 |
Amsterdam Watershed
An interactive forum on
innovative alternatives in learning environments
By Randall Fielding, January
2001
This forum sprang forth from the
AIA conference in Amsterdam, November 2000. Support
for this publication was provided by the
National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities. A print version
of the article appeared in the January/February issue of School
Construction News.
Bruce Jilk, conference chair, introduced
the conference as a watershed event and the period
from 2000 to 2010 as a watershed decade for educational planning.
Bruce tossed out numerous “mind grenades” about the future of schools.
A common theme involved
schools that are closely integrated with their communities and share
spaces with surrounding businesses, institutions, and residences.
Projects presented and toured included a school located above a drug
store (pictured below) and another built beneath residential apartments.
 Design
Share invited conference participants to ask Bruce a follow-up question.
Questions by 12 individuals from four countries were selected
for publication. Dr.
William DeJong, one of the most recognized educational facility
planners in the United States, was invited to provide
a counterpoint. Profiles, contacts, and references are provided at
the end of the publication.
Q Randall Fielding: Bruce,
you referred to the recent conference in Amsterdam,
"Innovative Alternatives in Learning Environments,” as a watershed
event and the period from 2000 to 2010 as a watershed decade for
educational planning. Why is this a watershed conference and
decade?
Bruce Jilk:
As the conference name “Innovative Alternatives in Learning Environments”
suggests, this event focused on schools that are outside the box.
Most of these schools did not exist 10 years ago. For example, in
1990 the U.S. did not have a single charter school. Now we have over
2,000. Home-schooling is one of the fastest growing educational industries.
This is reflective of the larger macro-shift in civilization —
from an industrial society to a knowledge society. The people who
study this (Club of Budapest [1])
tell us we are beginning the decade of the "Consequent Phase"
of this shift (which started about 1860). That is to say, the next
10 years are critical in forming the future. I took the liberty of
renaming this the "Watershed Decade," a term I feel says
the same thing only with a more optimistic connotation. Because the
event in Amsterdam disclosed the aspects of this cultural change as
it impacts the world of learning, it seemed appropriate to extend
that title to the event itself, Amsterdam Watershed.
William DeJong: I
do believe the decade 2000 to 2010 is likely to be a watershed decade.
As Bruce has alluded, this watershed period may have started 10 years
ago and is continuing into the first decade of the 21st
century. Just to name a few, during the past 10 years we have
experienced the demise of communism, economic globalization, embracing
the information age, the revolution of the communications industries,
and unprecedented economic expansion. At the same time we are
experiencing significant demographic shifts and a wide recognition
of the need to update the aging infrastructures of school facilities. Never
before has there been the opportunity for change to occur. But
will it? Will or should the change be incremental or revolutionary?
Even though I am one who personally often supports revolutionary change,
if history repeats itself, it will likely be incremental.
My background
is a high school teacher. Ten years ago I would have been hard-pressed
to believe we would be embracing block-scheduling concepts today.
There is also much on the horizon as far as schools within schools,
breaking larger schools into smaller schools, and new interdisciplinary
teaching techniques. There is a huge untapped potential for
major restructuring of education that is afforded by technology.
And there is no question about it, there are innovative, break-the-mold
examples, but they are few and far between.
I believe to a large extent,
education and the educational facility are evolving without much thought.
The major issues focus on how quickly and how cheaply we can get a
school building built. How to stop the leaks and seal up the
buildings. Getting the funding to renovate or replace buildings.
Creating the political will to address overcrowding and decaying infrastructure.
The classroom
is still the box; the school is still a series of boxes. In
10 years — will or should we have developed a new box or gotten
rid of the old boxes? There may be some isolated examples, but
by and large in 10 years we will likely still have the same box, found
new ways to rearrange the boxes, made them look better, made them
more comfortable, and put a lot of technology in them.
Personally,
I believe this will be an incremental change process unless the new
economy forces schools to change. The agrarian school responded
to the agricultural economy, the current schools by and large to the
industrial economy. I do not believe we have arrived at a school
or educational system that responds to our current and evolving economy.
Watershed decade? I hope
so, but I am also doubtful. The forces of mass production of
new and renovated schools, turnover of leadership, pressure to get
the job done, persons planning and designing schools with little to
no experience or understanding of education, all point to minor improvements
to the current mold.
|
