The Prévost orphanage in Cempuis () was an orphanage in northern France best known for its experimental libertarian education under the direction of anarchist pedagogue Paul Robin between 1880 and 1894.

History

Following the

Paris Commune The Paris Commune (, ) was a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris on 18 March 1871 and controlled parts of the city until 28 May 1871. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French National Guard (France), Nation ...

and disintegration of the French left in the early 1870s, anarchist pedagogue Paul Robin turned to education reform. While teaching French at the

Woolwich Royal Military Academy The Royal Military Academy (RMA) at Woolwich, in south-east London, was a British Army military academy for the training of commissioned officers of the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers. It later also trained officers of the Royal Corps of Si ...

, developed his ideas through the rest of the decade, just as France began a turn towards a free, compulsory, and secular education system. Robin became the supervisor of the Prévost orphanage in Cempuis in December 1880. He received the offer through the

old boy network An old boy network (also known as old boys' network, old boys' club) is an informal system in which wealthy men with similar social or educational backgrounds help each other in business or personal matters. The term originally referred to soci ...

: his friend

James Guillaume James Guillaume (16 February 1844 – 20 November 1916) was a Swiss anarchist and writer who was a leading member of the Jura federation, the anarchist wing of the First International. Later, Guillaume would take an active role in the founding ...

asked head of primary education

Ferdinand Buisson Ferdinand Édouard Buisson (; 20 December 1841 – 16 February 1932) was a French educational public servant, pacifist, and Radical-Socialist (left liberal) politician. He presided over the League of Education from 1902 to 1906 and over the Hum ...

to find Robin a position. Buisson and another friend of Robin's, Aristide Rey, were guiding the Prévost bequest, in which the

Saint-Simonian Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon (; ; 17 October 1760 – 19 May 1825), better known as Henri de Saint-Simon (), was a French political, economic and socialist theorist and businessman whose thought had a substantial influence on po ...

Joseph Gabriel Prévost established an orphanage in Cempuis in 1861 and set aside money for its continuance after his 1875 death. The

Seine department Seine is a former department of France, which encompassed Paris and its immediate suburbs. It was the only enclaved department of France, being surrounded entirely by the former Seine-et-Oise department. Its prefecture was Paris and its INSEE n ...

briefly used the building for administration in 1880, as Robin returned to France to run the orphanage as a 14-year experiment. The orphanage grew from 58 to 180 children between 1880 and the 1890s, including boys and girls between the ages of eight and fourteen. He integrated his family with the orphanage, treating his charges as if they were his children and vice versa. This lost him the affection of his children but endeared him to his orphans. His disciple and biographer, Gabriel Giroud, was one such orphan. Robin sought to provide an "integrated education" that combined intellectual and manual learning, both arts and sciences. Influenced by

Charles Fourier François Marie Charles Fourier (; ; 7 April 1772 – 10 October 1837) was a French philosopher, an influential early socialist thinker, and one of the founders of utopian socialism. Some of his views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have be ...

's concept of ''la papillonne'', he wanted students to have the freedom of moving between physical, intellectual, and moral tasks, so as to foster creativity. He also wanted early education to be spontaneous, as if knowledge was transmitted by chance. Much of what is known about the Prévost orphanage's pedagogy comes from Giroud and the bulletin compiled by the students.

History

References

Bibliography

Further reading