’ Ward himself goes on to observe: ‘Precisely a century after this account was written, the fields were empty again. Fifty years of subsidies had made the owners of arable land millionaires through mechanised cultivation and, with a crisis of over-production; the European Community was rewarding them for growing no crops on part of their land. However, opportunities for the homeless poor were fewer than ever in history. The grown-up children of local families can’t get on the housing ladder’. Wards solution is that ‘there should be some place in every parish where it's possible for people to build their own homes, and they should be allowed to do it a bit at a time, starting in a simple way and improving the structure as they go along. The idea that a house should be completed in one go before you can get planning permission and a mortgage is ridiculous. Look at the houses in this village. Many of them have developed their character over centuries - a bit of medieval at the back, with Tudor and Georgian add-ons.’
Ward’s anarchist philosophy is the idea of removing authoritarian forms of social organisation and replacing them with self-managed, non-hierarchical forms of organisation. This form of federalism was put forward in part by Kropotkin and Proudhon and is based upon the principle that as Ward puts it- ‘in small face-to-face groups, the bureaucratising and hierarchical tendencies inherent in organisations have least opportunity to develop’
He was an editor of the British anarchist newspaper Freedom from 1947 to 1960, and the founder and editor of the monthly libertarian journal Anarchy from 1961 to 1970.
From 1952 to 1961, Ward worked as an architect. In 1971, he became the Education Officer for the Town and Country Planning Association. He published widely on education, architecture and town planning. His most influential book was The Child In The City (1978), about children's street culture.
In 2001, Colin Ward was made an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy at Anglia Ruskin University.
Most of Ward's works deal with the issue of rural housing and the problems of overpopulation and planning regulations in Britain to which he proposes anarchistic solutions. He is a keen admirer of architect Walter Segal who set up a ‘build it yourself’ system in Lewisham meaning that land that was too small or difficult to build on conventionally was given to people who with Segal’s help would build their own homes. Ward is very keen on the idea of ‘build it yourself’ having said in response to the proposition of removing all planning laws, ‘I don't believe in just letting it rip, the rich get away with murder when that happens. But I do want the planning system to be flexible enough to give homeless people a chance’. In his book Cotters and Squatters, Ward describes the historical development of informal customs to appropriate land for housing which frequently grew up in opposition to legally constituted systems of land ownership. Ward describes folkways in many cultures which parallel the Welsh tradition of the Tŷ unnos or 'one night house' erected on common land.
Ward includes a passage from one of his anarchist forebears, Peter Kropotkin, who said of the empty and overgrown landscape of Surrey and Sussex at the end of the 19th century, ‘in every direction I see abandoned cottages and orchards going to ruin, a whole population has disappeared.’ Ward himself goes on to observe: ‘Precisely a century after this account was written, the fields were empty again. Fifty years of subsidies had made the owners of arable land millionaires through mechanised cultivation and, with a crisis of over-production; the European Community was rewarding them for growing no crops on part of their land. However, opportunities for the homeless poor were fewer than ever in history. The grown-up children of local families can’t get on the housing ladder’. Wards solution is that ‘there should be some place in every parish where it's possible for people to build their own homes, and they should be allowed to do it a bit at a time, starting in a simple way and improving the structure as they go along. The idea that a house should be completed in one go before you can get planning permission and a mortgage is ridiculous. Look at the houses in this village. Many of them have developed their character over centuries - a bit of medieval at the back, with Tudor and Georgian add-ons.’
Ward’s anarchist philosophy is the idea of removing authoritarian forms of social organisation and replacing them with self-managed, non-hierarchical forms of organisation. This form of federalism was put forward in part by Kropotkin and Proudhon and is based upon the principle that as Ward puts it- ‘in small face-to-face groups, the bureaucratising and hierarchical tendencies inherent in organisations have least opportunity to develop’
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March 4, 2021
I feel like I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about parenting, teaching, and city planning for someone who isn't a parent, teacher, or planner, but nothing prepared me for the kind of synthesis that they get here and my brain's still buzzing from it.
In these 10 speeches, "education" is nothing more and nothing less than the process by which the young develop the sense of agency and investment in The World, which of course means not just social arrangements and institutions but the built environment as well.
It's one thing to hear gooey advocacy for things like Experiential Learning and Child-Centered Development, and a totally different thing to hear someone as tough and pragmatic, and with such a broad range of both research and teaching experience, as Colin Ward take on these topics.
To take his thinking seriously is to feel the discomfort of seeing some cherished consensus opinions subjected to hard skepticism, like the idea that bigger education budgets will necessarily improve outcomes, or that there can or ought to be a guaranteed minimum level of content or competency that school systems can guarantee all reasonably able-minded students will leave with.
Most heretically: he even challenges the idea that work - like, real work, not just "studying hard" or whatever - robs youth of their childhood and distracts them from the loftier rewards of learning. He's fully aware of industrial nations' sordid history of child labor, and his arguments are accordingly careful and subtle... but not apologetic. To work is to be human, and Fully-Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism isn't arriving any day soon. Work, at its best and in reasonable doses, allows people to realize their own power to shape the world in some small way and integrates them as a valued (not merely tolerated or coddled) member of a community. [NB: I don't want to oversell this point and neither does Colin Ward - real jobs often don't live up to that ideal, especially ones that teens are able to get in the current economy]
The future of education that Colin Ward envisions here is one that's going to be a little bit loose, heterogenous, and counterintuitive compared to the current orthodoxy, but he emphasizes that the alternative is continuing to invest in a basically scholastic model of mandatory, full-time knowledge dumping, with constant supervision and no freedom of movement, that many young people already feel entirely alienated from (not to mention many of the teachers themselves).
Anyway, now to file for that time off request so I can binge everything this guy has ever published.
In these 10 speeches, "education" is nothing more and nothing less than the process by which the young develop the sense of agency and investment in The World, which of course means not just social arrangements and institutions but the built environment as well.
It's one thing to hear gooey advocacy for things like Experiential Learning and Child-Centered Development, and a totally different thing to hear someone as tough and pragmatic, and with such a broad range of both research and teaching experience, as Colin Ward take on these topics.
To take his thinking seriously is to feel the discomfort of seeing some cherished consensus opinions subjected to hard skepticism, like the idea that bigger education budgets will necessarily improve outcomes, or that there can or ought to be a guaranteed minimum level of content or competency that school systems can guarantee all reasonably able-minded students will leave with.
Most heretically: he even challenges the idea that work - like, real work, not just "studying hard" or whatever - robs youth of their childhood and distracts them from the loftier rewards of learning. He's fully aware of industrial nations' sordid history of child labor, and his arguments are accordingly careful and subtle... but not apologetic. To work is to be human, and Fully-Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism isn't arriving any day soon. Work, at its best and in reasonable doses, allows people to realize their own power to shape the world in some small way and integrates them as a valued (not merely tolerated or coddled) member of a community. [NB: I don't want to oversell this point and neither does Colin Ward - real jobs often don't live up to that ideal, especially ones that teens are able to get in the current economy]
The future of education that Colin Ward envisions here is one that's going to be a little bit loose, heterogenous, and counterintuitive compared to the current orthodoxy, but he emphasizes that the alternative is continuing to invest in a basically scholastic model of mandatory, full-time knowledge dumping, with constant supervision and no freedom of movement, that many young people already feel entirely alienated from (not to mention many of the teachers themselves).
Anyway, now to file for that time off request so I can binge everything this guy has ever published.
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