Artificial intelligence can now do many of the things schools were traditionally designed around. It can deliver content, personalize instruction, provide instant feedback, and adapt to different learning levels faster than most systems of schooling can. Naturally, this has led many people to ask whether schools, as we know them, will survive.
I think they will, although perhaps not for the reasons we have traditionally used to justify them.
For over a century, schools largely justified their existence as places where children went to acquire knowledge. Today, that justification is increasingly under pressure. Even the more recent shift toward “21st century skills” may not fully answer the question, because technology is beginning to support many of those capacities as well.
The Custodial Reality We Rarely Discuss
At the same time, there is another reality that we rarely discuss openly enough. Modern societies still need schools because parents work. Children need safe and structured environments during the day. In many ways, schools have become one of the central custodial institutions of modern life, entrusted with an enormous portion of childhood itself.
That may sound uncomfortable to some educators, but I think it is important to acknowledge honestly — because the implications are significant. If schools are entrusted with such a large portion of children’s lives, then the quality of those environments becomes a profoundly important question.
This is why the design of schools matters in ways we rarely discuss seriously enough.
A School Building Is Not Neutral
A school building is not neutral. It communicates constantly. It tells children whether they are trusted, whether individuality is welcomed, whether community matters, whether reflection matters, whether nature matters, and ultimately whether they matter.
At their best, schools create conditions for human connection. Five kinds, in particular, are worth naming explicitly:
What Is Quietly Disappearing
The irony is that many of the everyday conditions in which these forms of connection once developed naturally are quietly disappearing from childhood. The incidental encounters, the unstructured time with peers, the experience of navigating shared physical space with people different from yourself, and the feeling of belonging to a real community in a real place are becoming less common in many children’s lives.
The Real Question
The real question may no longer be whether schools should change. It may be whether our schools are designed to support the kinds of human connection and human development that the future will require most.