Well, it has been a busy few weeks for me. I returned home to help my mother recover from surgery, and took an ARE(Architecture Registration Exam). Now things have settled down for a bit and I’m excited to continue exploring school design. For this installment we are going to ignore current technological limitations and look at what can be done when the only limit is imagination, and whatever limits your Alien or dystopian society has placed on you. I am talking of course about Science Fiction!
Vulcan school pods in Star Trek (2009)
(The Vulcans are an Alien race in the Star Trek Universe.)
Standardized test makers would love the Vulcan school system. Endless individual pods where children are tested on multiple disciplines at the same time. I am not sure if this is a test day, and they are recounting what they’ve learned, or if this is the everyday experience. Let’s say it’s the everyday experience, since that is significantly weirder.
Vulcan students in their pods
Lack of space is not a problem for the Vulcan school system.
Vulcan students enter their individual pod through a set of steps. Images are projected along all sides, presumably related to what questions they are answering, although given the Vulcan penchant for staying cool and detached in the face of pressure, they could just be throwing random images up there to try to mess the kids up.
Is he supposed to solve the equations behind his head?
I think the computer throws multiple images on the screen and he only gets credit if he answers the correct one.
Toddler Class in Wall-E
Wall-E takes place in the dystopian future of Earth, where all humans are now living on a giant spaceship and have every need taken care of by robots. Including childcare. Although it only gets a few seconds of screentime, the school and children of the Axiom demostrate the priorities of the society.
All Day Care.
Children have no adult interaction, and are taken care of by teacher-robots. Here they are being taught their ABC’s(apparently only English-speaking humans survived) using reference words- A is for Axiom(the ship), B is for Buy n Large(the overlord corporation). Adults don’t need to work, and apparently don’t care to have anything to do with children, who are frighteningly happy to sit and stare at a bring screen. Well maybe that part sounds accurate. Given the general inability to walk in this society, and the fact that all communication happens over screens, I’m pretty sure that in order for these babies to exist, there must be a baby making lab somewhere on board.
I wonder when they stop sitting in rows and start playing bumper cars with their floating chairs. Clearly they do it- they have bumpers.
Young River Tam in school in Serenity
Serenity’s universe is humanity’s future after we have left Earth and taken over many other planets in a new solar system.
The classroom is in an outside setting, shaded from the sun, but open to the gentle breezes. The environment seems idyllic. There is ample wood, in contrast to the usual glass and metal futuristic aesthetic usually employed by Sci Fi.
This is what I’m talking about. Why aren’t all schools like this?
Things of course, aren’t always how they first appear. On closer inspection there is something odd about this classroom. What is up with how the students are sitting?
Kneel before your Teacher!
Those desks have got to be really uncomfortable for tall students. And short students. It’s like this is a society where they try to squeeze everyone into a box, regardless of whether they fit or not. But hey, it looks pretty!
Our heroine, scrolling through the touchscreen with one hand and taking notes with the other. Because she is a badass.
River and her teacher go on to have an argument over whether the Alliance should try to control people’s lives or not. The teacher ends the argument by jamming River’s pencil into her head, at which point we figure out that River is not in school, but in a lab where the Alliance is trying to brainwash her into accepting their propaganda. Turns out the too good to be true school was all along.
Let me know what you think about these sci fi schools! After which one should we pattern our schools after?
Spaces for learning, and learning from spaces. 
I like the last one… but I don’t like the desks! Maybe you could put the floaty bumper chairs in the last space… but I don’t know how well students would concentrate!