Teaching Without a Syllabus: Anarchist Pedagogy in the Literature Classroom

Published in Radical Literary Inquiry , Author : Carter, Mason ORCID iD : 0009-0004-6420-4114 Abstract Anarchist pedagogy, drawing upon Francisco Ferrer’s Modern School movement and the continuing experiments of contemporary free schools, offers a coherent alternative to hierarchical models of literary instruction by affirming the spontaneous energies of the learner, the diffusion of authority throughout the learning community, and the organisation of study around mutual inquiry rather than predetermined curricular command. This essay examines the principles of rationalist and libertarian education elaborated by Ferrer, traces their extension through twentieth- and twenty-first-century free-school practice, and elaborates their implications for the teaching of literature. The analysis demonstrates that a literature classroom organised through voluntary association, collective deliberation, and the refusal of grades, fixed syllabi, and punitive evaluation sustains both individual initiative a…