Those of you following my several efforts already know I have a goodly amount to say on the matter of "maths pedagogy" (my US heritage spellchecker says not to pluralize "math").
I also take up the term "andragogy" for good measure, meaning why give up on the adults? Let them experience high school again too, not because they've failed but because of Future Shock per Toffler.
Things change enough in one lifetime now, that going back to high school is not seen as a dis. The challenges are logistical. The devil is in the details (a great cliche).
Actually, "Pythonic Andragogy" (spellchecker goes wild, "adding to dictionary" twice) is more what I'm known for on the Pycon and OSCON circuits, per whatever buried archival footage (I've curated some of it). Part of maths pedagogy is to phase in a computer language and mix the two: maths and programming. Not really a new idea. Lots of curricula explore these possibilities.
High school for adults would allow for more adult behaviors. We'd have an outdoor camp-site based aesthetic in part to cut costs, in part to impart "camping skills" to a largely civilian population. Come to one of our campuses and camp out. If you want a dorm room in an apartment complex, we likely have those options.
A question is what adults have time to take off work and abandon their families in order to regress to a high school existence, much as some might like to. This conjures the wrong picture. A lot of high schoolers keep mixing it up (deliberately) with work and don't need to go anywhere. Others might opt for a campus experience, but as a family camping expedition.
Another feature of high school for adults is they don't make you rack up debt. Society benefits from your efforts to stay abreast societal changes, picking up another language (human or computer), learning to run a lathe, other power tools (3D printer, electric ATV...).
One reason I label it "high school" is to underscore the fundamental nature of this layer, already, in the present day. Driving habits, dating habits, study habits... this is a formative time in the teen years, wherein various self disciplines become established, or don't. We connect high school to the process of becoming who we will be.
What about designers who choose not to adopt this model and insist on "re-education camps" or "college" where adults (some with kids) are concerned. The PR around "re-education camps" is already very negative and is associated with brainwashing. Such camps are at the bottom of the barrel, like Guantanamo (a military prison).
That leaves "college and university" as institutions we keep going back to, for another dip in the well of knowledge.
I'm planning not to quarrel too much about how other designers design their semantic spaces. I've got the namespaces I've got, and those who take up studying my stuff end up knowing their way around from the inside. Such is the pattern, vs-a-vs just about anyone.
Why I'm pitching my curriculum at more or less the high school level is I think our maths especially is in that sweet spot. We have a geometry of vectors in a vector space, but with some alternative stipulations as to apparatus, making our IVM-based system "an API" to the more conventional XYZ one.
Having two geometries going in tandem is eye-opening, not to mention enlightening. As maths should be.
Another reason I focus on "high school level" is probably political, in that we still do associate the institution of high school with juveniles, and what's being revealed about so many in the political cast (or class) is their oft times juvenile habits, inculcated, likely as not, in their habit-forming teen years.
Making more room for young adults to assume responsibility involves deprecating the namespaces frequented by adults with stale skills and stale views. Some adults in expensive clothes, appearing on TV, would not appear so fashionable if we could see more directly into their profiles. They rely on screenwriters for lines anyway, most of them. Producers and directors like to stay off camera.
Many politicians continue operating in delinquency, way past a decent pull date.
But why not follow Hollywood with the extreme makeover schools and trainings (no, I'm not just talking about Scientology)?
Go back to school and learn some new language games. Then rejoin the youth more productively, with a shiny new education, more as contributing members of society than as an elderly boor stuck in pig-headed complexes from whatever past military-industrial age.
Again, the science fiction with the many campuses (converted bases in some cases), happy campers, sound stages, prototypes, is for a more mature and science-minded civilization than this one. It'd take a lot of work (including planning) to get there (Asylum City) versus indulging in tawdry war crime melodramas or worse.
Some of the upcoming designers appear up for doing some serious overhauls, and not in the genre of reckless accelerationism, another juvenile behavior.
Designing is a process and requires feedback loops to stay in touch with reality. Many designs remain science fiction, yet nevertheless tantalize us with their realism in some cases.
