There’s a difference between reform and experiments in schools.

There’s a difference between reform and experiments in schools. Reform legitimizes and justifies schools as existing structures. Experiments exploit cracks, creating flows that wash away sediment and make space for new worlds to emerge.

Reform means to “take new form,” but only within the logic of old forms. It sees cracks and tries to patch them while preserving the structure. That’s why the claim that schools are broken or no longer fit for purpose is misleading. It suggests schools once worked fine, then broke, and now must be fixed. Fixing signals a return. At worst, this is reactionary; at best, progressive. Either way, it remains reformist.

Even progress is caught in the same trap: moving “towards” something within the system’s logic of purpose. Purpose itself is linear, an arrow toward a goal. Unless we ask what the goal is, we are stuck legitimizing the system and its purposes.

So the question isn’t “what is the purpose of schools?” or “how has the purpose changed?” Those are forward-looking. The deeper question is backward-looking: why schools at all, and to what purpose? How do schools serve broader structures of power?

Reform will never bring significant change. Reform is the opposite of change.

Experimentation, on the other hand, means to try something out. It works within cracks, seeing what might be possible. Cracks widen, sediments loosen, structures shift. New forms emerge, not through fixing, but through possibility.

But experiments only happen locally. This isn’t about burning down schools. It’s about doing what’s possible in our context. Not to repair a system, but to explore what might be possible within it. Experiments invite others to look into these cracks, to adapt them to their own contexts, and to create more openings.

That is the experiment: an invitation.

For educators and practitioners, it means going against what is acceptable, what is sedimented, and seeing what might happen. It might look like:

🥥 bringing students into policy-making
🥥 creating spaces without grades
🥥 reshaping relationships that remove teacherly authority
🥥 designing experiences that emerge from the here and now, rather than from off-the-shelf plans

This is not reform. It’s not about fixing anything. It’s about seeing what might be possible and what might emerge.