Robert Owen's New Lanark
In Great Britain at the beginning of the 19th century,
co-operative living and learning were promoted by early advocate of socialism Robert Owen. In 1817 he founded a school in his cotton mill community of New Lanark in Scotland. This was based on the principles of co-operation, that children should be at school and not labouring in the mills, that the rules of the playground should be to be happy and help others to be happy. He employed adults who loved children, not teachers, and saw children as naturally inquisitive. He saw geography and comparative religion as ways that children might learn that who they were to become was defined by the culture and religion they were brought-up in. He believed that we could create co-operative based communities through learning and reason. His work was so important that New Lanark is a UNESCO heritage site, and at the time people from around the world would visit it to see how it worked.