Education: Schools of Tomorrow

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us-

—Winston Churchill

Since World War II, the boom in U.S. school construction has been so phenomenal that it currently accounts for 20% of all public building. The value of U.S. school buildings has reached about $30 billion—nearly four times the total assets of General Motors. More than half the nation's youngsters will soon be in postwar buildings; yet need still outstrips supply. This month schools across the land are re opening with a shortage of 132,000 classrooms. The need for the next ten years: 607,000 new classrooms at a cost of $25.5 billion. And ten years after that? By then the school-age population may be more than double the present.

What kind of classrooms are needed?

Until recently the U.S. conception of a school had changed little since the nation's first fully-graded public school—Boston's Quincy School—opened in 1847. Quincy made one radical concession to individuality: desks in seven sizes for growing scholars. Otherwise, all students passed their years together in box-shaped rooms, class by class, the bright and dull handicapping each other. This week Quincy School reopens its ancient doors, admitting 291 more students, still a monument to "egg-crate" education. For a century such schools have changed only the style of their facades—from Victorian Gothic to WPA Colonial to Neo-Revival.

Sun & Air. But the modern U.S. schoolhouse has a vastly bigger job. All under one bulging school system, Americans now demand kindergartens, big-time football, classroom TV and junior colleges. They want summer sessions for the gifted, special teachers for the retarded, night classes for the aged. The air-conditioned hive that serves this honey must house carpentry shops and physics laboratories, a hall for the town meeting, and perhaps a swimming pool that adults can use too. It must impress like a monument—and be as cheap as a summer cottage. It is running out of space, money and teachers.

The few architects who care to tackle such specifications have sprouted some of the most eye-catching buildings in the nation (see color pages). Architect Richard J. Neutra's pioneering (1940) Crow Island Elementary School in Winnetka, 111. did away with fixed seats and high ceilings. Architect Mario J. Ciampi's prizewinning Westmoor High School (1958) in Daly City near San Francisco is big, stunning architecture: shimmering glass, enamel murals, barrel-vaulted roof. Grabbing whatever space is left to schools, other designs march ingeniously up and down hillsides. New hexagonal and pentagonal structures reach out for sun and air, proclaiming the pleasures of education.

Time to Think. Yet in the past few years, a certain reaction has set in. When critics cried "frills" at murals and mosaics ("Must schools be palaces?" wrote Dorothy Thompson in 1957). school boards began to listen. New designs often emphasize the penny-pinching Spartanism that pioneering architects borrowed from industrial buildings. And many a school board's haggling habit of comparing prices per square foot (U.S. median: $15.99) drives away architects. Some boards would just as soon skip hiring an architect in favor of prefabrication.