Towards the ‘Future-building school’. Lasting Legacies of Design and Democratic Practice
It must be a place which permits the joy in the small things of life and in democratic living.1
It has to do with stewardship. And before stewardship you have to have a great design, so that all of this can happen.2
Many of the schools designed by Mary Crowley and her contemporaries in Europe and the USA in the middle decades of the twentieth century are still in use and have been formally recognized as of architectural or historical significance. This recognition takes different forms in different countries but having explored the subject through relationships to this one life we can see common ground between these schools. Most if not all are schools for the general population – in the UK known as state schools, in the USA known as public schools – designed at a time when post-war governments in general, in spite of severe economic and material shortages, increased their commitment to the building or renewal of democracies through public schooling. Many are regarded as significant less for their exterior appearance than for the interior arrangements including furniture, fixtures, fittings and decoration. They have in common a building design that originally was rooted in a view of the child as an individual with complex needs that needed to be met to support the fulfillment of growth and development. The approach to education taken by these schools was progressive or child-centered. Since they have been operating, the extent to which their educational agendas might have been maintained or lost has depended entirely on the teachers who inhabited their spaces, especially the head teachers. But those teachers have been subject to enormous pressures both demographic and political.
Over the last two decades, across Western democracies, neo-liberal agendas have had the effect of increasing pressures on schools, teachers and pupils to perform and to compete with one another. Along with this a corresponding view of the child has emerged, less concerned with their readiness for learning than preparation for earning. An economic value system has largely replaced the philosophical and educational agendas familiar to Mary Crowley and her contemporaries. At a time when that same economic value system is coming under increasing scrutiny it is a valid question to ask how well these schools are equipped to meet current and future educational needs and in what ways they might undergo re-design to strengthen their value and prolong their life.
Going forward, it is more likely that new schools will be reconfigured from the old rather than complete new buildings constructed, as global economies come under increasing pressure to provide public schooling from limited resources. Architects across the world are operating globally under respective conditions of procurement that are very different from those experienced by Mary Crowley and her contemporaries. Neo-liberal agendas of a succession of governments have brought an end to the kind of centralized planning and guidance that was generated in the past. However the economic conditions for the foreseeable future are not dissimilar to those of the post war period when shortages of materials and capital forced educators to improvise and architects to invent. For these reasons it is likely that new schools will be developed from existing buildings some of which might have served non educational functions and some of which may have long histories as schools.
In the recent past, so called iconic buildings designed by architects with a global name and influence, complete with atriums and striking unusual forms in the landscape have been supported by governments eager to evidence their commitment to education. For example, in 2010 the Evelyn Grace Academy in London was opened, the first school building designed by the acclaimed architect Zaha Hadid.3 The school received a great deal of attention from the press because of the architect’s status and the unusual appearance of the building but the match between architecture and education is not its strongest point. Critics have observed, ‘in places it looks like a standard gridded building to which exotic geometries have been cosmetically applied’, and the approach to pedagogy resembles nineteenth century styles in its emphasis on discipline, uniformity, order and standards which begs the question – is this a school fit for the twenty-first century? This reminds us of Mary Crowley’s dictum that schools should never become the playthings of architects or governments. What is missing is any evidence of the dedication of the architect to understanding the growth points of education and to study best practice in schools today to design for the future.
While many more Academies will be built, the showcase Academy is from an era that had passed away by 2011, of sponsorship of public schooling via large capital investments, less concerned with long term educational efficiency than short term impact. Such initiatives are not repeatable for hundreds of new schools.4 A more sustainable approach for the future is likely to be less concerned with short term cosmetic appeal than with permitting greater opportunities for reinvention through the engagement of users in the re-creation and sustenance of their environments over time. A step towards this might be in users of buildings, teachers and pupils alike, coming to understand the built environment as a result of a series of decisions and choices about their lives that others have made. The UK Schools Council’s Art and the Built Environment project of the late 1970s, on which Mary Crowley served as an advisor, could be re-invented in the present to support user engagement and participation in school design. All this is important in defending and developing democracies if we are to see schools, as John Dewey did, as builders and re-inventors of democracy generation after generation.
The present generation of teachers, pupils and parents are not necessarily aware of the significance of the design features they encounter in school buildings yet their views are being sought over any aspect of renewal or redesign. Teachers expect to find something familiar from their own experience of education and training and they tend to accept the environment and work with what they have got as efficiently as possible. Architects often consciously or unconsciously refer to their own memories of school in planning and, with the exception of those who specialize in educational buildings, have little knowledge of the history of the relationship between education and architecture that Mary Crowley’s life story illuminates.5 This is the case not only in the UK and Europe but also in the USA and beyond. For that reason, this book hopes to have shed some light on the extent to which these schools were often the result of very considered planning not only to provide shelter but also to promote certain educational principles and values according to a particular view of the child in its development. Some schools have under enlightened leadership adopted a policy of drawing attention to the way that the school building was intended to work as ‘philosophy in brick’ such as at Crow Island school, Winnetka, USA where the school community has assembled a permanent display about the history of the design of the school.
