vert's rather conservative thinking that Calvert would establish a Hoy on the subject. Instead, Calvert croft-type community in Lake asked his readers to get "unadorned County. It's unlikely he entertained once in awhile" fo r their health's the notion because of his extreme in sake. dividualism. He did, however, nur Whether clothed or not, skin re ture plans to broadcast his ideas. quired air, Calvert argued. He made Lecturing and writing aside, he set examples of superheated and under his sights on fa shioning a learning ventilated classrooms and sanctu experience particularly fo r children, aries in Chicago, where rebreathed which meant widening the educa air induced disease and sluggish tional channel beyond the pages of minds. Keep the windows open year The Open Road. around, he counseled. We ar light A number of progressive education weight clothing in winter and sum plans, such as G. Stanley Hall's mer. Calvert slept nude under the "child-centered" studies, and John sky in winter, cocooned in heavy Dewey's "learn-by-doing" Labora blankets, a wool cap shielding his tory School at the University of Chi bald pate, his bed warmed by hot cago, were well underway by 1910. water bottles fa shioned from gallon Influencing Calvert more were the tin cans filled with boiling water and massive protests in Europe and wrapped in cloth or newspapers. America fo llowing Spain's execution Needless to say, he passionately sup in 1909 of the anarchist Francisco ported the Chicago Outdoor Sleep Ferrer Guardia, the fo under of the ing Society when it formed in 1912. Escuela Moderna, or Modern School. «The goiJJ lo ve a cheerfu l Calvert discovered his Eden in Ferrer's schools taught manual and Lake County. He went there, he intellectual skills in natural envi grumbler. " Bruce Calvert wrote, dragging a 210-pound frame rons without punishments or grades supporting a 49-inch waist and a 40- and promoted pupil and teacher give inch chest. By 1913 he weighed 165 and take, while granting children li pounds, had taken thirteen inches cense to come and go and help devise off his waist, and gained fo ur inches their own curriculum. This libertar in the chest. Equally important was ian educational philosophy can be the insight that during the process traced from John Locke, through of regaining his health he learned Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Pes not to reason about his bodily needs. talozzi, Charles Fourier, Robert He had discovered a program of re Owen, Leo Tolstoy, Peter Kropotkin, juvenation that aimed at the auto and others. The establishment in matic, intuitive control of physical America of a Francisco Ferrer Asso requirements-he no longer had to ciation and Ferrer School occurred in think about it. Healthful activity be 1910.36 came part of the normal rhythm of To Calvert every child came into life. 35 the world unique, without original sin, only to be corrupted by a school system devised and perpetuated by Revolutionary Pedagogics a privileged class. This "Classic Sys alvert proved to him tem" stressed subjects having little self that his health to do with the life of the common per fu l Arcadian life-style son, who had nothing to say about its held lessons fo r others content. Every detail, he submitted, and with the convert's tended to destroy initiative, origi zeal he looked to share his insights. nality, intuition, and produced "shat In the libertarian tradition propo tered nerves, ruined digestion, weak nents chose to organize a cooperative eyes, hunched shoulders, crooked enterprise or propagate beliefs spines, dwarfed and crippled souls, through teaching, writing, or setting monkey or parrot inability to reason, up a school. When The Open Road mental incompetence, wishy-washy first appeared, observers speculated manhood, frivolous, anemic woman-
34 Traces