| Each collective organized one or two free schools for the children. Under the new order, the collectives of the Levant, like those in Aragon, Castile, Andalusia, and Estremadura almost wiped out illiteracy (70% of rural Spain was illiterate before the Civil War). In 1937 a school for accounting and bookkeeping was also opened with an attendance of 100...
The peasant collectives were especially proud of their "University of Moncada," which the Regional Federation of Levant placed at the disposal of the Spanish National Federation of Peasants. The university gave courses in animal husbandry, poultry raising, animal breeding, agriculture, tree science, etc.... The campus was installed amidst the orange groves in the countryside....
--Gaston Leval, Ne Franco, Ne Stalin
Public instruction is obligatory for children up to the age of fourteen. A new rural school some distance from the village has just been built and opened for all older children who have never before attended school. And in Mas de las Matas, two young teachers graduated from colleges in Saragossa, Valencia and Teruel have been placed in charge of two new classrooms providing for the education of 50 children in each room (18)
--Gaston Leval, Espagne Libertaire
(18) Fifty children per classroom may appear excessive, but considering the backwardness of educational organization in Spain, this represents progress. The
important thing is to combat illiteracy. The author taught as many as 52 students in one class (ranging in age from 5 to 15) in the progressive "rationalist" school
organized by the Spanish radicals and liberals.—Ed.
--Sam Dolgoff
The child's right to livelihood was also ungrudgingly recognized: not as a state charity, but as a right no one dreamed of denying. The schools were open to children
to the age of 14 or 15—the only guarantee that parents would not send their children to work sooner, and that education would really be universal...
Education advanced at an unprecedented pace. Most of the partly or wholly socialized collectives and municipalities built at least one school. By 1938, for example,
every collective in the Levant Federation had its own school.
--Gaston Leval, Ne Franco, Ne Stalin
In a largely illiterate country, tremendous quantities of literature on social revolution were disseminated and read many times over. The resolutions mentioned above
were more than just show pieces; they were widely discussed. There were tens of thousands of books, pamphlets and tracts, vast and daring cultural and popular
educational experiments (the Ferrer schools) that reached into almost every village and hamlet throughout Spain.
--Sam Dolgoff, Anarchist Collectives
The showplace of the collective is the newly organized Ferrer (libertarian progressive) School, housed in an old convent. The collective requested the services of 10
more teachers from Barcelona. School supplies, desks, stools, and other equipment are donated by the collective. The school is equipped with a hatchery and
greenhouses. From a comparative handful of privileged children, the school now accommodates l,233 pupils. Gifted children are sent at the expense of the collective
to the high school in Caspe.
--Augustin Souchy, Nacht ueber Spanien
On visiting the Local Federation of Syndicates our attention was drawn to a showcase, once used to protect the image of Christ, but now harboring a magnificent
photograph of Francisco Ferrer—a most agreeable substitution! (Ferrer was a libertarian educational pioneer, murdered in 1909 by the State in collusion with the
Church).
--Gaston Leval,“Collectivization in Carcagente” Tierra y Libertad 16 January 1937
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