In recent years, an increasing reaction against progressive education has set in. Today, many people believe the theory itself erroneous and that it should be thrown overboard. There is a strong movement afoot for more and more discipline, and even a campaign to permit physical punishment of pupils by public school teachers. Perhaps the most important factor in this reaction is the remarkable success in teaching achieved in the Soviet Union. I believe the idea of freedom for children was not wrong, but the idea of freedom has almost always been perverted.
Overt authority is exercised directly and explicitly.
If you do not, certain sanctions will be applied against you. Anonymous authority tends to hide that force is being used. Anonymous authority pretends that there is no authority, that all is done with the consent of the individual. The change from the overt authority of the nineteenth century to the anonymous authority of the twentieth was determined by the organizational needs of our modern industrial society. The concentration of capital led to the formation of giant enterprises managed by hierarchically organized bureaucracies.