Bruce Jilk is regarded by many in the field of school planning/design as one of the truly inspired minds, especially in terms of creating inspired learning environments around the world.

Going back to a series of 1998 conversations between Bruce and Randy Fielding, we found the following ‘timely’ gem that seems to be more and more true today, even if our design examples sadly remain limited on the most part. Here’s a snippet that could easily be said today without much effort at all:

For the present, many educational systems require that we build and maintain separate school facilities. If we have to segregate learning in school buildings, the most cohesive approach includes a small school, accommodating a broad range of ages, closely linked to the local community.

In 25 years, learning will be interspersed with the businesses, homes, and institutions that make up their communities, making schools as we know them obsolete. In terms of quality and timeliness, businesses have more knowledge than schools. Schools have old stuff. If you want the new stuff, you go to labs, businesses and the internet.

Whether or not we’re actually taking his ideas to heart as a design/education community nearly a decade later is entirely a different matter…but it doesn’t make his words back in 1998 an less true.

Read the entire conversation here. And then ask yourself where we’re getting it right today.