CONTEST “LIBERTARIAN PEDAGOGY”

“Reflections, analysis and proposals for libertarian pedagogy today”

The libertarian movement from the beginning emphasized the importance of education as a means of human emancipation. With just changing a person, his/her way of thinking and feeling, one could change this society; with just teaching values such as mutual aid, solidarity, cooperation, comradeship, one could overcome social dogmas like sick competition, hierarchization or selfishness. With the passage of time, due to the indefatigable work which a lot of libertarians did, these libertarian values were gradually included in different educational systems worldwide.

Nevertheless, the old question arises: is it possible to develop values based on freedom using non-libertarian methods? Should not the means be in accordance with the ends? In view of this situation, we wonder about the validity of the libertarian pedagogy in the world today, if it is possible in a capitalist society to develop some learning methods which allow us to transform it radically. Could the libertarian pedagogy deal with the social evils as believed in the libertarian world? In short, is the anarchist proposal for a free education no longer valid? These questions led us to announce a libertarian pedagogy contest in order to initiate a debate about if the proposal raised more than one century ago in favour of the so-called “comprehensive education” is still valid or if such a proposal should be reformulated.

Biblioteca La Colmena

May, 19th 2009

The conditions of the Contest “Libertarian Pedagogy” are the following:

1º) The submitted works -in Spanish -have to reflect, analyze and/or make proposals for libertarian pedagogy today.

2º) The authors are responsible for the presented works giving over the publishing rights to the Biblioteca La Colmena under a Creative Commons license.

3º) There is no limitation in the length of the works.

4º) The works can be submitted by post or e-mail to:


Biblioteca La Colmena Apartado de Correos 618 38208 La Laguna, Tenerife Spain bibliotecalacolmena@gmail.com


A contact address of the author/s must be included.

5º) The deadline for the works is June, 1st 2010.

6º) The Biblioteca La Colmena will not send the submitted works back.

7º) To participate in the contest entails to agree to the previous terms by the authors.

This appears to be a call from a Spanish-speaking outfit, so there may be a bit of confusion as far as translation of some terminology goes. While historically, the term "libertarian" has been associated with movements on the left, and anarchism in particular (a synonym of anarchism is "libertarian socialism,") recently in the US, the term "libertarian" has been appropriated by the extreme right, which is capitalist and does NOT value solidarity, cooperation, mutual aid, etc.

In the rest of the world, the term "libertarian" continues to have its proper semantic denotation.

So think Proudhon and not Ron Paul, Bakunin and not Ayn Rand.

.....think 'limited state' and not anarchy....think 'individualist' and not some anarcho-syndicalist term like 'solidarity'