The End of School? The School is Dead, Long Live the School!

“The school of industrial origin, as a temple and monopoly of knowledge, rests in peace.”

In 1965, James Coleman published the famous Equality of Educational Opportunity in the U.S., “the most ambitious and influential study conducted in Social Sciences“ (Murillo, 2005). It is valid and current to this day. He stated that school contributed little to its students‘ learning (no more than 10%) and that families’ social and economic origins explained academic results. “Schools are notably similar in their students’ academic performance when socio-economic origins are considered. Socio-economic factors strongly correlate to academic performance. When these factors are controlled statistically, it turns out that differences between schools account for a small fraction of the variances in student performance” (Coleman, 1966). From that moment on, education research took a remarkable turn, originating the movement known as “effective schools” (Carabaña, 2016).

Fifty-five years after Coleman’s report, we are in a global pandemic caused by COVID-19, which has radically transformed our behaviors through stages and levels of confinement, social isolation, and social distancing. These situations impact all educational system levels (preschool, primary, middle, high school, and higher education), putting education at a crossroads never before seen and calling into question its structure, mission, meaning, and purpose. In only a few months, the foundations, planning, and teaching-learning relations have been dramatically affected. Some reports indicate that the consequences will affect at least one generation (Reimers and Schleiher, 2020).

“In light of developments around the world due to the pandemic, it appears that education does not need a school, nor does learning need a classroom.”

The validity of the question: Is this the end of the school?

Beyond how we resolve the contingency, if we give up the school year for lost, or if all students are allowed to pass, but somehow fundamental learning is secured, the question arises: Are these the symptoms that signal the end of school and, with it, the end of an era, of an educational system already in crisis? It is also necessary to ask ourselves, today, more than ever, what precisely is the school’s purpose when face-to-face education is not possible? What is clear is that homes cannot be schools.

In this pandemic, technological innovation in the educational system has emerged amid the reality of governments, universities, schools, and professors’ desperate efforts to “weather the waves.” The need to learn, unlearn, and relearn in different cycles and vital dimensions has never been more evident (A. Toffler, 1970, 2006). In light of events worldwide, it would appear that education does not need a school, nor does learning need a classroom.

When the pandemic comes to an end, there will not be new normality but a new reality. How will education be configured? What will we do when we return to the schools and universities? How will we recover lost time? From what point will we begin and recover? Will we “leave to the past what we saw online?” What are the schools, principals, and educators doing or should be doing? Delivering adaptive, coherent, effective, and equitable responses to this new reality where the structuring power of time and space that the school used to provide could be the answer (the classroom has been dissolved). The way to react to the COVID-19 pandemic is part of the answer to the end of school and its means. We must reflect, discuss, and construct a new answer to the old question, “What is the meaning of a school?”

School is dead!

In December 2018, at the International Congress of Educational Innovation at Tecnologico de Monterrey, a consensus arose from the academic cloister: The education of the future (university, school) will be very different from now, but we do not know what it will be like(Escamilla, 2019). In less than two years, that consensus became true: The future arrived, and current education is very different from a few months ago. Then, it is clear that “school,” the one existing before the pandemic, has died, and, along with it, the classroom and the teachers. The problem is that many have not discovered or prefer not to know and continue to function, hoping all this will pass and that when they return to “school” (place, space, environment), the “old and normal” life will be resumed. But no. That school we knew, we will never see again, unless, of course, it is part of a museum tour.

Knowledge is everywhere, partitioned, and distributed. In the school that was taught, the teachers who transmitted knowledge and “passed the subject” will not be able to return (if they return, they will condemn their students for life)—the school of industrial origin, a temple, and a monopoly of knowledge rest in peace. The subjects are over. Yes, those niches, redoubts, and trenches where we crouched without moving a meter allowed us to judge whether the students were worthy of passing; if lucky, there was time and desire to provide feedback. The classroom (synonymous with class) as space is now declared on a death certificate. It may have provoked concerns before, fear to leave it, or to distance ourselves from its thick walls, but at this hour, the orderly classroom-oriented toward a blackboard or screen is a distant memory. We realize that the classroom is not a space but a learning situation where memorable experiences are created.

Long live the school!

It is not the subject, the contents, or the assignments that are the school’s purpose, but the ethical and integral training it offers. The pandemic shows us that the school is more a symbolic space than a physical place, where respectful coexistence among human beings materializes, and the search for the meaning of life, the survival of the land and the species, the co-construction of citizenship, the relationships between rights and duties, the responsibility for the collective “we,” and so on.

