The classroom of the future

Classrooms were stage sets for the drama of education from the time of Sumer, where schools were invented, to some time in the late 18th century when the idea of a state-run institution put paid to the guild- and church- run schools. After the state concept took hold, it wasn't long until the assembly line concept took hold, and et voila the modern school.

It has been my belief for thirty years that some form of apprenticeship->journeyman->master system needs to be restored because real 'learning' is always going to occur in the context of feelings about people, not things.

We can store and retrieve instructions and facts, but those are not the content or context of education. My experience getting two sons through school to some degree has completely confirmed this belief. When they had successful relationships with their teachers they did great. When they were at odds with their teachers they screwed up royally or went into retreat or displaced behaviors. It couldn't be clearer to a parent...but it still seems opaque to those who would design our 'systems' of education. They can't design systems of respect or affection or admiration...and those qualities cannot be ignored if you are talking about human beings and the reality in which their choices are made.

The apprenticeship system is prey to abuse, of course. But it doesn't pretend to be impartial, objective, and systematic. It admits it is highly personal, and succeeds and fails honestly on that basis. The pretence of universality that fosters aggressive state investment in education is bankrupt. Corporations will lead the way out of the concrete jungle, as it were, when they begin to adadvocate aggressively for sustained and sustainable human relationships again.

We are squeezing out the unknown in the "official" educational equation, and leaving a flatland maze for educating rats. We have been saying that since the first critiques of mass education began to emerge in the fifties. According to recent studies the rats are doing better. But the natural human propensity for breaking complicated things and overdoing simple things will destroy the "system" per se, and leave the individual adventure intact.

The individual adventure always trumps the cheese in the maze