Between imagination and reality: Tracing the legacy of childhood as a utopian space in the free schooling and unschooling movements

Following in the tradition of the Frankfurt School, the New Left idealized childhood as a period of revolutionary spiritual freedom. This vision opened the door to radical pedagogical experiments led by the creators of the "Free School movement," who created schools characterized by the absence of hierarchy between students and teachers, individual learning, and child autonomy, with the aim of raising—free from the destruction of individuality enforced by traditional education, the state, and technocracy—a new generation, capable of overturning the existing social order. This approach was renewed by the “unschooling” movement, a form of home schooling in which the child learns on his or her own. Nevertheless, in the mid-1970s, as unschooling gained popularity, a paradigm shift took place: alternative education, while still celebrating childhood and its rights, became an end rather than a means (adapting to the individual needs of each child, rather than changing society), and was, in fact, mostly limited to the elite. Today it seems that returning to the original societal ideals of the Free School Movement would only be possible through community investment in alternative education.