Following the Paris Commune and disintegration of the French left in the early 1870s, anarchist pedagogue Paul Robin turned to education reform.
While teaching French at the Woolwich Royal Military Academy, developed his ideas through the rest of the decade,[1] just as France began a turn towards a free, compulsory, and secular education system.
He received the offer through the old boy network: his friend James Guillaume asked head of primary education Ferdinand Buisson to find Robin a position.
The Seine department briefly used the building for administration in 1880, as Robin returned to France to run the orphanage[2] as a 14-year experiment.
Influenced by Charles Fourier's concept of la papillonne, he wanted students to have the freedom of moving between physical, intellectual, and moral tasks, so as to foster creativity.