The future school

Usually, thinking about schools still conjures up visions of classrooms with blackboards and teachers up front doing their best to make the children facing them a little wiser. We think of small narrow concrete hallways, repetitive classrooms, strict rules, and a big wall that disconnects students from the outside world.

As the interest in more individualized education increases, so does the spatial complexity of school buildings. The school must be an ever-changing, simulating environment that offers choices, as in a shop where everything is laid out for you. Not only that, but children also must contend with other children, learn to do things together, take others into account, and work out solutions together.

When entering the school, young children are confronted with a lot of new phenomena in a new environment and community that functions like a miniature city, a potted version of the world, the world in a nutshell.

Not only does a school become like a city, with learning expanding beyond the school curriculum, it is important that the entire environment is educational. Then, not only will the school become a small city, but the city will become an exceedingly large school.