Most people agree today that our schools are failing for vast numbers of students. Many of these young people are not learning, are bored, and are hostile toward the experience. The different subjects often don't make sense together and are seen as abstract, isolated facts. Many students see learning and school as irrelevant to their lives - and/or as something in which they can't succeed. As a result, the dropout rate is alarmingly high and rising. It is a sad, sorry situation - for the individual students and the total community.

Not only are these young people missing out today, but their futures will be seriously impaired. The quality of our nation's cultural richness and diversity will also be weakened, and our economy will suffer, through our future uninspired and unskilled workforce.

An irony here, is that learning, study, and research can be joyous, empowering, and interesting. When totally involved and supported, students of all persuasions and abilities do experience self-esteem, a sense of fulfillment, excitement, and wonder. Many of us have internalized this kind of learning experience and therefore know it's possible. And, many of us also believe that ideally, learning is a life-long process—not limited to a school room or a few, short years.

But, perhaps even more importantly, our flawed educational system raises another question. Are our grave educational problems symptoms of larger societal problems—a result of the pervasive fragmented thinking and being in much of our lives in school and beyond? And if so, is it even possible to transform our lives, our society, and the learning experiences within them, as well as our attitudes and practices toward them? This certainly raises a series of large interrelated problems and questions.

Is it possible for us to reinvent our schools in our communities and provide learning experiences that will enable all students to be motivated and have positive experiences while raising their learning curve and preparing them for the global world of information and communication of the 21st century? And is it possible to create integrated learning systems for the benefit of the total community as well?

Education as Ecology

The answer is a resounding, yes. It is very possible and also a functional necessity to do so.

A synergistic approach that combats fragmentation is essential—one that is interdisciplinary , community-oriented, and involves all the resources of the locale: human, ecological, economic, historic, technological, and aesthetic. A way to do this is to create intellectually and visually exciting indoor/outdoor interactive learning environments integrated with programs and curricula that stimulate and support creativity and choice, and that motivate students and others to want to learn -- so that they can learn.

Most people, regardless of their age, have little comprehension or awareness of the connections between different life systems—biological, cultural, or technological—or, the sensitivity to notice that culture is indeed a part of nature. Who we are as a species, and what we do on the planet and in space is part of a larger whole. Everything is interconnected.

There are ways to transform these problems within education and society at large and develop a healthy future where integrated systems and diversity are embraced, and learning, creating, and maintaining the environment is celebrated. But, to do so we must think wholistically and integrate our resources—biological, cultural, and technological—ecologically and artfully. Just as we must understand our planet to be an ecological system, we must understand learning, education, and other aspects of living—the many processes and results as an integrated whole - to be an ecological system of interrelated parts. Otherwise we will continue to suffer from disjointed fragments that are ineffectual and dysfunctional— both discretely and together. It is a functional necessity that we develop an educational environment and community cultural system with synergy as its goal and process.

A Vision of the School of the Future

The school of the future can be an indoor–outdoor living,learning laboratory open days, evenings and weekends. It will function as a community magnet that attracts and involves a multigenerational public. Students, teachers, historians, artists, environmentalists, ecologists, horticulturists, business people, scientists, foreign dignitaries, media technologists, senior citizens, families, and others will be involved in the creation, use, maintenance, and communication of its richly varied environments and programs, curricula, and creative research institutes. All of the programmatic elements will be integrated with its diverse environments —built and ecological.

Students will want to learn because learning will be experienced as fun, useful, fascinating, and "the thing to do". Teachers will want to teach because they will be appreciated and supported—and they will come from all fields and sectors of the community.

In the school of the future all participants will be thought of as educators—including the students - albeit demonstrating varying degrees of expertise. Teachers will be guides—not authoritarian figures—and love and support will be given to students. Teacher "control" and student discipline, which today takes up much precious class time, will become unnecessary and even obsolete.

Class size will be much smaller and many of the classes and workshops will be multigenerational with children and adults participating together and in some case, working as research teams. Students will be respected and given many choices and they will be held responsible for their choices—in behavior and subject matter.

The school of the future will integrate and balance technology, culture, and ecology with the traditional school subjects, through environments integrated with programs and curricula designed to foster observation, creative research, creation, communication, and understanding of the interconnections between biological, cultural, and technological systems. There will also be a profound appreciation fostered of the syncronicity, similarity, and diversity that exists in the universe.

The School of the Future as a Living Library and Life Frame of Diversity.

Each school of the future can be though of as A Living Library—an embodiment of local cultural and ecological diversity. The local school of the future with its integrated environments and programs, curricula, and participants from all sectors of the community can also be thought of as a Life Frame. A Life Frame integrates all the resources of a locale: human, ecological, economic, historic, technological, and aesthetic so that they work better together. The Life Frame results in (an) integrated site and situation sensitive indoor/outdoor environments linked with programs and curricula.