The School of a Thousand Years from Now

The Elementary designed by us at Polymath Research is based on the theory of the Elementary program (the elementary school curriculum) for the 6–12 phase in Montessori education¹. Building on that foundation, we worked out the physical conditions for human development and adjusted “school” so that it would have a cosmic structure. The result is a style that differs greatly from what society today takes for granted.

A Mobile City School

For example, we do not think of “school” as something fixed. Our Elementary is “mobile”: a “moving school.” It is designed around the core principle that both individuals and groups can always move about. We have taken what Montessori Elementary calls “Going Out,” the freedom to move around the city, and extended it to every activity. For us humans, the thinking animal, freedom of movement is indispensable.

The style of “going to the same place at the same time every day” is adopted by almost every form of education, including Montessori Elementary, but our Elementary does not adopt it. Instead, we have adopted a style in which “you decide for yourself what place to go to at what time.” This matches the reality of a universe in which everything can move without limit, and which is relative and non-simultaneous. Because we give priority to being cosmic over being social, we expect that quite a few people will find this style inconvenient (which, properly speaking, is strange).

Everything Futuristic Begins with the Passion of a Few

We have already taken into account that, like everything futuristic, our Elementary does not necessarily reflect the demands of today’s society. However widespread something eventually becomes, it always begins with the passion of a few people. It is the fate of everything futuristic to begin by rescuing the few who truly need it, and so it cannot meet the needs of the majority of today’s society.

We regard this as a problem that will resolve itself naturally, since society itself changes as the times progress. Even so, in a way that anticipates the future, we also hope to offer a supernatural solution to the problem of how parents work.

Freedom, Thoroughly

Our Elementary is thoroughly committed to freedom. Thanks to its “mobility,” it can meet the wide variety of needs of its students, and its style also lets it cope without difficulty with emergencies such as disasters. Because it was designed from the outset with every eventuality in mind, emergencies included, it has the robustness to respond flexibly to earthquakes and epidemics alike. No one has to do things they hate, grudgingly. No one has to waste their precious life spending time simply enduring something. You may talk freely with the people around you as much as you like, walk around anywhere, and go to the toilet whenever you want without asking permission. You are free to go anywhere: Iwate, the Tohoku region, Japan, the world. Going to the Moon or Mars is no problem either.

“Choose your own activities,” “work in mixed-age teams,” “learn less, discover more,” “gain insight from nature alone,” “think with your hands,” “solve real problems in daily life,” “don’t depend on resources” (no textbooks, no lessons, no tests, no homework, no report cards): our Elementary’s design has many other such “unconventional” features, and we expect they will gradually come to light as the project progresses.

A Structure Built on Willpower and Kindness

The structure of this Elementary is adjusted naturally by the “willpower” and “kindness” of the participating children². Both as individuals and as a group, they can attain order through self-organization. Without adults having to wield naked power, the children come to behave altruistically of their own accord. This is not a show put on to earn the high marks of a model student; it is a trait that emerges as part of the development of the whole personality. Within this structure, children bring out the wholeness of life with which they are innately endowed.

Many of you may wonder, “Can it really work that well?” But this structure is the same one the universe has adopted. Atomic nuclei, cells, the human body, planets, star systems and galaxies all have this structure. In that sense, we can say that our Elementary probably adopts the same structure as the school of a thousand years from now. It will probably be the same a hundred million years from now, or ten billion years from now. Whether on the Moon, on Mars, or on some planet in the Andromeda Galaxy, the most cosmic school there will most likely adopt the same structure as ours.

A Form of School That Could Run Even on a Spaceship

With our Elementary’s style, no one would get bored even aboard a spaceship bound from Earth to Mars, and there would be no need to transmit new versions of the national curriculum guidelines and textbooks every year. No printer, paper or ink would be needed to print homework worksheets. The work of marutsuke (marking answers right or wrong) would disappear too. It is a structure that can be carried out even in environments where luggage must be reduced and weight kept to a minimum³.

This style is the one that understanding the universe necessarily requires. The universe is dynamic, and it cannot be understood in a static state. Not using the ability to understand intuitively through sensation and movement (that is, the ability to discover) is like trying to see light while blindfolded, trying to hear sound with your ears covered, or trying to identify a flavor without putting anything in your mouth. Paper and pen are needed only when you draw diagrams, do calculations or express things in writing. To evolve your own thinking, rather than trying to soak up other people’s ideas, it is essential to make the fullest use of sensation and movement.

Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for the Growth Environment of 6–12-Year-Olds

This style also satisfies the necessary and sufficient conditions for the growth environment of human children aged 6 to 12. To meet the developmental needs of children in this phase, neither more nor less, it has to be this style. The experiences that so many children of this age naturally seek when left free reveal what those needs are.

Aren’t some schools advertising that children can play Minecraft without ever asking, “Why do they love Minecraft?” Why do children become absorbed in Pokémon, Splatoon and Roblox? What kinds of worlds do games and anime let them experience virtually? Children take flight into imaginary worlds to satisfy desires that many adults once had and have, without realizing it, sealed away. Those desires are precisely developmental needs, things that must be satisfied in order to move on to the next stage of development. Even if only as a substitute, children are trying to provide for themselves what they need.

Why is the rate of school refusal rising to a level that, for a product, would warrant a recall? Why is someone always being mean to someone else? The rate of school refusal does not reflect how many children keep going while thinking, “I really don’t want to go.” Whether the concept of “school” will exist a thousand years from now, or in the far reaches of the universe, is a matter for separate discussion, but whatever it is called, we can state with certainty that our style of nurturing growth is more cosmically standard than the existing ones. If we transition to this style, almost every educational problem in elementary school will resolve itself naturally.

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Footnotes

1. For example, Polymath Research’s own activity, “Cosmic Study” (exploration of the universe), is based on Montessori Elementary’s “Cosmic Education” and develops it further in a more thoroughgoing way. Our explorations of the Earth, life, language and number have likewise been developed on the basis of Polymath Research’s own research. ↩

2. At Polymath Research, we consider this structure to be the most important thing of all. If the structure is not cosmic, the school will not be cosmic. ↩

3. Polymath Research is attempting to design schools as a technology that can be used even in extreme environments such as Antarctica and Mars. ↩