This article focuses on open schools or schools without walls, those experiments within the public school system involving a reconceptualization of the role of the school in the educational process. A brief review of the free school movement (those experiments outside public schools) is also included. The stated goal of the open school is to help the child and adolescent move between classroom and community through a series of optimally stimulating settings with access to skills when he needs them, and providing learnings congruent with his own major life experiences. Characteristics of such open systems of learning are described, problems analyzed and two requirements for transforming the public schools given: 1) turning the school into a headquarters and the entire community into a complex of learning sites; and, 2) reorganization of learning across disciplinary lines. The first will involve a substantial redeployment of personnel and resources in public schools as well as a redefinition of the relationships between school and community, teachers and community persons, adults and children. In addition, scholars and university-based professionals can assist in the development of new curricula and educational materials for flexible and more humanized school systems. Useful references on this new school concept are given as well as an extensive bibliography of resources, periodicals, and books. (Author/JSB)