The typology of the school building : its importance in educational policies and practices

Abstract

The typology of the school has never been easy to define. All kinds of buildings have at one time or another been used as educational establishements, and so many different parameters have been used to define the effectiveness or otherwise of these institutions, that the role of the school building itself has either been ignored or considered of secondary importance when compared to more direct concerns such as curriculum development, mass education, etc,. However, there are very clear indications that the building is of primary importance when it comes to assessing the effectiveness of a school, a fact recognised as early as the nineteenth century by an English Victorian headmaster when he wrote: Whatever men may say or think, the Almighty Wall is, after all, the supreme and final arbiter of schools. I mean no living power in the world can overcome the dead, unfeeling, everlasting pressure of the permanent structures, of the permanent conditions under which work has to be done... Never rest till you have got the Almighty Wall on your side, and not against you. Never rest till you have jot all the fixed machinery for work, the best possible. The waste in a teacher's workshop is the lives of men.