Социалистические воскресные школы: история и практика

Political educational institutions

Socialist Sunday Schools (SSS) were set up to replace or augment Christian Sunday Schools in the United Kingdom, and later the United States. They arose in response to the perceived inadequacy of orthodox Sunday schools as a training ground for the children of socialists and the need for an organised, systematic presentation of the socialist point of view to teach the ideals and principles of socialism to children and young people. In the US, a Sunday School movement linked to the German American socialist movement emerged in New York and Chicago in the 1880s and again on a broader scale as part of the Modern School Movement during the first decade of the 20th century. An even larger network of American Socialist Sunday Schools, closely paralleling the British movement, was launched by members of the Socialist Party of America during the first two decades of the 20th century.

The earliest use of secular Sunday Schools by the radical movement began in Great Britain in the early 1830s, when adherents of Robert Owen and Chartism opened Sunday training schools for their children. These schools continued to operate until the decade of the 1850s, fizzling out with the decline of the early radical movement. In 1894, another Socialist Sunday School was created by trade unionist Tom Anderson. By 1912 there were over 200 Socialist Sunday Schools throughout Britain. In their early days they encountered opposition from local authorities and politicians, who argued that Socialist Sunday Schools subverted the minds of young people with political and anti religious doctrines and teachings. A national movement, the National Council of British Socialist Sunday Schools Union, formed in 1909, traces its origin to a school opened in Glasgow by Caroline Martyn and Archie McArthur, initiated by an 1895 letter to the Labour Leader by Lizzie Glasier. It was established as a protest against, and an alternative to, the perceived middle class bias and assumptions of regular churches. Its aims were to help the schools in their teaching of socialism. A manual was prepared for the use of teachers. It contained sample lesson plans and teaching tips to help teachers, together with suggested readings for socialist education. SSS leadership maintained that public education should be secular. Socialist Sunday Schools were purely educational. Their rituals and songs were free of religious content. They worked in close harmony with the Labour Movement and were concerned with the spiritual and social needs of the human race with regard to daily life and conduct. Socialist Sunday Schools, along with the Labour Church, were hindered by a lack of their own meeting spaces. They met resistance in hiring suitable meeting halls to the extent that, in 1907, London County Council evicted five branches from hired school buildings. A massive demonstration in Trafalgar Square ensued, addressed by Margaret McMillan who, with her sister, was a Christian socialist who campaigned for better education and healthcare for poor children. The Springburn branch met for many years in the Labour Party's Unity Hall in Ayr Street for lack of another venue. In 1926, Fulham Council refused the SSS permission to meet on Sundays because it was of a 'non theological' character. Socialist Sunday Schools encountered opposition because they were 'seen as subversive and as poisoning the minds of the young people of the country with their political and anti religious doctrines and teachings' and there were those who tried to discredit the schools by accusations of blasphemy and revolutionary teachings.

The earliest known Socialist Sunday School in the US was launched on March 1, 1880, in New York City by Branch 14 of the Socialist Labor Party of America. Some 30 students participated at the time of the school's launch, which was lauded in the daily New Yorker Volkszeitung as an institution of great benefit to the entire German working class neighborhood on Manhattan's East Side. The female members of Branch 14 were instrumental in the financial support of the school, which over the next two years conducted a series of concerts, performances, and fundraising social events. Other early American Socialist Sunday Schools were launched in Chicago during the last years of the 1880s. Four such schools were identified by police officials at the time and declared by the authorities to be of "Socialistic and Anarchistic origin". — and about 500 children are believed to have attended in all. One Chicago SSS, the North Side Sunday School, met each week for one hour of instruction by a member of the local Turn Verein, during which the ills of the capitalist system and the proposed alternative of socialism were expounded. An 1888 front page story in the Chicago Tribune editorialized that under the slogan "no religion and no church" children were being subjected to "an inculcation of socialistic views at an age particularly impressionable." Additional Sunday Schools linked to the organized anarchist movement sprouted up in various American urban centers during the first decade of the 1900s, springing primarily from the so called Modern School movement developed by the Catalan anarchist Francisco Ferrer in 1901.]] The primary Socialist Sunday School movement in the United States was that connected with the country's largest socialist organization, the Socialist Party of America (SPA). Approximately 100 Socialist Sunday Schools were established by SPA during the first two decades of the 20th century. These institutions were intended to supplement the general education obtained by working class children in the publicly owned school system of the country. Socialist Sunday Schools of the SPA were organized in no fewer than 64 cities and towns spread across 20 states and the District of Columbia. The publishers of the Socialist New Yorker Volkszeitung were quick to follow, launching a periodical to aid the effort in December 1908 called The Little Socialist Magazine for Boys and Girls. The name of the publication was changed to Young Socialists' Magazine in June 1911. By 1911 some 14 Socialist Sunday Schools were in existence in the New York metropolitan area. Coordinated by Socialist Party of California activist H. H. Lilienthal, more than 100 children were enrolled at the organization's January 28 launch, held at the headquarters facility of Local Oakland. While precise enrollment numbers are not available, one contemporary estimated in the spring of 1911 that some 2,000 children participated in English language Socialist Sunday Schools, supplanted by others in schools for children who spoke German, Latvian, Yiddish, and other languages of the immigrant community. Among the leaders of the Socialist Party's effort to develop Socialist Sunday Schools was Bertha Mailly, for a time Secretary of the New York State Committee, who encouraged prospective SSS teachers to read John Dewey's School and Society to provide a conceptual basis for their work. During the second decade of the 20th century the Socialist Party's "Young People's Department", headed by William Kruse, published an organizing manual for party locals seeking to establish Socialist Sunday Schools, including an extensive proposed list of books for SSS libraries. The Socialist education movement in America was closely connected with certain of the foreign language federations of the SPA, which taught children in their native tongue. Known to have organized Socialist Sunday Schools during this period were the Finnish Socialist Federation, the Ukrainian Socialist Federation, the Hungarian Socialist Federation, and the Lettish Socialist Federation. In tandem with the Socialist Party of America's network of Sunday Schools there existed a system of Sunday Schools conducted by the Workmen's Circle (Arbeiter Ring), a predominantly Yiddish language socialist mutual benefit organization. Founded in 1892, the Workmen's Circle was reorganized in 1901 and had grown to a membership of 6,700 by 1905. By 1924 the Workmen's Circle was considerably larger than the declining Socialist Party, counting a membership of 85,000 in nearly 700 branches spread across 38 states and Canada. The Workmen's Circle established an educational bureau of its own in 1908 and sponsored programs for both adults and children, including some specifically designated as "Socialist Sunday Schools". Some of these Workmen's Circle schools eventually allied themselves with the closely related network of Socialist Party schools, while others retained an independent affiliation with the Jewish socialist organization which had pioneered them.

The primary publication of the Socialist Party's youth movement was a monthly magazine called Young Socialist's Magazine, established in 1908. Although it would be incorrect to say that the activities of the British Socialist Sunday Schools were the sole influence upon the American movement, British publications and experiences were closely followed by American SSS activists. American SSS workers traveled to Britain to observe the activities of the thriving school movement there, and reported their findings upon their return.

According to Kenneth Teitelbaum, a scholar of the socialist youth education movement, socialist schools for children also operated in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Hungary, Belgium, and Switzerland.