Page 59 - Looking_after_school

2. The architecture: from the educational institution
to the learning environment

matter in their own hands by issuing national examinations). In this
architecture, a degree (or certification) is a normalised and validated
(socially recognised) admission ticket into other educational institu-
tions or into the job market. Within institutions these degrees are often
translated into curricula for different levels of education (primary, sec-
ondary, higher) and for different forms or orientations of education
(general, vocational). Curricula, through general subjects and course
content, both shape and fulfil what is needed for students to function
normally in society. Society leaves its normalising mark on education
through not only elementary knowledge and basic skills (reading, writ-
ing, math), but also through course subjects (language, mathematics).
Those subjects are the disciplinary building blocks of the curriculum
and express a societal norm in one way or another. What is of impor-
tance in this architecture is thus the degree. It functions as a means of
communication between different institutions (for instance, between
primary and secondary education, between higher education and the
business world, or between higher education and other governmental
institutions). A degree is the recognised proof of successfully passing
a curriculum, and thus essentially refers to a duration, a level, a set of
courses, or a discipline. In this manner, a degree is an indication of
education and schooling rather than an expression of specific learning
outcomes that an individual student has obtained, which is the case in
what we call the architecture of the learning environment.
In the architecture of the educational institution, the student runs
through one or more curricula during their school career. This means
that they follow fixed roads that run from the family into society
(including the job market or higher education). There are indeed alter-
nate roads, and it is possible to change roads, but the map is drawn, and
the destinations are set in advance. In other words, as soon as young
people leave their family and enter the institutional architecture of
education, they set foot on a more-or-less normalised system of roads.
By means of the school report, the student (but also the parent and the
teacher) always has an instrument at hand to orient themselves with,
and to steer through the curriculum turn by turn. The degree, then,
proves the socially recognised maturity of the student and plays a key
role in the regulation of access. In this architecture, there is also special
attention paid towards the school career of young people; this career

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