In Pursuit of Utopia #8: “New Harmony (Pt. 2)”
From https://schoolsucksproject.com/in-pursuit-of-utopia-episode-8-new-harmony-part-2/:
What was the ideal for New Harmony, as well as what life was actually like there. What was the theory? How was it practiced?
Education at New Harmony: Last time we discussed his philosophy of “love” super-ceding classical instruction, concluding that Pestalozzi (while he might have meant well) developed a “soft-power” approach to education, which then came to New Harmony via F.J.N. Neef. We discuss how exactly that system of instruction manifested at New Harmony; what do we know about the actual techniques as they were applied?
In this episode and the next, we discuss how New Harmony ties into this series as a whole. It is a quintessential utopia, reminiscent of those that came before (More, Bacon, the Puritans), and foreshadowing those yet to come (Progressive America and the USSR).
New Harmony is a reference point going forward, as a kind of metric by which all subsequent utopian experiments are measured.
We’ll conclude next month by revisiting our conversation about ideology from the last episode, no longer tangential, but the perfect bow to tie up our conversation. Ideological possession (to steal a term from Jordan Peterson) is the heart and soul of utopianism. In the mind of the possessed, the promise of utopia fosters an ends-justifying-the-means mentality, which always seems to wind up in catastrophe.
ALSO DISCUSSED
-What motivated Robert Owen? Who were his influences?
-Is there any information to reveal Owen’s feelings about the Christian “Rappites” of Harmony, IN?
-What was the average day for the average person in New Harmony like?
-How did the actuality of New Harmony differ from Owen’s plan?
-What were the instructional techniques employed by Neef? How were they received by parents and students?
-What was the average school day like for the average child in New Harmony? Can we know? If not, can we reasonably speculate?
-Why do you think the experiment at New Harmony ultimately failed?
