Tolstoy, after he became an anarchist, believed that education should be devoid of coercion, and inspired many anarchist inspired education experiments around the turn of the century (1900).

From Tolstoy's Wikipedia page: "Fired by enthusiasm, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana and founded 13 schools for children of Russia's peasants, who had just been emancipated from serfdom in 1861. Tolstoy described the school's principles in his 1862 essay 'The School at Yasnaya Polyana'. Tolstoy's educational experiments were short-lived, partly due to harassment by the Tsarist secret police. However, as a direct forerunner to A. S. Neill's Summerhill School, the school at Yasnaya Polyana can justifiably be claimed the first example of a coherent theory of democratic education."

Politics and Culture in Anarchist Education: The Modern School of New York and Stelton, 1911-1915: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1179429?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...

The Unlikely History of Tolstoy College: http://news.infoshop.org/education/unlikely-history-tolstoy-...