# What should school achieve today?

Momo Maximilian Feichtinger · Education · planted 2026-09-02, last grown 2026-09-03 · 5 min · https://zukunftbilden.eu/en/denken/was-schule-heute-leisten-sollte

**School should help people see the world more precisely, ask good questions and act effectively with others. That is the thesis of [the education question page](https://zukunftbilden.eu/en/fragen/bildung). The rest is craft: what does it look like on a Tuesday in November, in a room with seventeen children and two adults?**

The question page names three levels: orientation, agency, spaces and culture. Children need thinking tools and a real connection to the world. Learning grows stronger when it leads into projects, decisions and feedback. Both only hold when people, rituals and places stand behind them. Paideia puts these levels into an order you cannot swap.

## The triad and why the order matters

The base is relationship, called the growth relationship in our handbook: relationship before operations. The path is meaningful, value creating work: meaning before system. The goal is wisdom and self determination: maturing before pure output. That order is a claim about people. Without a relationship that holds, no learning format works. Without a real project, relationship stays pleasant and without consequence.

> Without the goal of wise power we produce either nice but powerless children or capable but immature people.
>
> Paideia, pedagogical foundation, chapter 2.1

![Three circles forming a triangle: relationship, meaningful work, wisdom, with a seedling and the word Schule in the middle](https://zukunftbilden.eu/assets/denken/dreiklang-schule.webp)

*The mental model: relationship first, then meaningful work, then wisdom. In the middle the school grows.*

The growth relationship has a name from developmental psychology. Diana Baumrind called this style authoritative: warm, clear and demanding at once, high warmth and high expectation. In daily practice a mentor likes a child and still asks something of it. Warmth alone produces arbitrariness. Expectation alone produces obedience. Together they produce growth.

The idea has a second root. In a video from 2023 I name theatre director Peter Brook as the inspiration for this first principle. He asked what makes theatre essential once you strip away everything unnecessary, and found the relationship between actor and audience as the answer. Nothing else is indispensable, everything else only serves that one relationship. That is exactly why relationship comes first in the triad.

### The game master stance of a mentor

- Build the world: set up the environment so that real challenges occur in it.
- Set the challenge: hand over a task that looks one size too large.
- Hold the consequence: let what follows from a decision actually follow, even when it gets uncomfortable.
- Resist the temptation to deliver the solution yourself. The hero story belongs to the child.

## Where the triad comes from

It came out of a months long symposium on Clubhouse, around 9,700 members, more than twenty hosts from philosophy, neurology, pedagogy and parenthood. The same question ran every day: if there were no education system, what should it look like? These three stages are what remained. The answer was then tested every Saturday at Colearning, long before it went into a school.

![Drawing of a quiet workshop bench with a 3D printer and a cutting plotter, a blank pass on a blue lanyard, and a child seen from behind.](https://zukunftbilden.eu/assets/denken/was-schule-heute-leisten-sollte-2.webp)

*Meaningful making is the second step in the triad of relationship, making and wisdom.*

## Where this runs first

Freie Schule Salzburg is the first case. Planned in 2022, at Strubergasse 26 in Salzburg since 2023, run by the non profit association Kreativwerkstatt. Since the 2025/26 school year it holds the permanent Öffentlichkeitsrecht, the Austrian state accreditation, based on its own organisational statute under the private school act. For families that means state valid reports and no yearly external examination. The school runs years one to nine in mixed age groups across three stages: Primaria 1, Primaria 2 and Sekundaria. At the 2026/27 start there are seventeen children with two mentors, at most twelve per mentor. Tuition is 600 euros a month.

### The path of this school

- **2022** The school is planned.
- **2023** The move into Strubergasse 26, rooms on the first floor.
- **2025/26** The permanent Öffentlichkeitsrecht arrives. Reports count, the yearly examination pressure falls away.
- **August 2026** Rebuilding from 17 to 28 August. The rooms get their names and their purpose: Agora, Forum, Laboratorium, Phantasia, Skriptorium.
- **14 September 2026** Welcome celebration on the first day. A red ribbon, scissors for every child and every parent, cut together.

The Laboratorium holds a 3D printer and a cutting plotter, plus a film and a podcast studio. Access is staged: “Every machine has its own licence: safety briefing, operation, material knowledge and a test piece.” That is the triad as furniture. Relationship is built by the person who signs off the licence. The test piece is the meaningful work. And whoever may run a machine carries real responsibility, which at this school is called maturity stages.

