“Building the natural society of the future”: The Peckham Experiment (1943) as an anarchist account of childhood and education

Abstract

The Peckham Experiment (Innes H. Pearse and Lucy H. Crocker, Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985) is a book about the Peckham Health Centre (1935–1950), which was a scientific experiment and community centre set up to identify and foster conditions of good health for local working-class families in South London. The book was offered as a “description of the progress of the experiment” and contains extensive passages and numerous photographs which evoke life at the Centre “from the point of view of the child”. The title quotation is from a review of The Peckham Experiment by anarchist Herbert Read (1893–1968) and encapsulates its enthusiastic reception by anarchists and radicals. This article analyses whether the anarchists were justified in their adoption of the text and the space it described, drawing on other published and oral testimony. It also uses the text as a way to cast light on what the philosopher of education Judith Suissa calls the “distinct” nature of the anarchist tradition of education and its significance as an alternative to liberal and child-centred traditions in the history and philosophy of education.