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| Planning
tomorrow's schools |
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11. Use the entire community as a resource
Again, John Eliot, Kimi Ora, Mt. Edgecumbe, Freyberg, the Key School in Indianapolis, and many of the other models we have quoted, underscore the common sense of moving schooling away from the traditional classroom. How the world ever came to confuse classroom teaching with real learning is a mystery of its own. Probably only the dedication of enthusiastic teachers, principals and administrators has enabled this system to last so long - in spite of itself. But that tradition is rapidly coming to an end. And the lessons are clear from other industries that failed to correctly analyze their future role in a world of rapid change. After opening up much of the world last century, railway company after company collapsed, because they thought they were in the railways business, not the people-moving and transport business. Hollywood almost died through the start of television, because it wrongly thought it was in the movie-film business, not the entertainment business.
And if schools do not lead the educational changes, and make themselves the new community resource centers for lifelong learning, then the world is well served by other innovators waiting to fill the gap.
12. For everyone: the right to choose
The coming changes will be dictated, we believe, by another inevitable fact of life: the growing one-world economy and the consumer's right to choose.
The whole world now is not only one giant electronic, automobile, fast-food and financial services market; it is also a major one-world educational market. It is now possible for the works of our most brilliant educators and schools to be translated into forms that can, in turn, be made available instantly to anyone who wants them, anywhere, any time. The day of the school monopoly on education is rapidly ending.
This presents both corporations and educational organizations with the world's biggest business challenge: and possibly the most exciting marriage in history.
Contents Page Preface
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