The Physical Setting and Open Education

front of their groups, each lecturing on the topic of African culture. Traditional classroom? No. This is a new open-space school building-no interior walls, carpet under foot, bright colors, resource centers, all the materials you can use to be an effective open-education teacher. Yet these teachers have artificially created three separate classrooms, one next to the other, imposing a "front" of the room and four invisible walls which keep out neither sight nor sound.1 This is an openspace school, but this is not open education. Indeed, this is a situation in which the design of the school interferes with what the teachers are trying to do. By the same token, four real walls do not preclude open education. In both cases, the crucial issue is the relationship between the philosophy of education and how the physical setting can be used to implement that philosophy. There are many statements available describing a variety of