What if schools weren't factories for obedience but laboratories for freedom?
In a Europe traumatized by the First World War, educationalists point the finger of blame: the school, which produced “brave soldiers”. The task now is to build peace and develop a new education for a generation of children who, it is hoped, will never wage war again. How can we educate them without surveillance and punishment? How can we help them to emancipate themselves? To make children happy is to make them better adults, according to those who embarked on the adventure. Their names are Rudolf Steiner, Maria Montessori, Célestin Freinet, Alexander S. Neill, Ovide Decroly, Paul Geheeb or Janusz Korczak, each of them inventing educational methods. A Swiss pedagogue, Adolphe Ferrière, brought them together in the Ligue internationale de l'éducation nouvelle.
Direction
Grudzinska weaves seven visionaries into one quietly radical conversation across time.
Production
Gorgeous interwar archival footage that makes old schools look like art deco dreams.
Writing
Dense but never dry — pedagogy as suspense, philosophy as plot.
Director
Joanna Grudzinska
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The Ligue internationale de l'éducation nouvelle collapsed as fascism rose — many of these educators were exiled, imprisoned, or killed, their dream of 'peace through pedagogy' crushed by history.
Ferrière originally coined 'école active' — the active school — and the film reveals how this 1920s jargon still echoes in every 'student-centered learning' PowerPoint your least favorite administrator has ever made.
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