Not A Blog™

Honestly, I thought this nonsense was over in the 50’s. I was wrong; it’s still around.

I’m talking, of course, about the Anything of the Future moniker. Nobody has mentioned this yet, so I’m going to go ahead and say it. If you feel the need to describe something as the ______ of the future, it’s not.

In particular you may have seen the School of the Future. I wish I could say that this was the media’s doing, sticking inappropriate names on someone else’s good idea. It’s not. It’s actually Microsoft’s name for this thing. By virtue of the fact that Microsoft has named this social experiment as the School of the Future, they have assured that it will not be.

The problem with saying that something is the worst idea you’ve ever heard is that the very next week, someone is going to come out with a new Worst Idea You’ve Ever Heard—and it’ll be even worse. Therefore, the best I can do is to say that this is just about the worst idea I’ve ever heard. The media often confounds details, so I get these straight from the software giant itself.

As a buzz-phrase, it sounds fine. It had better; that’s point of buzz-phrases. But in what way does the school actually improve on regular schools? Let’s see what Microsoft has to say:

The School of the Future project should involve all stakeholders, including students, parents, community organizations, and businesses.

No shit! You think? If we’re not doing this in school districts now, rebranding the school as something futuristic and shiny won’t change anything.

Note: there are about 800 of these “no shit” phrases. I just used the first one.

Digital tools as well as electronic and print media should be used to eliminate barriers of language and economics.

Am I the only one who sees that this will accomplish the exact opposite of what it’s intended? How do digital tools eliminate barriers of economics? Last time I checked, they help define these barriers. Introducing more of them won’t make the barriers go away.

The technical infrastructure must support current and future mobile and fixed technical equipment and should enable the sharing of all data types.

You have to be freakin’ kidding me. Current and future requirements? How the hell do you support future requirements!? They haven’t been invented yet! Earth to Microsoft: our school was still using slide projectors as recently as 2001. Not an old version of powerpoint, slides. If you build your foundation on technology, you will fail. Schools will not update their equipment often enough to support your vision. This doesn’t even address the idea that if you need all this fancy technology to execute your vision, it’s probably focused too much on the technology itself, and not enough on actual learning. If you don’t need it, why is it there?

…The [learning] environment should be independent of changes in faculty and administrative personnel.

Isn’t this the definition of a classroom? Why is this “futuristic”?

The school should act as a learning laboratory where staff and students can design, carry out, and evaluate appropriate projects to enhance the teaching and learning process.

Wrong. The school should act as a school. What happens in laboratories? Anyone? Why, yes, sometimes their experiments do fail. Hmm…

Who’s head rolls when the socio-economic experiments in the “learning laboratory” go awry? Some kids are going to get screwed big time. Hope they aren’t yours.

The School of the Future “will be the most unique educational structure in the world,” said Jim Nevels, chair of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission.

Not according to Microsoft’s brief it won’t. The School of the “Future” is, as seen here, what schools are already striving for. The School of the “Future” is a regular school with more Microsoft products. Evidently, they do not consider Apple computers to be “technology”.

So here’s what’s going to happen to the School of the “Future”. Initially it will be ahead of everybody else. Then the board will realize that all this technology is relatively expensive to maintain. Upgrades will be put off to the point where the entire system would need to be overhauled to catch up to the rest of the world. At this point, the school will become just like every other public school in the country. The experiment will have been declared a success despite doing, at best, mediocre. Someone will make a legitimate sounding excuse as to why the project cannot be continued in the “future” vein (probably a combination of financial reasons and local politics), and the School of the “Future” will slowly cross over into the realm of the mundane, leaving the public school system of the United States fundamentally unchanged.

But as to why people haven’t figured this out yet, I can’t understand: nothing you make to be representative of the “future” will turn out to be the future. Don’t even bother because you’re wasting everyone’s time.

-Ted