So-called openspace schools, with few interior partitions, allowing groups of students to work in separate areas of a huge, open space. An outgrowth of escalation in school construction costs in the decades following World War II. Especially effective in elementary schools, schools without walls are particularly conducive to team teaching. Seated in different parts of a huge room, on carpeted floors that minimize noise, groups of students and their teachers work on one topic at a time, and, when appropriate, a second teacher specializing in another subject may arrive to introduce applications of the first subject to a second subject. Groups of students will join or separate, according to what they are studying. In simplest terms, a group studying Egyptian history with one teacher would learn the plane and solid geometry of the pyramid from another, the origins of language and hieroglyphics from a third teacher, art from a fourth and geography and political science from a fifth. Various groups might work together or apart, according to a schedule of team teaching determined by the faculty.
From the construction point of view, schools without walls eliminate all costs of partitions and their attendant insulation and wiring. When needed, portable folding partitions, portable chalkboards and other movable equipment can substitute for all materials that conventional walls might support. White-taped “alleyways” solve the problems of student traffic flow during and between classes. OPEN EDUCATION, or open classroom techniques, that developed in preschools of the 1930s and 1940s, schools without walls provided enormous appeal to both progressive educators and to taxpayers and school boards eager to cut the escalation in school construction costs in the decades following World War II. Especially effective in elementary schools, schools without walls are particularly conducive to team teaching. Seated in different parts of a huge room, on carpeted floors that minimize noise, groups of students and their teachers work on one topic at a time, and, when appropriate, a second teacher specializing in another subject may arrive to introduce applications of the first subject to a second subject. Groups of students will join or separate, according to what they are studying. In simplest terms, a group studying Egyptian history with one teacher would learn the plane and solid geometry of the pyramid from another, the origins of language and hieroglyphics from a third teacher, art from a fourth and geography and political science from a fifth. Various groups might work together or apart, according to a schedule of team teaching determined by the faculty. From the construction point of view, schools without walls eliminate all costs of partitions and their attendant insulation and wiring. When needed, portable folding partitions, portable chalkboards and other movable equipment can substitute for all materials that conventional walls might support. White-taped “alleyways” solve the problems of student traffic flow during and between classes.
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