How long would formal education continue to reflect real learning?

The Tsunami of information has started sweeping the infrastructure and edifices of the learning organizations. How soon they would swallow some of these structures and crush their forms and formats is a guess any one can make. Learning, has already disembarked from many of the established palaces and is enjoying the role of a nomad breathing freedom like an active and imaginative adolescent. Fantasies about how learning would happen and how their markets can be captured is becoming an engaging dream of the would-be entrepreneurs waiting for their smart moves
Like Driver less cars,Teacher less universities, skipper less games .one could think of schools which would be open resources like parks where anyone can walk, learn and get going.Years before, when a student of grade 11 asked me a question “why should I go to the same school for all subjects?” I marginalized it as a challenge to a systemic authority. In retrospect, it appears to make sense and might be the bargain of the future.
With knowledge corridors,wide open, one could see worldwide the changing formats of learning processes thanks to intense intervention of technology. The role of teachers and schools are fast changing. Many corporates have already started using their brands as adjectives to the ‘classrooms’ and this brand building is going to be highly competitive and aggressive.
Conflicts arising from the corporate definition of what education and learning should be- with the individuals appetite for learning shaped by one’s own aspirations is likely to surface. Guided learning in conflict with need based learning is likely to create market turbulence.
This raises a fundamental question – how long would the formal education continue to reflect real learning.The textbooks will no more be helipads for knowledge flights. hence the school assessments would not be true assessment of the competencies and knowledge caricatures of the learners. Then what would the schools be? – just picnic spots during the absence of parents at home? – Not a bad idea
Would they be centers for creation of new knowledge? – Yes. They can be facilitation centers – but free from the routine formal assessments. why not? The crisscross intercourse of knowledge domains leading to new knowledge structures – with extensive possibilities of convergence and divergence with appropriate support from technology– opens possibilities of interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary approaches. Multi-polar learning would make learning more stressful, yet productive. Would it open multi-level entries for learning – eliminating the existing age restrictions?Would there be opportunities for re-entry to learning situations or possibilities for relearning for the same individual? How could formal institutions support such ideas? On the face of it, they appear remote, nevertheless appear to be the games of the future.
The open sources for learning exploding day in and day out, the opportunities of space-time free learning could be a boon for intensive, extended, need-based and focused learning for learners with diverse interests and learning styles. That raises the question – Should the attendance in the schools be compulsory and if so what would be the specifications? Can learning be linked to real-time engagement measured and monitored through technology or just the physical presence of the learner in the classroom?
And finally – how long would the formal education reflect the real learning? Belief systems keep us going till there are real time challenges to our beliefs. Hence these will continue .. but for reasons other than exclusive intent of learning. Possibly it is time to make the educational organizations and institutions understand that the journey towards the future is neither smooth nor predictable.