Not only has the school died, so has the subject or course teacher. A new one arises or is born, emerging from knowledge, learning how to teach until knowing how to educate. Because it is one thing to know history, mathematics, biology, etc., and another thing to teach history, teach mathematics, teach biology, but a very different thing to educate about history, mathematics, and biology (J.M.Touriñan, 2016). So what could be the new teacher’s profile? An educator-builder of learning environments; designer of challenging situations (challenges, problems); articulator and negotiator of agreements, a mediator of conflicts; facilitator of experiences (projects); trainer in social skills; specialist in expansive conversations, etc. So, a new professionalism and teaching identity emerge (C. Day, 2006, 2018).

School has died, yes. The one that vowed and justified all its work enclosed in itself, thinking that the best students are theirs, superior to other schools and students, without contact or relationships with them. Competing to prove that it was better than the other schools or that it had more vulnerable students and that with that population, it got the results tha
t put it in some ranking.

But cheer up! The school does matter (Bolívar and Murillo, 2017) because it is the basic unit of change and transformation (Bolívar, 2012). Also, change is a necessity (Sanchez, 2018), particularly and especially at this time, and it will be pursued. This school, which we call “Open” to learning and undertaking the changes and transformations that society demands, has at least the following characteristics:

• School oriented, open, and constituted as a learning community (Stoll and Louis, 2007), where the educators are responsible for their professional development (V. Robinson, 2008). They comprise and work in professional learning communities (Lieberman and Miller, 2008; Gairín, 2015) and understand that student learning success is not the fruit of individual work but derives from collective effectiveness (J. Hatie, 2015).

• An open school that opens its old “classrooms” to different members of the internal community (parents and other family members), but also to stakeholders from the external community (professionals, various trades, and institutions) who work together to develop integrated learning projects. Everyone teaches, everyone learns.

• An open school connected with others to build networks of schools, teachers, and students (Earl and Katz, 2007) to share knowledge, projects, and learning experiences. Synergy and collaboration are habitual practices and not exceptions.

• An open school beyond “schools” (Bolivar, 2012), connected, integrated, including the community, companies, social organizations, universities, and neighborhood meetings. The “beyond” is not just local; it is also regional and ultimately global.

This nascent school passes:

• From subjects to pass to challenge-problems to be solved.

• From a fixed and established curriculum to one customized and flexible, materialized through projects (inter and transdisciplinary) to be developed.

• From subject professors to up-to-date, networked educators, creators of environments and learning experiences, developing competencies through problem-solving.

• From compartmentalized learning to a memorable experience of integrated learning.

However, this school’s degree of disjunction or tension will be determined by the congruency, compatibility, and urgency of the educational response that considers the technological and ethical dimensions. First, there is the urgency to design and create virtual learning environments, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and mental reality, along with data analytics and data science. The connectivity then becomes a social right (Piquer, 2020) that must be guaranteed by the State, and the use of this right, an unavoidable responsibility of the school. Second, there is a conviction that if the school, administrators, and teachers do not intervene in reducing social gaps, they contribute to maintaining and increasing them; in other words, to perpetuating inequality. Social justice, then, is an imperative of the school and its educators, which is deployed among schools, within them, and, particularly, inside the classrooms.

This new scenario creates great responsibility for directors and educators because social differences can be heightened and exacerbated. The school does not change the health or political situation of the country. However, it must ensure continuity of learning to not exacerbate differences and segregation in the future. In this reality, the collaboration among school leaders is vital to prioritizing curricular objectives, creating work teams and professional learning communities, designing and sharing scenarios, building flexible study plans and schedules, facilitating strategies, identifying available (realistic) ways to provide education, knowing the roles, expectations, competencies, and health of the teaching community, fostering communication and collaboration among students, and other things that must be done.

The king is dead; long live the king! It is part of the monarchial tradition to honor the deceased king but reassure continuity through the ascending monarch. It is in this sense that we announce the end of the school. The school is dead! (As we have known it.) Long live the school, the new one assuming the throne, heir to the deceased, but completely different. Shall we see it? It is already among us. Its coronation, however, will occur when we return to face-to-face classes.

About the author

Miguel Rivera Alvarado (mrivera@educamino.cl) is a professor of History and Geography with a master’s in Educational Quality and Excellence and a master’s in School Management, Ontological and Educational Coaching. He has 20 years of experience as a school principal in Chile. He is co-founder and CEO of ECO network and President of the educational corporation, EDUCAMINO.

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Originally posted on https://ined21.com/el-fin-de-la-escuela/

Edited by Rubí Román (rubi.roman@tec.mx) – Observatory of Educational Innovation.

Translation by Daniel Wetta.

Miguel Rivera Alvarado

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