Educational institutions are said to be in crisis, to be outmoded, failing, unsustainable.

There are
plenty of experts and commentators who envision the end of the classroom, of the instructor
and also of the school itself. Why? The reasons, like those advancing them, come from many
quarters: The argument that “schools kill creativity” for example, can be traced back at least to
the 18th century, and has been recently revived by Sir Ken Robinson (2012). The case that
“learning is not the result of instruction,” but “rather the result of unhampered participation in a
meaningful setting” is found in Ivan Illich’s 1971 Deschooling Society (p. 44). Learning, as Illich
and others argue, is situated, and should occur in situations where the child is related directly or
indexically to what he or she is to learn (e.g., see: Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989, pp. 33–34).
Still others speak of the political and social obsolescence of school and formal education. They
see the task of education as a naively optimistic enlightenment project in a disenchanted, post-
industrial, postmodern era. These sentiments capture a key point shared by progressive,
collaborative and constructivist approaches to education and learning: that learning in the
classroom is the opposite of what it can and should be. Instead of being boring, difficult, artificial
and individual, learning should be fun, natural, authentic and social.Arguments have also been
made from the perspective of science and technology. Given ongoing advances in media
technology and neuroscience, the school or university increasingly appears as a “reactionary” or
even “feudal” institution, as media theorist Marshall McLuhan remarked over half a century ago.
McLuhan argued further:The sheer quantity of information conveyed by press-magazines-film-
TV-radio far exceeds the quantity of information conveyed by school instruction and texts. This
challenge has destroyed the monopoly of the book as a teaching aid and cracked the very walls
of the classroom. (1960, p. 1)There is something compelling about cracked and broken
classroom walls, about the destruction of the monopoly of books, pencils and teachers. It is little
wonder that these images are also mirrored not only in the arguments of critics and reformers
but also in pop culture (e.g., Pink Floyd’s “We don’t want no education”). In an age of social
media, twitch speed and Twitter, it is not difficult to portray the classroom and blackboard as
unnatural, unmodern, unexciting and uninspiring. These old mainstays are all readily seen as
outmoded and obsolete – particularly for new generations of “digital native” students. Most of
the hallmarks of this “digital generation” (Prensky, 2001) – like the iPhone, PlayStation or
Facebook – have no meaningful place in school, and their use in the classroom and lecture hall is
a question of tight control or, at least, of much hand-wringing among teachers. These
educational environments remain all but media technology-free zones, it appears.Although
critiques and observations of this kind are important, even urgent, they are certainly not new.
As the examples of McLuhan and Illich show, they’ve been repeated for decades. But they
actually go back for centuries, if not millennia. 250 years ago, Jean-Jacques Rousseau roundly
condemned books and formal schooling as utterly unsuitable for children:When I thus get rid of
children’s lessons, I get rid of the chief cause of their sorrows, namely their books. Reading is the
curse of childhood, yet it is almost the only occupation you can find for children… I hate books;
they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about. (1979, p. 184)Rousseau saw
children as products of nature; and he considered the rustic simplicity of the countryside to be
far superior to desks and libraries. About 125 years later, at the turn of the 19th century, John
Dewey made similar arguments. His concern, however, was not exclusively about the return of
the child to nature; he also wanted to take advantage of the communicative potential of new
technologies like “the radio, the railway, telephone, [and] telegraph:”The significance attaching
to reading and writing, as primary and fundamental instruments of culture, has shrunk
proportionately as the immanent intellectual life of society has quickened and multiplied. The
result is that these studies lose their motive and motor force. They have become mechanical
and formal, and out of relation – when made dominant – to the rest of life. (1897, p. 317; 1929,
p. 2)Technologies for transport and transmission, Dewey implies, form nothing less than the
“primary and fundamental instruments of culture;” and the radio, telephone and telegraph have
allowed us to shrink enormous distances and to reach vast audiences instantaneously. This
unprecedented change, Dewey concludes, “demands a corresponding educational
readjustment.” Like Rousseau before, and like Illich or McLuhan later, Dewey wanted change
that would free students from their desks and textbooks. Like Illich, Dewey saw “the only true
education” as one that happened in “social situations in which he [the child] finds himself”
(1897/1998, p. 229) – situations which often have little to do with lessons, books and exercises.
As a result, it’s almost certain that all of these educational critics would be very disappointed by
today’s classrooms, schools and even universities. They would probably balk at their continued
isolation from “the rest of life” and their emphasis on that “curse of childhood” – texts and
lessons, reading and writing.