LA RUCHE -THE BEEHIVE
In 1904, Sébastien Faure, with only a small sum of money, began by going into debt. He rented a large farm on a 25-hectare estate in a place called Le Pâtis de Rambouillet. To equip the premises, he bought everything on credit. Around sixty people lived there permanently: 40 children from poor backgrounds — what we would today call disadvantaged — who paid no boarding fees, and 20 volunteer adults.
Drawing inspiration from Paul Robin's pedagogical proposals, the goal was to develop to the fullest all of the child's faculties: physical, intellectual, and moral. To preserve the school's independence, Sébastien Faure refused all subsidies. The proceeds from his lectures covered its operating costs. Later, the school transformed into a full cooperative and eventually managed to become self-financing.
In his introduction to Sébastien Faure's Pedagogical Writings, Jean-Marc Raynaud explains the foundations on which Faure wanted to build and develop La Ruche :
"La Ruche, because it claimed to belong to the labour movement and its capacity to take its affairs into its own hands, also had to take its own affairs into its own hands. The farm's produce — milk, cereals, poultry, honey — as well as the work of carpentry, bookbinding, blacksmithing… were meant to allow it to be self-financing. And to be self-financing not by selling its products on the market for profit, but within the framework of production and consumer cooperatives. An integral cooperative, because it was at once an educational space, a place of production and of consumption. La Ruche was to be at the heart of a process of generalised self-management, laying the foundations for a global alternative to the capitalist system." (p. 18)
The printing workshop activities and the large annual festival held in August, which attracted many militants and sympathisers, also provided a substantial contribution to the operating budget. Postcards, while helping to popularise the school, contributed as well.
Opened in 1905, La Ruche thrived and the experiment lasted until 1917. The restrictions and supply difficulties imposed by the war eventually led to the closure of the school in February 1917.
Sébastien Faure himself described what La Ruche was:
La Ruche
Brief Information
This work of solidarity and education, located in Rambouillet (Seine-et-Oise), was founded and is directed by Sébastien Faure. It raises about forty children of both sexes.
No rankings : neither punishments nor rewards.
Its Programme
Through life in the open air, a regular diet, hygiene, cleanliness, walks, sports and physical activity, we shape healthy, vigorous and beautiful human beings.
Through rational teaching, engaging study, observation, discussion and critical thinking, we shape cultivated minds.
Through example, gentleness, persuasion and tenderness, we shape upright consciences, firm wills and affectionate hearts.
La Ruche receives no subsidies from the State, the department, or the municipality.
It is up to people of heart and intelligence to support us, each according to their means. (...)
What La Ruche Still Is
La Ruche is not a school. A school is an establishment founded for the purpose of teaching and which, strictly speaking, has no other aim. Teachers come to give their classes and pupils come to attend them. The teachers' mission is to teach what they know, and the pupils' duty is to learn what it is indispensable or useful for them not to ignore. Such, in practice, is the purpose of a school. The school is open to all children from the same neighbourhood, the same town, or the same region. It must not, without serious and specific reason, close its doors to anyone.
Schoolchildren remain with their families, who are responsible for housing, clothing, feeding, and caring for them if they are ill, etc.
The school that takes charge of housing, feeding, and caring for the child — the school which, to put it in a word, partially replaces the child's family and takes its place — is a boarding school.
A boarding school receives from the child's family a fee covering the costs and services of the instruction, education, housing, and food it provides.
La Ruche is not a boarding school, and no child is admitted or stays there on a "paying" basis. Some parents, thanks to their work, spontaneously send money to La Ruche on a regular basis or from time to time. They feel it is a matter of conscience not to fail in this. These parents are right, and they are voluntarily fulfilling a duty. Their payments go into La Ruche's funds ; their child is neither better cared for nor more loved than the others. But these small sums are intended to prevent the child from being entirely dependent on the organisation and have the result of reducing my personal effort.
Finally, La Ruche is not an orphanage. We have only a few orphans, and even they became orphans after they came to us.
For it to be an orphanage, La Ruche would need to have a regular status, provided for and regulated by law or by the statutes of a properly constituted society ; or it would need to have ties with Public Assistance, which, in return for payment, would entrust it — as it does with other organisations — with the children it has taken in and who continue to belong to it.
La Ruche is therefore neither a school, nor a boarding school, nor an orphanage.
Sébastien Faure
Thoughts of an Educator
(Modest treatise on physical, intellectual and moral education)
in Pedagogical Writings , Paris, Éditions du Monde libertaire, 1992, pp. 123, 130 and 131.
