Some Typical Contemporary Schools That Contradict Best Practices
Lawrence Stueck
Ken Tanner
SDPL
May 1999
Theoretical Foundation used to Judge Schools
The School Design and Planning Laboratory (SDPL) is working to develop an alternative curriculum delivery system for engaging the learner. We see the school facility design as an instructional material/context, not as a value neutral row of climate controlled boxes with some electronic equipment set in a grass field. Our research is based on the assumption that the school ought to attend to matters of curiosity, focus, interest, and environmental insight with great energy. The physical environment and the social structure of the school can be modified by providing comfortable, non threatening, yet challenging settings where curiosity and involvement are plentiful. The design of a learning environment versus a school building is a new image that is a practical strategy to refocus the process of education.
Our proposed school environment follows a constructivist, integrated, embedded curriculum model where students search for meaning, appreciate uncertainty, and inquire responsibly (see for example Celebration School). It encourages student-to student interaction, and thus fosters cooperative learning. Inter-personal, language and math skills are embedded in daily operations of the learning community. Students' suppositions, points of view, and quest for meaning are all addressed in the role play of school life. Students come to understand that they are ultimately responsible for their own learning. It abandons the mimetic approach to learning and uses practices that encourage students to think and rethink, demonstrate, and exhibit.
Our ideal school is designed to create activities that students
find engaging and from which they learn things that are of social
and cultural value. It is designed to have instructional time
for reading, writing and mathematics. These skills are embedded
in an integrated project based set of activities. The images shown
in this photo essay do not lend themselves well to these types
of learning activities.
The SDPL is interested in designing schools that meet curriculum needs of students. It is also important to build 'teacher friendly' schools. Our main concerns are safety and security, plenty of natural light, supervisable circulation patterns, views of life, aesthetic school houses, appropriate scale, access to the outside, flexible spaces, and value engineering.
The following images depict schools that we believe to be inferior in many of the above design concepts. We are looking for something other than "pretty good bricks." These are different schools designed by different architects. The SDPL is interested in educationally sound and developmentally appropriate environments for learning.
New, Bland, and Boring Schools
The buildings shown in this section are typical design solutions for schools in America in 1999. In many respects they have degenerated over the past 100 years. The parent entrance shown in these first two photos contrast sharply with the student entrance shown on the next page. In this image we note the typical choice of a field for the new school. In a county with many beautiful woods, a treeless field was chosen for this school. The quality of shade trees and the economic cooling aspects of shade on a building are eliminated. Having civil engineers and architects versus landscape architects and the end users (students and teachers) select the building site adversely biases selection. Note the dominate windowless kitchen wing to the front of the building, presenting a solid brick wall to the street. Furthermore, consider the scale of this monolithic building for 450 elementary school students and their teachers. "Institutional" does not have to be this bland, and inexpensive does not need to be this boring.