Skool’s Out Forever.

I hated school. I love learning.

What’s the bloody point of school? They teach you mostly useless cr*p, make you sit down most of the day, keep your hands where they can be seen, and train you to be obedient.

I guess it suits some. But I bet it doesn’t suit most. There’s the social side of things — the only part of going to school that, when pushed, I can see a positive in: making friends, dealing with conflict, avoiding twits on the school bus, kicking about with your mates.

‘What did you learn at school?’
‘How to be good at football,’ I said.
‘Yeah, but I mean about stuff, you know, academic stuff.’
‘Not much. Enough maths to get by. How to read.’
‘Come on, there must be more?’
‘Seriously, not really. Well, OK — my art teacher was the only one who taught me something useful. A mindset. How to take an idea, develop it, refine it and produce something. Make something.’

But then art teachers are outliers, aren’t they? And even they’ve been sat on by grade targets and pointless admin.

As some of you know, I teach at the University of Southampton. Bit of a turnaround, really — from hopeless and uninterested at school to (part-time) academic at a decent university.

It’s a valuable insight into how people actually learn. And it only deepens my views about school — and, in many ways, structured education in general. What I see is a split three ways: about 20% of students are pushing, engaged and genuinely learning. Around 50% are plodding — learning a bit, marking time until they go and work. And 30% are wasting their time and money.

And I’m not writing them off. I know what it feels like to be written off by teachers. It’s just that there are better places for them to learn and grow than university lecture halls and tick-box modules.

What amazes me — constantly — is how few of them know how to find things out for themselves. You don’t even have to go to the library anymore. The answer is in your pocket. Google, ChatGPT, YouTube… everything’s there.

Relevance matters. Conditioning runs deep. Too many have been trained to wait, follow instructions, look up, and ask what to do next. They’ve been schooled — properly.

I left school as soon as I could and went to college. I skipped A-levels and did a BTEC in Construction. I loved that course. Finally, I was learning something I wanted to know — something that made me want to go in every day. I could see the point. I wanted to know how to build buildings.

Architecture school that followed was a mixed bag. It’s a five-year route — a three-year degree, one year out, and two-year diploma. The diploma was a waste of time. The degree was good fun once you realise it’s not really about buildings. It’s a good course if you don’t want to be an architect.

Eventually, I figured it out: it’s called a School of Architecture for a reason. It’s very much not a School for Architects. The big holes are construction and business — two things you’d think might be central.

The truth is, school—including university—isn’t fit for purpose anymore. The world has changed. Information and access to learning have exploded. But the system is still built for the 1950s.

So, without writing a life history or a manifesto on education, here’s what I’d change:
1.    Make learning relevant. Ditch the syllabus-for-syllabus-sake approach. Start with curiosity. Let kids learn things that matter to them.
2.    Make full-time school optional. It doesn’t work for everyone. And no, I don’t mean just shifting the same tired curriculum to the kitchen table. Families need the freedom to find genuinely better ways to help young people grow — not just different locations to deliver the same outdated system.
3.    Teach business, sales and marketing. You can’t navigate the world if you don’t understand how value is created, how money moves, and how to sell an idea.
4.    More fresh air. Fewer fluorescent lights and plastic chairs. More time moving, building, talking, exploring.
5.    Personal responsibility. Let young people take ownership. Trust them more. Set real-world tasks, not pretend academic ones.
6.    Find the spark. Everyone has something that lights them up. Help them find it, stoke it, and stand back.

That’s it. Not a manifesto. Just a better way — or at least, a better way for those lucky enough to have the support around them to make it work. But then again, the current system isn’t working for those without support either. So maybe what we need isn’t one way — but a few.

Have a good weekend.

You will always find me at carl@carlarchitect.co.uk.

​All the best

This Week’s Links:

Some ideas for kitchen lighting.

Curtains instead of kitchen cupboard doors. Definetly not something Wren et al are selling, therefore very cool.

Is oat milk unhealthy

17 Images of Brilliant Storage Inspiration

Main Image credit: Not a dropout. Just stepped into freedom early. (MidJourney)