## How this can be checked

Four times a school year the school shows publicly what the children have built. These expos are the most honest test I know. Either something is on the table, or nothing is.

### The expos in the 2026/27 school year

- 26 November 2026
- 11 February 2027
- 13 May 2027
- 1 July 2027, closing expo with a summer celebration

Since August 2026 the school’s learning platform is called Heureka. It shows every child where it stands, runs without AI and even offline on request, can be paused at any time, and the youngest children learn with no device of their own. The principle behind it: “We treat computers, the internet and AI like fire. Unaccompanied it burns everything down. With adults who live and teach a mature way of handling it, it becomes a stove, a light and a forge.”

One sentence measures the whole school: whatever I want to learn, I can learn it. Whatever I want to create, I can create it. What that looks like for one single teenager is in [Building an AI platform at fourteen.](https://zukunftbilden.eu/en/denken/mit-14-eine-ki-plattform)

### On record

- Permanent Öffentlichkeitsrecht since the 2025/26 school year, under the school’s own organisational statute
- Tuition 600 euros a month, as of September 2026
- Years one to nine, mixed age across three stages, seventeen children with two mentors in 2026/27
- Paideia is the quality mark and development layer for independent schools, at around ten percent of the running income per child, net
- Four expos in the 2026/27 school year, the first on 26 November 2026

Source: freieschulesalzburg.at/kosten and the blog post on Öffentlichkeitsrecht, retrieved September 2026. Pedagogical foundation, chapters 2.1 to 2.5.

### Sources and links

- [Freie Schule Salzburg](https://freieschulesalzburg.at)
- [The triad: what this school stands on](https://freieschulesalzburg.at/blog/der-dreiklang-worauf-diese-schule-steht)
- [Öffentlichkeitsrecht explained simply](https://freieschulesalzburg.at/blog/oeffentlichkeitsrecht-einfach-erklaert) · Source for the correction in this note.
- [Costs and getting to know the school](https://freieschulesalzburg.at/kosten) · Current tuition figure.
- [What does an independent school in Austria cost?](https://freieschulesalzburg.at/blog/was-kostet-eine-freie-schule)
- [Matura after an independent school: the three routes in Austria](https://freieschulesalzburg.at/blog/matura-nach-freier-schule) · The school runs to year nine, the article explains what comes after.
- [Why our learning platform is called Heureka](https://freieschulesalzburg.at/blog/warum-unsere-lernplattform-heureka-heisst)
- [Try Heureka, demo without sign up](https://paideia-heureka-demo.web.app/)
- [Paideia for schools](https://zukunftbilden.eu/en/paideia)
- [Colearning](https://zukunftbilden.eu/en/colearning)

## Margin notes

- **Randnotiz** The order is where most schools fail. Relationship costs time that appears on no timetable, and it pays off in the third month at the earliest. So almost everywhere it gets done last, although it has to come first.
- **Verknüpft**  [Paideia for schools](https://zukunftbilden.eu/en/paideia), [Colearning](https://zukunftbilden.eu/en/colearning), [Building an AI platform at fourteen.](https://zukunftbilden.eu/en/denken/mit-14-eine-ki-plattform), [Does belonging have to be earned?](https://zukunftbilden.eu/en/denken/zugehoerigkeit-und-verantwortung)
- **Beleg** Permanent Öffentlichkeitsrecht since the 2025/26 school year, according to the Freie Schule Salzburg guest article of 31 August 2026 and the blog post on Öffentlichkeitsrecht. Tuition 600 euros a month according to freieschulesalzburg.at/kosten, retrieved in September 2026. Triad and game master stance from the pedagogical foundation, chapters 2.1 to 2.5. Alongside it an unlisted video from 2023 ("Dreiklang der Bildung Momofeichtinger").
- **Rechenweg** Paideia works with about ten percent of the running income per child, net. Ten percent of 600 euros tuition is roughly 60 euros per child and month.

## How this note grew

- 2026-09-03: Deepened with the origin of the relationship pillar: theatre director Peter Brook named as the inspiration, from a video of 2023.
- 2026-09-03: Corrected: permanent Öffentlichkeitsrecht since the 2025/26 school year, tuition 600 euros a month. Deepened: the origin of the triad, the game master stance, the timeline of the school, expo dates, Heureka and a block with all sources.
- 2026-09-02: Planted from the education question page.

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