TOWARDS THE ‘FUTURE-BUILDING SCHOOL’
In her book, Learning Futures,6 the educationalist and futurologist Keri Facer takes us on a journey to ‘the future-building school of 2035’,7 within a narrative that explores some familiar territory amidst features and affordances that new technologies will by that time have enabled. In this scenario of the future, we inevitably notice the new, the innovative, the fantastic, but also apparent are the contexts, characteristics, principles and values that have survived as important signifiers of school. As well as changes we see consistencies that are powerfully still present. Evident are characteristics that realize the relationship between education and architecture in ways familiar since at least the beginning of the twentieth century. Since learning can already happen anyplace and anytime it may be surprising to find that there is still a place and a building called ‘school’. But indeed there is and we discover a building strongly connected to the local community in rich and complex ways – some via the architecture and some via the curriculum.
In the 2035 school, the building’s walls are decorated to one side with a digital mural and to the other with greenery, producing food for the cafe: the pupils are producing art and food as part of their curriculum. Courtyards feature in the design of the school; one semi-public space leads to offices on one side, a museum on the other while social and cooperative enterprises, a cafe and small businesses bring the community close to the learning spaces. At the heart of the school is an inner garden-courtyard and around this on several floors are tiered workshops, labs, studios and study spaces – a whole variety of rooms, each one distinctively different from the next by means of size, shape, colour or decoration. There are home rooms on the ground floor where the youngest children gather at the start of the day, with easy access to the outdoor garden courtyard. There are design features that signify to the onlooker that this is a public place of inclusive intergenerational education and while each school might be different, certain characteristics are present in all schools. This includes a museum which is always different, reflecting the locality but in every school museum there is a corner dedicated to ‘the museum of uninteresting objects’ wholly curated by the pupils who are challenged to bring in an object with no interest at all, finding on the way all sorts of interesting features. The place therefore embraces locality, ownership through construction and a rich and growing democracy. Here we find a combination of high-level and low-level technologies and spaces that are flexible enough to support both.8 The wealth of human experience and potential not yet subject to digitization has value here and is afforded space within which it might be allowed to flourish.
Facer makes the point that the seeds of this 2035 school are already present in schools operating today and we need therefore to identify what these are and nurture them carefully and positively.9 Having explored the life of Mary Crowley and the influences on her educational planning and design we have demonstrated that the vision of school set out by Facer has been long struggled for and it is not an easy task to achieve. Mary and David Medd, who travelled so extensively in their lives visiting and advising about school design all over the world would have relished the opportunity to visit Facers’s school of the future primarily because it expresses so much of what they had always valued and believed was important. But the history of education and related government policies remind us of a tendency for schools to revert to the traditional model of education.10 Indeed, the reaction of one reviewer of Facer’s book who read the 2035 school as ‘a cross between Summerhill and California’s High Tech High’ betrays an ignorance of the history of curriculum innovation in relation to school design in the public sector that this book has attempted to counter.11 I suggest that to strengthen the possibilities of Facer’s vision of future schooling, we need to better understand our history as well as strengthen possibilities of participation and unite past practices with contemporary children’s voices.
REVIVING MARY CROWLEY’S FIVE ‘INGREDIENTS OF DESIGN’
As we have seen, by the 1960s Mary Crowley was confidently asserting the necessity of her five ingredients of design in school planning. She extended this to the planning of environments for the under fives in retirement during the 1970s. As a reminder, for schools these ingredients included: a home base; an enclosed room; a general work area; specialist bays; and a veranda or covered area. As much educational as architectural elements, these would in the hands of ‘good’ teachers enable the best practice in teaching to flourish. In any case, here we need to ask how relevant today are Mary Crowley’s ingredients of design in providing an educational environment fit for changing teaching and learning styles? How have they fared in practice and what additional ingredients of design are today powerfully shaping present and future relationships of education and architecture?
In reviewing the literature on modern school buildings and the planning of innovative schools, architectural psychologist Rotraut Walden has identified agreement that the following factors are agreed as necessary; ‘spaces that adapt well to various teaching and learning styles such as hands-on project-based learning, team teaching, presentations, and small group instruction, through open and closed plan classrooms and quiet rooms’.12 In his outline of design themes for the modern school, reviewed by Hille in 2011, an almost identical summary is identified, namely the need to design for school identity, community, variety of learning venues, student and teacher interaction, flexibility and adaptability, quality and comfort in the learning environment.13 Other commentators have noted the emerging ‘educational direction’ in the planning of new schools over the past two decades as to make schools look and feel more like homes. ‘The use of terminology such as house plans and neighbourhood plans by architects reinforces this trend’.14 In London, the purpose built UCL Academy has challenged the hegemony of the classroom with the concept of ‘superstudios’ – large teaching areas which have been specifically designed to provide the best possible facilities for students to use for: classroom group learning; project-based work and pair work; work in small and large groups; individual, independent study; discussions and presentations.15 This built in variety is what the Medds would have recognized as supporting best practice. Evidently there are many parallels between the discourses of past and present in designing new schools. However, there are important differences to be pointed out.
