I am entirely certain that 20 years from now we will look back at education as it is practiced in most schools today and wonder how we could have tolerated anything so primitive.
-John W. Gardner
John William Gardner, secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under U.S. president Lyndon Johnson, wrote those words in No Easy Victories, his 1968 book on the challenges of social reform. His word for the schools of his day—"primitive"—was a daring one to throw out at a time when progress seemed unstoppable. However, in Gardner's America not only the education system but the schools themselves had become victims, rather than beneficiaries, of postwar prosperity. The baby boom had impelled mass production of huge new school buildings, constructed using low-cost building products, synthetic compounds created during the war, and standardized, mechanized systems.
We now know the hazards of many of those postwar materials and methods—the formaldehyde-soaked carpeting, the mercury-treated drywall, the sealed windows and noisy ventilation—but millions of school buildings containing those toxins and irritants are still in use, and children are expected to learn in aging structures that were never very safe or sound in the first place. "Primitive" remains the best word to describe many of today's learning environments.
We start with an examination of the basic needs of the child and the basic requirements of the child's learning environment because, unless those environments are safe and clean, it will be a challenge to achieve any learning and teaching that is itself more than primitive. Experts in child development and authorities on health and safety join teachers and designers in a heartfelt and fact-based plea for learning environments that address the fundamental necessities of life.
