Restructuring the Conversation

Wired Magazine columnist Clive Thompson illuminates the challenge facing independent schools in rethinking and reformulating their financial models, as he discusses the future of reading in a digital world.  In response to a round of layoffs, restructuring, and other symptoms of financial distress, Thompson cogently observes that "we need to stop thinking about the future of publishing and think instead about the future of reading."  Publishing, with the book-based business model we know so well, faces a sharply limited future.  Reading, on the other hand, is limitless.

Exactly what we face in private, independent education!  Maybe one reason we seem so stymied by small-money conversations about lowering costs per student by increasing faculty productivity (code for leaner faculty/student ratios) is that we keep trying to figure out the future of school.  Instead, what if we began a conversation about the future of learning looks like at each grade level?  Maybe it looks a lot like "school" in Kindergarten, but the future of learning for 14 to 18-year-olds could be quite different, indeed.