Malthus and Owen 215should be removed from the family unit at an early age and
educated in nurseries. A system of rewards should be instituted
within a happy, loving framework to encourage children to
succeed. While academic achievement is important it is far from
the most important part of a child’s development—moral educa
tion and character building are the primary goals of his system.
Students in his school would not learn to read and write until they
were nine or ten, but by that time they would be good citizens.
Owen’s school was meant to be a happy place, where children
sang and danced and enjoyed themselves— a place where they
wanted to be and where they would learn to be good.
Owen believed that through education based upon behavioral
conditioning, a society free from misery, vice, crime and poverty
was possible and he set out to prove his contention. Utopia was
not simply possible; it was forthcoming.
When Robert Owen purchased the mills in New Lanark, he
and his partners were primarily interested in an economic
undertaking. But Owen had some big plans for this small factory
town. He incorporated many of his ideas about education and
factory reform into action in the New Lanark experiment and the
results were dramatically successful. Within five years Owen
had transformed a typical mill town into a showplace of clean,
happy, productive people. The workers lived in small neat
houses, which lined clean, well kept streets. The workers labored
in clean, well-ventilated factories, under managers who had an
“open door” policy encouraging suggestions or grievances. The
children played and learned at school where teachers were kind
and encouraging, where punishment was never administered
and where any question was considered worthy and was an
swered immediately.
Within the factory he made many changes. He improved the
organization of the mills to prevent dishonesty and theft and
established a system of “silent monitors” to increase worker
productivity. The silent monitor was a cube of wood which hung
over the worker’s station. Each side was painted a different
color: white, yellow, blue, or black. An excellent day’s work was
rewarded with a white side showing, a good day produced a
yellow side, a lesser day, the blue and for a bad day’s work, the
black was displayed. The improved working conditions, along