Sweden’s Free No-Classroom Schools

A private school in Sweden jettisons the conventional classroom based education

From the Businessinisder,

A new school system in Sweden eliminated all of its classrooms in favor of an environment that fosters children's "curiosity and creativity."

Vittra, which runs 30 schools in Sweden, wanted learning to take place everywhere in its schools -- so it threw out the "old-school" thinking of straight desks in a line in a four-walled classroom (via GOOD).

Vittra most-recently opened Telefonplan School, in Stockholm. Architect Rosan Bosch designed the school so children could work independently in opened-spaces while lounging, or go to "the village" to work on group-projects.

All of the furniture in the school, which looks like a lot of squiggles, is meant to aid students in engaging in conversation while working on projects.

The school is non-traditional in every sense: there are no letter grades and students learn in groups at their level, not necessarily by age.

Admission to the school is free, as long as the child has a personal number (like a social security number) and one of the child's parents is a Swedish tax payer.

As I have been continuously pointing out, the information or digital age will radically change the way we live or do things.

And the secular trend will evolve towards the personalization of educational services. And moving away from the classroom model, as the above, is just an example of such transition. Aside, online platforms, and other competition-driven innovations will drive such transformations that will send the current firmament high costs of (industrial era designed) education spiraling down.

Pivotal changes happen at the fringes. As I earlier pointed out the Khan Academy’s P2P collaborative tutoring, free online education as the University of People and Stanford University’s expanding online courses could be representative of the early movers.

And as the cost of education falls, knowledge will surge. Thus, the knowledge revolution will serve as the critical backbone to decentralization trends.