The Education Bazaar

Abstract

1. The gap It is not possible to review the future of anything, since it has not yet occurred. It is, however, not only possible, but even essential to view the present with an eye to immediate and continuing change. Change,in all things, is one of the only constants with which we deal,whether we are architects, planners, or educators. Architects generally are extremely receptive to the idea of innovation in school buildings, for instance, and planners are constantly changing their ideas about where or how big schools should be. Similarly, educators continually evolve and refine programs for teaching and learning. There is some tenuous liaison between architects and planners, but it is usually only one-way with the planners briefing the architects through pre-conceived zoning regulations and financing programs. The planners receive very little in return from the architects, because the communication and administration systems are not organized to work that way. In the same way the educators and the administrators of education instruct both planners and architects in an uninflected monologue. In addition, in all three disciplines, Education itself has too long been a preserve of bureaucracy. The consequent atrophying of the educational part of Education is not at all suprising when form, size, cost,location and content have all been left largely to the unimaginative,often incompetent minority which administers for us. The thorny wood of Academe is jealously guarded by the lynxes, lions and she-wolves of bureaucracy. And intellectual speculation—which is not necessarily idle but could be profitable—about what schools, or non-schools, might be is pushed farther and farther into the future,where it perishes.