A vital element for the Medds in their planning was to avoid so much flexibility as to remove any suggestion of what might happen in any given space and end up with characterless open plan. Today there is a reluctance to prescribe what should happen in any school space outside of the functions of science labs and home economics. The Medds would have argued for the continuation of a degree of prescription for several reasons. First, they would have argued that while societies always change, children are always children and have the same basic requirements in any time or place and therefore their findings are still relevant. Second, teachers need to be reminded that schools are places primarily for children and only secondly for adults. Third, and most importantly they would have recognized that too much flexibility and openness results in environments that offer teachers the opportunity to re-establish the traditional classroom for reasons stemming from the pressure they are under to produce results. What was needed was not open plan but a ‘planned environment of opportunities’.16
As we have seen, Mary developed her design ingredients from careful observation of teachers and children in schools and by drawing on a legacy of progressive educational practice. Her confidence in their role in making schools fit the child and enabling a ‘good’ teacher to develop the growing points of education was nurtured over time through relationships with HMI and CEOs committed to a view of children as a creative and active agents in their own learning. For a short period of time in Hertfordshire, an additional ingredient was insisted upon by the CEO, John Newsom who in 1949 persuaded the Education Committee to require that one third of one per cent of school building budgets to be spent on art in the form of sculptures or murals.17
In spite of this attitude, pupils themselves were not consulted in the development of the schools designed at Hertfordshire in the 1940s nor by the Ministry of Education (DES) thereafter. It was believed that children ‘spoke’ through their observed actions and behaviours discernible to the trained adult eye.18 To this extent, their changing needs were regarded as essential to come to know and understand. As Christian Schiller asserted, ‘The clients are the children who come to school to learn. Observation of their changing needs can have a radical effect on established concepts of school design.’19 In the USA, there was a similar concern to engage with pupils’ needs. As we have seen, in the design of Crow Island School (1940), children as well as their teachers were thoroughly consulted about their ideal school environment.20
The terms of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1948) determined that children should be protected and cared for and given the means requisite for their normal development, materially, morally and spiritually. This was the context in which the Medds and their contemporaries were working. Significantly, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) ratified in 1990 by all countries except the USA and Somalia, included the recognition that children have the right to be consulted on matters of concern to their lives including their education. Over subsequent decades there has followed across the world a greater interest in bringing into play the views of children about all aspects of their education. There has been much consultation and some direct involvement of children and young people through participative design activities.21 But it is rare for children and young people to be encouraged to express their views about school as a whole and rarer still to be listened to.
In 2001, The Guardian newspaper hosted a competition inviting children in the UK of school age to suggest ways that school might be changed to become the school they would like. This resulted in the ‘Children’s Manifesto’ published by The Guardian and a book, The School I’d Like. Children and Young People’s Reflections on an Education for the 21st Century. Children between the ages of 4 and 18 in 2001 declared that the following features, characteristics, principles and values were important in twenty-first century educational environments. Here they are in summary:
The school we’d like is:
A beautiful school with glass dome roofs to let in the light, uncluttered classrooms and brightly coloured walls.
A safe school with swipe cards for the school gate, anti-bully alarms, first aid classes, and someone to talk to about our problems.
A listening school with children on the governing body, class representatives and the chance to vote for the teachers.
A flexible school without rigid timetables or exams, without compulsory homework, without a one-size-fits-all curriculum, so we can follow our own interests and spend more time on what we enjoy.
A relevant school where we learn through experience, experiments and exploration, with trips to historic sites and teachers who have practical experience of what they teach.
A respectful school where we are not treated as empty vessels to be filled with information, where teachers treat us as individuals, where children and adults can talk freely to each other, and our opinion matters.
A school without walls so we can go outside to learn, with animals to look after and wild gardens to explore.
A school for everybody with boys and girls from all backgrounds and abilities, with no grading, so we don’t compete against each other, but just do our best.22
Ten years on, in a similar exercise, The Guardian newspaper once again invited children and young people to have their say on the school they would like.23 The idea was to see what had changed in children’s views after a decade of government policies to ‘transform’ education through a school renewal and building programme with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) at its core.24 But in reviewing this more recent collection of ideas, suggestions and requests, it soon became evident that very little had changed in pupils’ priorities. While there were certainly suggestions of using digitized platforms and materials in more innovative ways than perhaps teachers were yet able to imagine, what remained consistent was a desire for more ‘real’ learning opportunities that could not be contained within the classroom or by any piece of digital equipment. There is also evidence that children and young people seek a physically more active engagement in learning in comfortable environments that respect their emotional and developmental needs. Indeed, there were many parallels and consistencies with how children and young people had responded in 2001 and with what secondary school age children had suggested in a similar activity carried out in 1969.25
The more recent 2011 ‘Children’s Manifesto’ summarized the ideas drawn from children who offered their suggestions in this second national survey. These ideas evidenced a desire to integrate into their school experiences the practice of caring for each other, for teachers and for other live creatures, for gardens and basic husbandry such as keeping livestock including horses and sheep in school playgrounds. These are practices and experiences that are less academic, resist digitization and to a large degree involve first-hand experience.
In 2011 pupils wanted schools to be,