This is the preliminary announcement for the 37th annual reunion of the Friends of the Modern School. The meeting will start at 11:00 A.M. on Saturday September 26th 2009 in the Faculty Dining Room of Brower Commons at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. We start with an informal gathering of old friends and comrades that will be continued with a luncheon at Noon.
To reserve a space at the 2009 Reunion, please download this form. Please fill it out and mail it with payment to: Friends of the Modern School, 200 Sumac Ridge Lane, Altamont, NY 12009.
Our formal meeting will begin with a talk by Barry Pateman about Harry Kelly one of the three leading organizers of U.S. Modern Schools and the force behind the move of the New York Modern School to Stelton, NJ. Barry is the Associate Director of the Emma Goldman Papers Project located at the University of California at Berkeley and this talk will be a supplement to his previous two talks on leaders of Modern Schools. That will be followed by a preliminary showing of a documentary film about the Modern School by filmmaker Bryan Welch. Bryan began work on this documentary in September of 2008 when he filmed interviews of former Modern School pupils and residents of the original Ferrer Colony of Stelton. Bryan has been a teacher and supporter of free schools on the west coast and has produced other films about the concept of freedom in education. We will then have an informal discussion of the cooperative facilities that were part of the Ferrer Colony in Stelton and other cooperative ventures organized in association with Modern Schools. This will be led by Ralph Coppola with participation of the audience.
The Francisco Ferrer Foundation of Barcelona, Spain is making plans to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the execution of Francisco Ferrer that took place at the Montjuich Fortress in Barcelona on October 13, 1909. There are now plans to create a “Peace Museum” at Montjuich. In August of 2009 there will be an exhibition on the Tragic Week that Ferrer was accused of organizing and these will still be observable in October. Several of the Friends will be going to Barcelona for the October Centenary with perhaps two or three supported by the Ferrer Foundation. If you are interested in going to Barcelona for these celebrations of the life of Francisco Ferrer please contact me by e-mail, phone or at the above address and I will inform the Foundation of your interest. They are encouraging former pupils of Modern Schools from the U.S. and other countries to come and participate in the activities that will go on for a few days starting on October 13. We will probably participate in seminars, panel discussions and the like. We will have more details in our August mailing.
Goldman House: The New Jersey State Review Board for Historic Sites unanimously voted to recommend to the Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (New Jersey’s State Historic Preservation Officer) that the Goldman house at 143 School Street in Piscataway be listed on the New Jersey Register of Historic Places and that our proposal be forwarded to Washington, DC for placement on the National Registry of Historic Places. Our Trustees and some of the Advisors met in April of this year to discuss plans as to how we might use the house to commemorate the Modern School and Ferrer Colony in Stelton. No decision has yet been made on how to go forward, but if you have any ideas please contact me. We will probably meet again in September.
Modern School Reader: We are in the final stages of completing the book entitled A Modern School Reader: A Documentary History of Anarchist Education in America, 1909-1961 assembled by Paul Avrich with commentary by Jon Scott and Edited by Barry Pateman. It is possible that we can go to press this summer.
Recollections of the Modern School Ferrer Colony: Our recent book by Victor Sacharoff and others is in its third printing. If you want a copy please send a check for $20 to me and I will mail it out in a day or so. It will be available at the reunion on Sept. 26th also for $20.
Friends of the Modern School website: Friendsofthemodernschool.org is a work in progress and has information that may be of interest to many of the members of the Friends.
Due to the printing costs for our books, maintenance of our Memorial Marker at 79 School Street in Piscataway, funding for the Goldman House proposal and costs for our annual reunion our bank account is running low. Please consider making a tax-deductible gift to help complete these projects. You may use the enclosed reply form for that purpose.
There are several books about Modern Schools that are available as reprints from several sources. Those of you who are looking for a copy of Paul Avrich’s classic The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States can find a copy by searching the internet for that title. You can get a copy directly from AERO at educationrevolution.org. AERO also has for sale DVD’s of several of the reunions of the Friends at that site. You can also get Elizabeth Ferm’s Freedom in Education and The Modern School of Stelton by Joseph Cohen and Alexis Ferm from The Factory School. Their site is here. The latter contains essays by Cohen, Ferm, Harry Kelly and Leonard Abbott. An interesting book that contains a chapter on Stelton is Perdita Buchan’s new book Utopia New Jersey: Travels in the Nearest Eden available from Rutgers Univ. Press or online.
The buffet luncheon will be prepared by the Brower Commons, and will include several delicious salads, some vegetarian, tossed garden salad, rolls, fresh fruit, cookies and hot beverages. The price to us is about $14.00 and we are asking you to pay $20.00 to help defray costs of postage and printing for the reunion announcements and for the cost of technical equipment supplied by Brower Commons. Because the $20.00 does not cover our expenses you may want to consider a larger amount or donation.
We will have a second announcement of our program with more details in mid-August and at that time we will provide directions to the Brower Commons at Rutgers. If you reply to this announcement you will still receive the second announcement because it will have more news and information, but you need not reply a second time.
Jon Thoreau Scott, Secretary/Treasurer