ABSTRACT
The work discusses some prescriptions for the education of bodies in the anarchist experience of the Modern School of Barcelona. Anchored in a set of reflections on nature for the better development of education. We analyse different documents as a compendium of nature knowledge, textbooks, and articles published in Boletín de La Escuela Moderna in the period between the 1880s and the first decade of the 20th. century. Despite capturing the modernizing trend of education, it also recovered the tradition to defend a “return to nature”. The anarchists showed themselves attuned to the appeals of their time, but innovated in proposing an education that questioned the status quo, authoritarianism, and advocated the worker’s emancipation. For them, educating was more than instructing. For this reason, activities such as day-trips, travels, in addition to school practices in which nature was explored and understood, were essential for students to overcome obscurantism and ignorance that helped stimulate all forms of domination. In that experience, the education of bodies was fundamental.
Keywords:
History of education; Body education; Nature and education; Anarchist education; Modern School of Barcelona