No Teachers And No Curriculum: Is This The School Of The Future?

No Teachers And No Curriculum: Is This The School Of The Future?

No Teachers And No Curriculum: Is This The School Of The Future? Walking into Brightworks could be a shock for helicopter parents — there are no rows of desks, no hallway passes and no bells to jolt students from one class to the next. Instead, the K-12 school is alive with invention, autonomy and what founder Gever Tulley calls “the energy of a big multi-generational family household.” In a quiet pocket of San Francisco’s Presidio, just a short walk from the Golden Gate Bridge, a sandy beach and a winding forest creek, the three school buildings buzz with purpose and possibility.  The topic this semester is space. In the basement workshops, student Reza proudly shows off a Mars habitat model; another is designing an alien restaurant. In the light filled atrium, Bix is writing a screenplay about alien politics, and Truman discusses his model of Larry Niven’s imagined Ringworld , giant wheels where humans will hover in their habitat held in place by centrifugal force. In a transformed roo…