The End of the Classroom

From LeMonde, November 14, 2012, article by Maryline Baumard
  
“And the window panes return to sand/The ink returns to water/The desks return to trees…”: pictured as a schoolboy’s daydream by French poet Jacques Prévert in Page of Writing, in 1945, this process of physical breakdown is now becoming a reality. The disintegration of what seemed to be the very heart of the school–the classroom– is underway. Assaulted from all sides, its walls are collapsing. 

The attacks take the form sometimes of technology, sometimes lack of funding, sometimes the urgent need for individual attention. In days past, the classroom was four walls and a teacher addressing a group. Knowledge confined in an enclosed space and authoritatively delivered. But the model that once seemed eternal is now being shaken to its foundations.

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