Four Alternative Futures for Education in the United States: It's Our Choice.

Abstract

Abstract. This article discusses four possible futures toward which educational systems might direct our society. The first is a future dominated by rote memorizers. The second is a future of critical thinkers. The third is a future of successfully intelligent thinkers. The fourth is a future of wise thinkers. Each future builds on previous one. Which one should our schools aspire to? ********** One way of conceiving of task of describing future of education in United States is to view it as a prediction task. We have to guess what future will hold. To a large extent, of course, any exercise such as this one must be a forecasting task. But word prediction implies a certain passivity in face of future that I believe we should put aside. To a large extent, forecasting future of education is a selection task. We, as a nation, get to choose our own future. What future will we choose? I describe here four (of many possible) futures. Each builds on previous one and adds something to it. What future would you choose? Future 1: The Ideal of Walking Encyclopedia Future 1 is future that most children around world face. The education they receive emphasizes rote memorization of whatever it is that powers that be in society think is worth rote memorizing. In a religious environment, it might be Bible, Koran, or some other holy book. In a secular environment, it might be a set of disconnected facts about exports of various countries or dates of certain treaties. Such training may be useful for those who build their lives expecting others to do what they have done; it will not be useful in developing critical-thinking skills children will need to cope in a flexible way with a rapidly changing environment. This future is one that many people support. I recently received an e-mail from an individual who plans to become the smartest person in world. His plan is receiving media attention. His method is to read entire Encyclopedia Britannica. Lest this view sound limited to him, keep in mind that TV quiz shows, as well as national spelling and geography bees, measure how smart their contestants are in terms of their ability to retrieve large numbers of facts, many of which are of little relevance outside context of contest. There is no particular reason why sheer memorization should lead to development of critical-thinking skills. Rote memorization requires recital and repetition. Critical thinking requires skillful analysis, evaluation, and interpretation. Of course, one cannot think without something to think about. Children or adults need a knowledge base with which to think. But there is a difference between a knowledge base and a store of information. Any repository of facts or supposed facts and ideas can be a store of information. One could memorize a German-English dictionary and know translation of each of words from German to English and vice versa. In this case, one would have a large store of information, but a trivial knowledge base. A knowledge base is for use. The information must be stored in an organized way that makes it easily retrievable when needed and at call of different kinds of retrieval cues, whether on a test in school or on larger test that is life. Too many teachers and students alike confuse two. They believe that merely knowing an unrelated collection of poorly integrated facts will constitute a child's having developed a knowledge base. In fact, it will constitute a store of information, much of which may be unusable. One can end up with a situation similar to that of an erased computer disc. The data are not truly erased. They are still on disc, unless one has taken special measures to ensure that data are wiped clean. Rather, data have simply become inaccessible. They no longer have a normal means of being called up. Only a computer specialist can retrieve them, often with difficulty, and usually in degraded form. …