Introduction: From Art Schools to Imagination Schools
When artist Patrick Brill declared, “All schools should be art schools,” his words were not simply about filling the world with painters or sculptors. Rather, they were a manifesto for reimagining education itself. For centuries, our education systems have prioritised conformity over curiosity, standardisation over creativity, and compliance over critical thinking. Brill’s statement dares us to imagine something different: what if schools were designed not to “teach” but to “ignite”? What if the classroom was not a factory, but a studio, a place where the imagination is nurtured as the most vital human faculty?
What if the classroom was not a factory, but a studio, a place where the imagination is nurtured as the most vital human faculty?
This question is more urgent than ever. In an era defined by automation, climate collapse, and global complexity, education cannot afford to remain a system rooted in 19th-century fears. If we are to prepare the next generation of creative leaders, design education must become the spearhead of a broader educational revolution.
The Prussian Paradox: How Fear Shaped Modern Schooling
To understand why imagination is still marginalised in education, we must revisit its origins. In 1806, after Napoleon’s victory at Jena-Auerstedt, the shattered Prussian state sought to rebuild its society. The tool it invented was compulsory schooling. As John Taylor Gatto meticulously documents in his book Dumbing Us Down, this system was not about liberation, but control. It was engineered to produce obedient citizens, efficient soldiers, and compliant factory workers. Pupils were drilled in schedules, rote memorisation, and the idea that learning meant passive absorption.
Two centuries later, the industrial scaffolding remains. Schools are still designed as factories of predictability, their bells and timetables echoing the rhythms of the assembly line. Margaret McMillan, in her 1904 work Education Through the Imagination, warned of this crisis: “The child who asks too many questions is a nuisance; the child who doubts the teacher’s answer is a rebel.” Her proposed remedies, play-based learning, sensory exploration, and creative engagement, were sidelined, as governments doubled down on control, efficiency, and testing.
Two centuries later, the industrial scaffolding remains. Schools are still designed as factories of predictability, their bells and timetables echoing the rhythms of the assembly line
The irony is that today, as AI and robotics take over the very roles this system was built to sustain, our schools remain wedded to producing compliant followers rather than courageous innovators.
Rear-View Mirror Pedagogy: Neil Postman’s Warning
In 1969, Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner penned “Teaching as a Subversive Activity”, a radical critique of education’s obsession with the past.
“We are driving a multi-million-dollar sports car, screaming ‘Faster! Faster!’ while peering fixedly into the rear-view mirror. It is an awkward way to try to tell where we are, much less where we are going, and it has been sheer dumb luck that we have not smashed ourselves to bits , so far. We have paid almost exclusive attention to the car, equipping it with all sorts of fantastic gadgets and an engine that will propel it at ever increasing speeds, but we seem to have forgotten where we wanted to go in it. Obviously, we are in for a helluva jolt. The question is not whether, but when.”
Postman’s metaphor captures a system hurtling toward obsolescence, armed with glossy tech but no vision. Students today are fed a stable diet of mush: standardised tests, outdated syllabi, and the illusion that certainty matters more than inquiry.
The result? A generation taught to colour inside lines that no longer exist. As AI reshapes careers and climate collapse demands radical innovation, education clings to metrics designed for a vanished world. “We’ve forgotten where we wanted to go,” Postman argued. The “helluva jolt” he predicted is here: rising mental health crises, skills gaps, and a pervasive sense that schools prepare children for everything except life.
The Lost Library of Solutions
The tragedy is not that solutions are lacking , it’s that they’re buried. Thinkers like McMillan, Maria Montessori, and Rabindranath Tagore proposed child-centred, imagination-driven models over a century ago. Tagore’s experimental Santiniketan School, for instance, rejected exams and desks, teaching students under trees through art, music, and dialogue with nature. Yet such ideas are dismissed as “outdated” in an era obsessed with data-driven outcomes.
Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf education, offered another vision in the early 20th century, emphasising holistic development and artistic expression. Yet his ideas were deeply rooted in the educational philosophies of the 18th and 19th centuries, drawing inspiration from Goethe’s emphasis on intuition and Pestalozzi’s hands-on learning approach. Steiner argued that education should cultivate not just intellect but imagination and moral character, seeing the arts as essential to human development.
Academia’s bias against older sources compounds the problem. Peer-reviewed journals favour recent studies, while 19th- and early 20th-century texts — many advocating for creativity and holistic learning — gather dust. As Gatto noted, this creates a circular logic: “We ignore history, then repeat its worst mistakes as breakthroughs.”
Art Schools for the Mind: A Blueprint for the Future
Brill’s vision of universal art schools is not about turning everyone into an artist in the conventional sense. It is about reclaiming education’s true purpose: cultivating minds that question, connect, and create. The arts, whether painting, theatre, music, or design, train us to live with uncertainty, to see failure as iteration, and to solve problems through discovery. They are the antidote to the industrial legacy of control.
To shape the next generation of creative leaders, design education must evolve into an art school for the mind. Here is a blueprint:
- Rewrite the Curriculum. Replace rigid subject silos with thematic, interdisciplinary learning. A lesson on climate change, for instance, could combine science, design thinking, literature, and activism. Students could debate policies, design sustainable systems, and imagine futures through poetry or prototypes.
