A large part of the cost of education in the developing world is due to the physical infrastructure – literally the bricks and mortar. Standardized construction methods that scale would bring down this cost to a large extent.
The developing world has a dire shortage of schools – the classroom space. With the traditional construction methods, the cost and time required make it almost impossible to meet these needs in a meaningful timeframe. 14Trees, a Swiss-British organization ‘dedicated to accelerating the provision of affordable construction’ is working on 3D-printing of buildings to solve this problem. World Economic Forum has published an article about an initiative that uses this approach for building schools in Africa.
A large part of the cost of education in the developing world is due to the physical infrastructure – literally the bricks and mortar. Standardized construction methods that scale would bring down this cost to a large extent.
Another key benefit this could bring is in terms of the school’s practices. The philosophy of a school should also reflect in its physical infrastructure. Tomoe gakuen, the school that transformed Totto chan’s life in the early post-war Japan was a repurposed train car. Things like the classroom size, layout, access and open spaces define and decide the learning at the school. Standardized construction could also serve as a checklist to make sure that the best practices of learning are baked into these schools.
Shall we say we are probably at a Gutenberg moment in Education…?
References
Kuroyanagi, Tetsuko, and Chichiro Iwasaki. Totto Chan: the Little Girl at the Window. Kodansha America, Inc, 2012.
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