The Philadelphia Inquirer
Sun, Oct. 30, 2005
By Chris Satullo
The mingling aromas of chalk dust, Magic Marker and Elmer's Glue. The long, echoing corridors, waiting to erupt at the sound of a bell. The smell of fries hanging over cafeteria tables. The tang of formaldehyde inside the bio lab, recalling the ghosts of unfortunate frogs.
Most of us can still see, taste and smell what our school days were like. The memories are vivid and enduring. They define for us the thing called school.
Perhaps that's why we keep building the wrong schools in the wrong places with the wrong designs to prepare our kids for the world they will inherit.
That world is globalizing. It's a cliche, but true just the same.
Globalization rewards people who are lifelong learners, who can ride waves of digital change, not drown beneath them. It will smile on those for whom collaborative effort is second nature, those who can work fluidly across cultural boundaries.
Globalization punishes people who view learning as a once-and-done deal, who see it as a task of private drudgery, not cooperative enthusiasm, who value rote over flexibility.
Most American schools were designed to serve that second model, not the first. These buildings worked reasonably well for industrial times. They work less and less well as we move deeper into the watershed era of Moore's Law, the observation that computing power doubles every 18 months.
Our media are awash in chatter about this new age. But our school buildings, even the new ones, don't seem to notice. They still rely on "cells and bells" - insular, static classrooms, between which students migrate on a rigid schedule.
And we're building cells and bells with a vengeance. Thanks to demographics, school-equity suits and No Child Left Behind, the United States is spending a lot, about $30 billion a year, on new schools and renovations.
Public dialogues about these projects tend to be the stale ones where taxpayers grouse about "Taj Mahals," teachers obsess over classroom setups, and the booster club asks where the football field will go. Few question whether cells and bells are the way to go.
As we spend this pantload of cash on schools, many educators, architects and business leaders weep at the huge gap between what we're building and the latest thinking on how children learn and what they need to learn.
Bill Gates raised a useful alarm about all this in a much-quoted speech this year where he argued that high schools needed to be revamped to achieve a new version of the three R's: rigor, relevance and relationships.
Earlier this month, these issues got a full airing at a National Summit on School Design in Washington, organized by the American Architectural Foundation and KnowledgeWorks Foundation. The summit attracted a diverse group of 200 - teachers, principals, students, architects, education researchers and community activists.
I helped plan and lead the event. (Full disclosure: AAF paid me for my work.)
Here's an impressionistic review of some of the key points to emerge from the summit, which sketch the outlines of a better school of the future.
High school is so 20th century. It's axiomatic among educators that 12th graders have little patience for traditional classes. Experiments on how to recast their last months of high school are widespread: collaborative service projects; business externships; tech-driven, creative independent studies. Students often rave about these as rich, stimulating experiences. So why not learn the obvious lesson? Focus much more on these approaches, and high schools will need fewer traditional classrooms. What schools will need are tech studios and conference rooms, where collaborative, mentor-guided learning can happen. Many educators argue the same is true for lower grades.
Small is beautiful. Research suggests that students learn better in environments small enough for every adult to know them and for them to know every schoolmate. Alas, most of our schools - built to meet imperatives of convenience and cost, not learning - are too damn big. (Think Columbine.) Not every school can be as intimate as such celebrated experiments as the Met School in Providence, R.I. The money isn't there. But a "campus of academies" approach can break even large school populations into right-size, smartly themed units, without sacrificing the benefits of scale: lower cost, broad curriculum, strong arts and theater ensembles, and champion sports teams.
Moore's Law liberates. Very soon, it will be possible to put into the hands of any student a portable device with way more computing power than the PC now on your desk. These portable devices will be capable of moving effortlessly around a global "cloud of connectivity," as Roy Pea of Stanford University called it at the summit. Their archiving capacity could store what Pea called "lifelong learning portfolios" tailored to each student's interests and achievements. This could supercharge collaborative learning and interactive distance learning. School spaces need to foster, not inhibit this. Technology also offers a wonderful chance to improve equity for poorer students, without massive school construction costs.
Centers of community, not prisons. Let the community in, as schools are being designed and once they're open, and schools might regain proper support as public assets. Smart school design can enable off-hours public use of gyms, auditoriums and meeting rooms, without security pitfalls. Schools can also be the site of community services to aid children and families, though some educators oppose that idea as "mission overload."
Schools as textbooks; communities as laboratories. School design should teach students about science, ecology and community history. In turn, schools should use the community outside the walls as a learning space. Taking advantage of nearby museums, theaters, recreation centers and main streets can enhance learning while reducing the need to build expensive elements into schools.
Around the land, these ideas are being put into practice, from the "community learning center" initiatives in Union City, N.J., and Akron, Ohio, to the Interdistrict Downtown School in Minneapolis. At the summit, though, I noticed how often participants cited the same few examples of innovation. The gap remains wide between dreamers' sense of the possible and what gets done in the real world.
Whose job is it to help close the gaps? Education and design theorists need to work harder on how their ideas can work in the real world of limits and political pressures. In turn, teachers and architects need to be open to research-based innovations, rather than resisting them out of habit and defensiveness. Politicians need to stop reaching for the quick, dumb fix - such as forcing one-size-fits-all prototype designs on diverse communities. We need more business leaders like Bill Gates, who will stress the global stakes behind getting schools right.
And we, the public, have to drop our nostalgia for the old and our obsessive fear of taxes - if we want school systems to build public schools that work for everyone. Everyone, that is, except the frogs.
Originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on October 30, 2005.
Contact editorial page editor Chris Satullo at 215-854-4243 or csatullo@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/satullo.
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