Are schools like strip-fields?

Dean Ashenden's Inside Story piece about the technology in learning - Coming, ready or not -  is worth reading in full. This quote from the piece is particularly striking:

"A combine harvester will not make medieval strip-field agriculture more productive, yet an assumption of just that kind can be found in many ways of using (and researching) technology in schooling. When computers are added to classrooms and nothing changes the conclusion is that technology doesn’t work. In fact, it is schooling’s strip-field system that is not working."

(The agricultural comparison is probably worth extending when considering how innovation in education spreads.)