One of the advantages of growing old is the sense of entitlement that comes with being a crank. Me? I think school is a terrible institution. I’m not so much interested in its reform as its abolition the future. He invited submissions from more than 60 schools of photography around the world, from which he and his co-curators selected 50 finalists. It is a depressing conceit that the place to look for the future of art is a classroom.

Most of the great photographers of the past 150 years were either self-taught or mentored by established photographers. Alfred Steiglitz mentored Paul Strand; Man Ray mentored Brassai, Bill Brandt, Berenice Abbott, and Lee Miller; Walker Evans mentored Helen Levitt; and Alexey Brodovitch, through his Design Laboratory seminars, mentored a whole generation, including Richard Avedon and Robert Frank. Many wonderful photographers did have formal instruction in educational institutions of one sort or another: Arthur Leipzig learned his craft from the Photo League during the Depression for a $6 fee, and W. Eugene Smith paid to learn the fundamentals at the New York Institute of Photography. But these were not yet the full-blown degree-awarding

A new show at the Aperture Gallery, “re-Generation: 50 Photographers of Tomorrow,” brought my visceral hatred of the classroom back to me. The exhibition originated at the Musee de l’Elysee, an institution devoted to photography in Lausanne, Switzerland. To celebrate the museum’s 20th anniversary, its director, William Ewing, decided to identify those young photographers whose work will be considered important in 2025, 20 years in institutions of today, establishments that issue pieces of paper certifying so-and-so is an artist.

Virtually all the works in “reGeneration” are technically accomplished, but there is a cold feeling about them, a sense of assignments dutifully turned in. “Is there nothing they love?” was the thought that kept going through my mind as I went from picture to picture. Only rarely did I get the feeling of a passion that had to find expression.

Several of the entries are conceptual pieces that reference noted works of photography. One is “Every … Nicholas Nixon’s Brown Sisters” (2004), by Idris Khan, who studied at the Royal College of Art in England from 2002 to 2004. Nicholas Nixon has taken a picture of his wife and her three sisters in pretty much the same pose every year for 30 years; what Ms. Khan has done is to superimpose the annual images one on top of the other into an undistinguishable blur and to blow up the muddy result to 45 inches by 55 inches, far larger than any of Mr. Nixon’s originals. The beauty of Mr. Nixon’s work is that we see the four women aging incrementally, and can see what time does to them phys ically and to their relationships. The point of Ms. Khan’s work eludes me.

Carlin Wing, a Harvard student from 1998 to 2002, has three pictures from his “Culture, Inc.” series on display: “Hiroshi Sugimoto: Conference Room F,” “Thomas Ruff: Conference Room H,” and “Nan Goldin: Conference Room 28B” (all 2002). Each picture shows part of a conference room in which a work by the named photographer is hanging on the wall. The series is presumably about the relationship between the culture of photography and the commercial corporations that use photographic works to gussy up their premises. This would be more interesting if it showed the rooms peopled and investigated how the pictures on the wall affected the conferees around the tables, or, more likely, how they failed to affect them. As it is, the series is about interior decoration. Like all conceptual art, once you get it, you got it.

Other contemporary tropes make an appearance. There are large color pictures of isolated bits of sterile modern architecture like Gabor Arion Kudasz’s “MOM Park-Office Buildings” (2004) and Josef Schulz’s “Form #2” (2002). And there are large color portraits of people with blank expressions, like the three from Raphael Hefti’s series “Beauticians” (2002), and the woman in the white slip from the series Eva Lauterlein’s “Chimeres” (2002-4).

But there were a few photographers whose later work I will look forward to seeing. “Mike,” “Jump,” and “Amir” (all 2004) show that Charlotte Player, who studied at Nottingham Trent University from 2001-04, has an eye: She has found a way to present each of the hip young men here as a unique being.

Anoush Abrar, who studied at the Ecole Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne from 2002-04, is represented by “Samuel,” from the series “Iranian Jewish Community in Los Angeles” (2004). This is a portrait of a man in his 60s or 70s wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and tie, and standing at the door of a plush residence, presumably his. The picture shows him to be intelligent, powerful, and weary.

The first two pictures from the Gaza Strip by Christoph Bangert, who studied at the International Center of Photography in 2002-03, are generic shots of Palestinian Arab terrorists – one with masks and grenade launchers, one a funeral. But the third, “Nancy Is Sleeping in Nura’s arms, Jamil Is Hiding” (2003), is an affecting picture in a low key of a plain woman seemingly beset with concerns beyond the children she is tending.

Most willing students can be taught the various technologies of film and digital photography. It is far more difficult to teach someone to see, but learning to see – to see knowingly – is the first requirement for being a photographer. To learn that one must to go about in the world; study the work of predecessors and masters; deepen one’s self by exposure to great music, poetry, and theater, as well as insightful history and profound ideas, and wrenching religious impulses. You don’t get a degree, but if you work at it, you may get a pair of eyes.

Until June 22 (547 W. 27th Street, fourth floor, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, 212-505-5555).