The Garden and the Forest: Building an education ecosystem that survives

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when we say “education”? For most of us, especially in K-12 conversations, the answer is “schools.” Parents begin their search with board, fees, location and peer groups.

Rarely does the search begin with the deeper question: What do we want education to do? Pause and look closely: education is far bigger than mere schooling. It’s about understanding the self, understanding the world, and building a life that fits into the world, or sometimes, helps reshape it. Schools should be a means to those ends, and not the ends themselves. 

That distinction matters because institutions designed for a different time-period still carry significant ripple effects. Historically, learning often happened one-on-one: gurus guiding princes, artisans passing craft through families, communities training children through lived work.

The modern school system evolved alongside the Industrial Revolution, organised for predictable productivity: fixed hours, standard curricula, timetables and periodic assessments. That design met real needs then, safe places for children while adults worked, standard literacy and numeracy, pipelines into formal employment.

But what worked in the last century doesn’t necessarily work for today. 

Two trends make this mismatch urgent. First, the nature of work and skills is shifting rapidly. Employers expect a large chunk of today’s core skills to change within the coming decade, roughly two-fifths of skills are likely to be transformed or become outdated by 2030.

Second, the “half-life” of many skills has decreased: what took a decade to become old now loses strength in about four years in many fields. In short, curricula built to last a generation risk producing adults trained for the past, not the world they will inherit.

There is also time: education works through long feedback loops. What we teach a child today usually shows its results 15-20 years later. That delay hides the cost of mistakes and rewards complacency. When a system is slow to show consequences, it becomes easy to repeat exam cycles, standardised metrics and age-segregated cohorts without asking whether the map still matches the terrain. 

I’m not arguing that schools should be completely phased out; many schools do brilliant work. But we must stop treating them as sacred and unquestionable. When schools become the definition of education, we narrow our imagination for alternatives.

This is where the garden/forest image helps. Schools can be magnificent gardens - structured, tended, beautiful. But ecosystems survive because of diversity; forests are messy, interdependent, resilient. An education system that survives needs both. 

Enter third spaces: diverse, experimental places that take risks schools often cannot. These are not fancy extras; they’re essential. They are maker labs, museum workshops, peer mentor circles, community studios and hybrid online-offline platforms where children tinker, fail, iterate and build portfolios without the relentless pressure of marks.

Third spaces treat learning as a process, curiosity in motion, instead of something to be measured by periodic exams. We already have openings. India’s National Education Policy 2020 explicitly creates space for multiple pathways and non-formal modes of learning, an invitation to experiment beyond traditional classrooms.

On the ground, initiatives like Atal Tinkering Labs aim to foster hands-on curiosity and design thinking across thousands of schools; MuSo style spaces and local makerspaces convert prototypes into community projects and small ventures. These examples show third-space ideas can scale and connect to broader ecosystems. 

Third spaces do more than supplement schools; they create healthy competition. When children return from maker workshops more curious, resourceful and self-directed, schools feel practical pressure to change.

That pressure is generative, not antagonistic: it pushes the ecosystem to improve. Think of it as biodiversity: when multiple models coexist and iterate, the whole system becomes stronger. Yet designing third spaces well requires intentionality.

They must be safe and inclusive, staffed by facilitators who guide inquiry not lecture, and linked to local communities. They should prioritise portfolio evidence, peer feedback and public showcases over standardized marks.

Funders and policymakers must treat them as serious investments, not afterthoughts, building pathways that let children move easily between school, community lab and self-directed study without extra red tape or hurdles. We must also protect childhood.

The current over-instrumentalised model trains children to be cogs, measured, bracketed and ranked, often at the cost of curiosity, play and agency. Childhood is not merely preparation for adulthood; it is a unique phase for exploration and wonder. Third spaces protect that room for play, failure and sustained curiosity. 

So, what do we do practically? Start simple and serious. Fund third spaces with clarity and scale, not as soft charity projects. Give parents and communities real choices, and the means to support them.

Finally, for start-ups in this space, adopt a posture of humility and iteration. If a pilot fails, learn fast and pivot. If it works, scale thoughtfully. Keep the strengths of schools - their basic social role, while also making space for more variety in how children learn.

Let schools be gardens again: cared for, structured, vital. But let us also leave room for forests to thrive - wild, resilient and full of unexpected life. In a landscape that values curiosity as much as competence, if we want children who can navigate uncertainty, we need both. 

[Article by Sandeep CK, Founder K12 Studio, and a Teach For India Alum. Views expressed are their own]