Christopher Alexander is monumental. I finally got to his Pattern Language.

Pattern 18 talks about Network of Learning:

In a society which emphasizes teaching, children and students—and adults—become passive and unable to think or act for themselves. Creative, active individuals can only grow up in a society which emphasizes learning instead of teaching.

And later:

Schools are designed on the assumption that there is a secret to everything in life; that the quality of life depends on knowing that secret; that secrets can be known only in orderly successions; and that only teachers can properly reveal these secrets. An individual with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tags.

New educational institutions would break apart this pyramid. Their purpose must be to facilitate access for the learner: to allow him to look into the windows of the control room or the parliament, if be cannot get in the door. Moreover, such new institutions should be channels to which the learner would have access without credentials or pedigree—public spaces in which peers and elders outside his immediate horizon now become available.…

Between 1977 and 2021, the thing that has changed the most in education is development of online tools, resources and connections that can be fostered through online presence. I don’t know if this ideal design of physical space could ever be achieved (although my nerdy teenage self would be drooling over this concept). But evolution of online courses and such massive storages of information as Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg and many more, is the kind of new educational institutions that Alexander talks about.

Naturally, with massive amounts of useful things, there is abundance of distractions and time-wasting resources as well. What young and old minds alike need is the ability, skill and habit of curating the vast ocean of information and entertainment there exists.

The difference between how Alexander imagined the new system of education, and the internet as we know it, is that there are no designated architects, administrators, and pedagogues. Anyone with a YouTube channel can become a pedagogue (or a preacher, for that matter). The question, again, is that of individual choice and curation — leading into matters of authority, and dispersed administration.

There still are a lot of unsolved issues raised by “A Pattern Language”, like that of tighter communities, gap between cities and country, or personal vehicles that are causing divide and raise other concerns. It’s good to see, on the other hand, how the flow of time and progress resolves, or at least, evolves some of the matters.