Beaconhouse Conference: "Learning to Live Again"

Towards 2035: The Schools of Tomorrow brought together delegates interested in the current and future status of the education system.

Beaconhouse School System organized this one-day conference. This event commemorates their 30th anniversary and looks forward to the next 30 years (i.e. 2035). Over the previous years, the school system has grown from one Montessori [link] school to many...

Noteable speakers included President Pervez Musharraf who spoke on the same subject as many of the initial panelists, not on schools of tomorrow but rather "Learning to Live" again after the 7.6 earthquake in Kashmir. Some disliked the digression from the conference's title but I loved the details and new focus. General Musharraf spoke about the Pakistan Army rebuilding schools: one primary school per village and one secondary school per four villages out of the 4,000 villages in the north. There is a monumental task of recovery that is dynamic and I felt the various speakers brought this out, even if they didn't always agree with one another.

The Earthquake Relief Fund Committee at my school is also looking into this matter of rebuilding schools as a long-term goal. However, the short-term goals center around survival otherwise there will not be children and communities to educate. A litany of health statistics from a local epidemiology expert painted a grim picture of reality for the people of the north without the additional strain of the earthquake. For example, 20% mortality rate for winter is standard in these northern regions with half of those deaths attributable to pneumonia.

I ended the conference by attending a workshop on School Design Features by Steve Lloyd of the College of St. Mary and St. John in England. The workshop was open-ended rather than concrete; it focused on the range of issues to consider when designing a modern school and how these issues have changed with time. He brought up some interesting questions for our schools of tomorrow and some categories for arranging thoughts around:...