- Elevate the Old Guard. Resurrect marginalised pedagogues and reconnect with the wisdom of historical thinkers. McMillan’s play-based learning finds validation in neuroscience. Tagore’s nature-based education resonates with today’s ecological crises. These are not relics; they are roadmaps.
- Teachers as Provocateurs. Shift the teacher’s role from authority to provocateur. Teachers should ask, “What if?” more often than “This is.” Their role is not to close questions but to open them, cultivating classrooms where debates, experiments, and explorations outnumber lectures.
- Assess Differently. Scrap exams that reward memorisation. Instead, evaluate portfolios, collaborative projects, and the capacity to rethink and reimagine. In design education especially, the quality of thinking and iteration is more valuable than the final answer.
- Embed Imagination as Literacy. Creativity must be seen not as enrichment but as essential literacy. Just as reading and numeracy are fundamental, so too should be storytelling, prototyping, and speculative thinking.
- Prepare students for public responsibility. Designs shape public life. Posters, campaigns, interfaces and identities influence opinion, behaviour and access. My course on “Designers Manifesto” emphasises social responsibility as an explicit competency: how to design for dignity, clarity, and ethical persuasion. Students must learn the stewardship responsibilities that come with persuasive visual language. We must include modules on policy, accessibility, and public impact. Bring in non-profit briefs, pro-bono partnerships, and community stakeholders as real clients. These experiences produce designers who understand the social consequences of their craft and who can build persuasive, ethical campaigns.
Teach leadership as craft
Leadership in design is not an innate trait but a skill honed through practice, as emphasised by Rama Gheerawo. In his work on inclusive and human-centred design. In books like Creative Leadership: Born from Design, Gheerawo underscores that leadership is a craft rooted in empathy, collaboration, and adaptability. Design education must teach students to navigate conflict resolution, facilitate diverse teams, deliver constructive critiques, and master client diplomacy with humility, acknowledging when they don’t have all the answers. By integrating these principles of inclusive leadership, students should engage in scaffolded opportunities: leading small project teams, facilitating critique sessions, presenting to external stakeholders, or managing community-driven briefs. These experiences are not peripheral but fundamental, shaping creative leaders who can steward both projects and people with sensitivity and vision, ensuring design serves all.
Design education must teach students to navigate conflict resolution, facilitate diverse teams, deliver constructive critiques, and master client diplomacy with humility, acknowledging when they don’t have all the answers.
Sparks of Rebellion: Where Change is Happening
Change is not hypothetical, it is already emerging in pockets of educational reform.
- Wales has introduced a new curriculum that makes creativity a core skill.
- Finland has adopted “phenomenon-based” projects, where students dissect real-world problems across disciplines.
- Design schools worldwide are experimenting with studio-based, collaborative models that privilege process over product.
These examples are glimpses of a possible future where education embraces imagination as the ultimate survival skill.
Conclusion: The Courage to Imagine
The crisis in education is not a lack of rigour — it’s a lack of courage. To embrace Brill’s call, we must confront an uncomfortable truth: Schools, as they stand, are not broken. They are working exactly as designed — to produce a world of followers.
Yet there are sparks of rebellion. In Wales, a new curriculum mandates creativity as a core skill. In Finland, students learn through “phenomenon-based” projects, dissecting real-world issues across disciplines. These are glimpses of an education that prizes imagination as the ultimate literacy.
As Postman wrote, “Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods. It’s time to let them stay question marks — curious, open-ended, and unafraid of the unknown. For in a world on fire, the only viable answer is to teach children to light matches, not fear the dark.
References
- Brill, Patrick (Bob and Roberta Smith). All Schools Should Be Art Schools. Various writings and public statements.
- Gatto, John Taylor. Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. New Society Publishers, 1992.
- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Scientific Studies. Various works on intuition and nature, 18th–19th century.
- McMillan, Margaret. Education Through the Imagination. 1904.
- Montessori, Maria. The Montessori Method. Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1912.
- Postman, Neil, and Charles Weingartner. Teaching as a Subversive Activity. Dell Publishing, 1969.
- Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich. How Gertrude Teaches Her Children. 1801.
- Rama Gheerawo, Creative Leadership: Born from Design / Creative Leadership: How to Design the 21st-Century Organisation
- Steiner, Rudolf. The Education of the Child and lectures on Waldorf education, 1907–1924.
- Tagore, Rabindranath. The Religion of Man and writings on Santiniketan School, early 20th century.
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Since its inception in 2019, Design Education Talks podcast has served as a dynamic platform for the exchange of insights and ideas within the realm of art and design education. This initiative sprang from a culmination of nearly a decade of extensive research conducted by Lefteris Heretakis. His rich background, intertwining academia, industry, and student engagement, laid the foundation for a podcast that goes beyond the conventional boundaries of educational discourse. Support the Show 👉https://www.patreon.com/thenewartschool Equipment used to produce the podcast: 👉https://kit.co/heretakis/podcasting See our work on 👉https://linktr.ee/thenewartschool Follow us on twitter at 👉@newartschool Read our latest articles at 👉https://heretakis.wordpress.com/ and 👉https://heretakis.medium.com/ and 👉 https://odysee.com/@thenewartschool:c
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