ABSTRACT
The fragmented, controlled day of both teacher and child is symbolic of the external direction that used to characterise the content as well as the organisation of schools; it has little place in an education for the late 20th, let alone the 21st century. It is in this concept of knowledge and in the methodology associated with it that one can perhaps see most clearly the goals of education in the 21st century. Such an organisation could spring from the machinery of the Open University which may well turn out to be not an expensive distraction but a highly relevant pilot project for a central feature of the education system of the 21 st century. In the 21 st century it is likely to be a process in which at the very least, the direct link between the social structure and the education system will have been loosened by the interpolation of the individual.
