In Secret Schools, the amazing determination to learn is highlight through the stories of schools held in secret. The book is divided into five sections.
In Section 1 Cultural Connections: Protecting One's Identity schools for students living in Lithuania under Russian rule, children of Japanese migrant workers in Brazil and Indigenous workers in Ecuador are profiled. In these situations the purpose of the school was to preserve their cultural identity by teaching the children their language and heritage.
In Section 3 Girl's Rights: Banding Together For Gender Equality stories of brave girls and women attending secret schools in defiance of being denied an education simply because they are female. In this section, the Flying University founded by Jadwiga Szczawinska-Dawidowa and others to educate girls in a Poland controlled by Russia, Prussia and Austria in the 1800's, Iran's Taraqqi Girls' School created in 1911 in a country where it was believed educating women was sinful, and the Golden Needle Sewing School in Herat, Afghanistan where girls were educated under the cover-up of a sewing shop to outwit the Taliban during their reign in the 1990's are featured.
Section 4 Spy Schools: Going Underground and Undercover presents secret schools whose purpose was to train government spies used to protect their countries from both external and internal threats. In this section, readers will learn about the spy school that trained agents for the Soviet Union's KGB spy agency, Camp X which was a secret spy school located on farmland in Whitby, Ontario Canada during World War II to train secret agents for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the top-secret Joint Services School for Linguists (JSSL) that was formed in 1951 to train young British men in Russian language and culture so they could monitor events and communications coming out of Russia during the Cold War.
Finally, Section 5 Radical Learning: Moving in A New Direction focuses on secret schools whose function was to create change. In the 1980's covert study groups or "reading groups were organized by students for students in South Korea to further the pro-democracy movement and bring and end to military rule.In 2014, billionaire CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk set up an experimental school that used a more open way to teach students. The school known as Ad Astra had a limited number of students and eventually closed. The last secret school featured is one that helps the children of suicide bombers, essentially reversing the radical ideas they have been exposed to so they do not become the next generation of suicide bombers. The school, located in Jakarta, Indonesia is in a secret location and has only a dozen students at any one time.
Discussion
In Secret Schools, Canadian author Heather Camlot explores a wide range of very different secret schools that have existed over the last few hundred years. Each school has arisen out of a unique need, sometimes to preserve a culture that is being actively destroyed, other times to help defend a country or to protect the rights of a group such as girls who are being denied the right to learn and reach their full potential. In Secret Schools, readers learn just how far people will go to get an education, risking everything, even their lives to do so. What we take for granted in North America and Europe isn't always so in some countries.
The book is divided into five sections, each with a title page done in a different colour. Each section provides a very short overview, with at least a page-long explanation on three or four schools that fit into the category being explored. Camlot provides the historical context for each school and there are plenty of comic type illustrations by Erin Taniguchi. Secret Schools is a fascinating read that covers schools that are well known and others that readers will never have heard about.
Book Details:
Secret Schools: True Stories of the Determination to Learn by Heather Camlot
Toronto: Owlkids Books Inc. 2022
47 pp.
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