21. Education? Computer, Naturally

Nowadays computers have found, their ways into all walks of life. What changes will computers bring to our education system? Will they finally replace teachers altogether? This article presents us with some interesting ideas.

From computer lessons in kindergarten to graduate degrees for the elderly, education over the next 50 years will become a lifelong pursuit.

While institutions called schools will remain places for children to learn basic skills, electronic communications will bring knowledge to people at every age wherever they are—at home, on the job, by a hospital bed, in the car, as well as in a traditional classroom. "People will be able to say, 'I'll learn where and when I want'," says Ernest Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Key to the expansion of education in the next 50 years will be the computer. In every kind of setting, the emphasis will be on individualized instruction. Teaching in elementary grades will be streamlined not only according to ability and IQ but also on the basis of tests revealing how an individual brain works best and in what environment.

Students, for example, who learn through hearing information, would receive much of their instruction aurally, either from a teacher or a computerized recording machine. Visual learners would spend more time reading and writing on computer screens.

In a single classroom, desktop computers will enable students to work at their own speeds and on different subjects at the same time. New research indicates young brains grow in spurts—not at a steady, continuous pace, as previously thought. As a result, school curricula will be tailored to match stages of brain development.

Skills such as mathematical reasoning will be emphasized in the age groups 2-4, 6-8, 10-12 and 14-16, when the brain is expanding rapidly, rather than at plateau phases when the brain cannot handle these tasks as well.

Observes Conrad Toepfer, associate professor in the department of learning and instruction at the State University of New York at Buffalo: "School programs will be much more responsive to what the child is capable of thinking, which will minimize over-challenge and under-challenge."

By the turn of the century, educators say, there will be a shift from engineering and other applied skills since computers will be able to solve such problems. The focus will be on reasoning, with emphasis on the basic subjects of math, chemistry, physics and English.

Just because students will carry a personal computer instead of a book bag, teachers will not disappear. Futurist Christopher Dede of the University of Houston at Clear Lake notes that computers will be effective in teaching subjects such as math, but "in areas such as creative writing, where there are many different right answers, machines will never teach as effectively as people."

Fifty years from now, a college education will mean as much as a high school degree for the generation who came of age in World War II. In 2033, more than 60 percent of American adults will have attended college compared with less than 30 percent today.

That doesn't mean college won't face problems. In this century, a 25 percent drop in the number of 18-to-22-year-olds will doom scores of small private schools. The remaining 3 000 colleges and universities will provide only a part of a person's never ending education.

Industry, for one, will become much more involved in education and job training. Hundreds of corporations will grant degrees, most often in high technology, science and engineering, where state-of-the-art equipment and research will surpass that on most campuses.

Use of television, computers and videotapes will also create classrooms in libraries, museums, neighborhood centers and the home. As a result, futurists see a surge in "public" professors—national experts appearing electronically across the country. In the next century, academia's motto "publish or perish" could well become "perform or perish".

As learning becomes more accessible, more efficient and more rewarding for a greater number of people, the result should be a better-educated citizenry. Says Robert Glaser, co-director of the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh: "The average intelligence should be greatly moved up in the population."

But educators fear that not all Americans will be part of this march toward better learning. Children with home computers will outpace those who have none. Libraries and small firms in poor neighborhoods will not be able to offer the same educational programs as wealthier facilities. The Carnegie Foundation's Boyer warns: "The gap between the educated haves and the have-nots may well increase."

The hope for the future is that as the opportunities for lifelong learning expand, computer literacy will become a basic right for all Americans.

From U.S. News and World Report,

May 9, 1983.