“The first microcomputers in schools were in the classrooms of visionary teachers who used them (often with LOGO) in very personal ways to cut across deeply rooted features of School (what Tyack and Cuban neatly call “the grammar of school”) such as a bureaucratically imposed linear curriculum, separation of subjects, and depersonalization of work. School responded to this foreign body by an “immune reaction” that blocked these subversive features: The control of computers was shifted from the classrooms of subversive teachers into “computer labs” isolated from the mainstream of learning, a computer curriculum was developed… in short, before the computer could change School, School changed the computer.”
from Papert, S., http://www.papert.org/articles/school_reform.html

Matt P. has zeroed in on a major problem.

“Where failure is costly, innovation will slow to a crawl or stop altogether.” (Matt Perez in response to T. Kastelle’s blog post ‘Fighting the System’ (http://timkastelle.org/blog/2010/02/fighting-the-system/)

Failure in schools is not just costly, it’s unacceptable! How many school systems consider failure an acceptable option? Of course, some systems (NYC public schools, Chicago public schools, etc.) are systematically looking at low performing schools and closing them down, redistributing the children into newly constituted schools in the charter movement, or just redirecting the students to adequately performing existing schools. But therein lies the dilemma. Some social structures are difficult to reform – Papert’s `article after all was entitled, “Why School Reform is Impossible.”

We’re left with the alternative that the evolutionary process must include colonising new biomes, much like island speciation (which, is a good analogy to Christenen’s argument that innovation happens best where there is no prior existing product or market to stifle the new idea). Given the importance of certification of schools by some authority this is indeed a huge challenge. Private for-profit institutions and newer open universities are perhaps the closest examples of experiments of this type.

I direct a Centre for Educational Innovation and Technology but I realise that we may well represent the invading antibody that the university antigens are trying to surround to protect themselves from the ramifications of the change we represent. In Papert’s words,

“School responded to this foreign body by an “immune reaction” that blocked these subversive features: The control of computers [any innovation] was shifted from the classrooms of subversive teachers into “computer labs’ [protected spaces, like R&D centres] isolated from the mainstream of learning, a computer curriculum was developed… in short, before the computer [new innovation] could change School, School changed the computer [contained and sequestered the new innovation].

Tim has pointed out vividly this process in business by reminding us that Xerox Parc was one of the most innovative and creative hotbeds of new ideas and technologies influencing laterally dozens of companies and millions of people. Yet Xerox the company remained immune to these innovations and failed capitalise successfully on a single one.