educological possibilitiesreasoning by analogy about

the Silicon Valley of the future of learning

SPRO

UT

& C

O.

Tell compelling stories about novel models for learning and research featuring science as a cultural activity.

Make tools & materials which generate those stories.

Create experiences we want by hand to learn what’s involved.

LONG-TERM

MID-TERM

SHORT-TERM

A H

IGH

SC

HO

OL IN

BO

ST

ON

TH

E O

PPO

RT

UN

ITY

★ Bottom 10% academically

★ Top 10% per capita spending

★ The reason families leave Somerville.

★ Looming, order-$10e6 investment

★ Socioeconomic stratification

IMM

UN

OSU

PPRESSA

NT

S

TOOL ENVIRONMENT COMMUNITY

MY

QU

EST

ION

What would a Silicon Valley for the future of learning look like?

TH

E H

YPO

TH

ESES

School offers unbeatable access & permission, especially in metropolitan contexts.

TH

E H

YPO

TH

ESES

School offers unbeatable access & permission, especially in metropolitan contexts.

Learning happens everywhere.

TH

E H

YPO

TH

ESES

School offers unbeatable access & permission, especially in metropolitan contexts.

Learning happens everywhere.

School politics will bend to school economics.

TH

E H

YPO

TH

ESES

School offers unbeatable access & permission, especially in metropolitan contexts.

Learning happens everywhere.

School politics will bend to school economics.

To invent the future of learning, we need a different (not better) Silicon Valley.

SC

HO

OL C

AN

BE R

EPLA

CED

1952

Hang out with people who look and act like you.

Daycare Learn to XMake (valuable)

friends

Social capital Human capital Network capital

You can speak proper English & perform affective labor & show up

on time.

You can build things or write an

Excel macro.

You’ll know other engineers or hedge fund

managers and their parents.

WH

AT

DO

ES S

CH

OO

L D

O?

serv

ices

cap

ital

sig

nalli

ng

GO

OD

LEA

RN

ING

Intellectual

MaterialSocial

e.g. tools, space, stuff

e.g. materials, notations, models

e.g. peers, elders, support networks

Intellectual

MaterialSocial

A M

OD

EL: W

EBD

EV

( )( )SU

BST

ITU

TE &

CO

MPLEM

EN

TA substitute for a product is one you will buy instead, if the first product is too expensive.

A complement for a product is one you will buy also, usually to make the first product valuable.

With your partner, take some time to brainstorm as many school substitutes & complements as you can.

Substitutes on green Post-its, complements pink.

When you’re done, put them on the paper.

*

* Turn to your right, figure it out.

WH

AT

’S A

SV

FL L

IKE? Silicon Valley had cheap land, proximity to technical

skill, easy money, ...

With your partner, take some time to brainstorm as many affordances as you can.

Extant affordances on green; non-existent pink.

When you’re done, put them on the paper.

*

* Turn to your left, figure it out.

What affordances—social, technological, economic, environmental, political and value—would a SVFL

benefit from?

INV

ERT

, NO

T E

XPA

ND

It is clear now, as it was not at first, why Illich reacted with

such horror to my saying that we should push the walls of

the school building out further and further. That seemed at

the time a good enough way to say that we should abolish

the distinction between learning and the rest of life. Only

later did I see the danger that he saw right away. Think again

about the global schoolhouse, madhouse, prison. What are

madhouses & prisons? They are institutions of compulsory

treatment. . .

A global schoolhouse would be a world, which we seem to

be moving toward, in which one group of people would have

the right through our entire lives to subject the rest of us to

various sorts of tests, and if we did not measure up, to

require us to submit to various kinds of treatment, i.e.

education, therapy, etc. until we did. A worse nightmare is

hard to imagine.