TIME - Man of the Year/CompactPublishing-TimeMagazine-TimeManOfTheYear-Win31MSDOS.iso/moy/101592/10159920.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 9.6 KB | 189 lines

                                                                                SPECIAL ISSUE: MILLENNIUM -- BEYOND THE YEAR 2000 

THE CENTURY AHEAD, Page 59

Tomorrow's Lesson: Learn or Perish


Computers will act as tutors, teachers will be well-paid heroes,
and doing your homework will be a matter of survival

BY MICHAEL D. LEMONICK - With reporting by Sophfronia Scott
Gregory/New York


    The group is trudging along a pathway through the forest,
looking something like an extended family on vacation: small
children, teenagers, middle-agers and older people. But when
the walkers suddenly emerge in a wide meadow, it is clear that
something strange is happening. On one side of the clearing
stands the gray-clad army of Robert E. Lee, and on the other
the dark blue-uniformed infantry serving under George Meade. As
the hikers stand and watch, bugles sound, guns begin to fire and
the battle of Gettysburg is under way.

    Real as it seems, the entire scene has been staged. The
year is 2067, and the spectators are students who are learning
about the battle in the safety of a classroom through the
technology of virtual reality. By putting on special goggles
and bodysuits, the generationally mixed students "enter" the
bloody scene and experience it as if they were really there.
The sights, smells, sounds -- perhaps even the sensation of
warm summer breezes against the skin -- all help make an
indelible impression. In the course of their studies, the pupils
will experience many other important historical events that have
been carefully re-enacted and digitally filmed. The technology
also enables them to transport themselves to far-off places,
ranging from the top of Mount Everest to the moons of Jupiter.

    This kind of total-immersion experience, already being
explored in places such as the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology's Media Lab and the University of Washington's Human
Interface Technology Lab, will be just one part of a great leap
in learning that will take place by the middle of the 21st
century. Part of the change will be technological: highly
advanced computers will serve as both tutors and libraries,
interacting with students individually and giving them access to
a universe of information so vast that it will make today's
Library of Congress look like a small-town facility.

    An even more fundamental change will be the almost complete
breakdown of education's formal rigidity. It will be replaced
by instruction tailored to the individual student. For example,
instead of forcing most 10-year-olds to sit through 10 months
of fifth grade while a few gifted ones skip forward and others
fall back, all the children will learn at their own pace, taking
several core courses and a wide variety of electives.

    The standard high school diploma will be replaced by a
series of achievement goals. Advancement into college, a trade
or a career will be based on the attainment of those personal
goals. The venerable concept of apprenticeship, which thrived in
18th and 19th century America, will be revived; young people
will divide their time between school and training with mentors
in areas ranging from carpentry to wildlife biology. At the same
time, adult education will boom as workers retrain for new jobs,
bone up on developments in fast-moving fields and learn new
skills and hobbies for their retirement years.

    As with the last big revolution in edu cation -- the
imposition of universal public schooling in the mid-1800s --
this one will be driven by the Federal Government. The impetus
will be political, social and economic. Such competitors as
Japan and the European Community, which pour substantial
resources into education, have already caught up with and
surpassed the U.S. in the quality of their workers, and the
trend will continue. In America a growing, uneducated,
unemployable and mostly minority underclass will put increasing
pressure on society to pay more than lip service to education.

    The result will be a federal effort that will rank as, to
quote Jimmy Carter's response to the energy crunch, "the moral
equivalent of war." Much more money will be funneled into
public schools to upgrade them physically and boost teachers'
salaries dramatically. Teaching will become, as it was in the
past, a hero-like profession that lures some of the brightest
college graduates. A massive public relations campaign will
promote teaching as a career and learning as a central theme of
national life.

    Competition from low-cost, entrepreneurial private schools
will pressure public institutions to abandon such inefficiencies
as the tenure system. They will also give up the 10-month school
year, a relic of the time when students had to do farm work in
summertime. Year-round schooling is a more efficient use of
resources; summer breaks tend to make the first and last months
of the term virtually useless anyway.

    Beyond the first five grades, the standard curriculum will
probably disappear. Basic mathematical, reading and writing
skills will still be required of advanced students, along with,
for Americans, a solid background in U.S. history and
government. But there will be greater specialization for
students who want it. The mass-production approach to the high
school diploma will vanish in favor of competency tests in
subjects as diverse as physics, metalwork, music and graphic
design. Potential employers and college admissions officers
would then have a much more specific idea of a student's skills
and training.

    Learning will no longer stop with high school or even
college. Specialized knowledge will become obsolete so quickly
that adults will be encouraged to take frequent breaks from
work, subsidized by their employers, to catch up. "Learning
vacations," even for entire families, will become a major part
of the travel industry as well as a big moneymaker for colleges
whose campuses and faculty would otherwise be idle.

    The loosening of strictures will throw older and younger
people together in the same classrooms. That might pose an
instructional problem: What level does the teacher aim for? But
within a few decades, technology will make it possible to
provide tailored instruction within a single class. Students
will become adept at using interactive multimedia, a system
consisting of computers, exhaustive data bases of information,
moving images and sound.

    The suitably epic term for such an educational odyssey is
"knowledge navigation," a term coined by James Dezell,
president of EduQuest, a division of IBM. In an experimental
EduQuest program, students reading a passage from Tennyson's
epic poem Ulysses can select a distinguished actor to read it
aloud, call up a panel of experts to discuss the text, or read
background on the Trojan War. Most important, students will
receive this information in any order that suits them. The
technique is expected to help open up vital areas of study that
transmit many of the ethical underpinnings of a society. "How
do we pass on morals and ethical issues to our kids?" asks
Dezell. "Most of those issues have been examined in the great
works, but those things are very difficult for a student to
read." Multimedia programs, he believes, will make literature
-- and thus these ideas -- far more accessible.

    Computer-aided instruction will be a key to solving the
problem of adult illiteracy, according to Kent Wall, co-creator
of the Buddy System, a program now used in Indiana public
schools and homes. "Suppose Mom's out shopping," Wall imagines.
"Johnny, the fourth-grader, is in bed. And Dad's sitting there
thinking about the fact that he can't read, or maybe he reads at
the second-grade level. But if Dad can go over and find the "on"
button, he can teach himself how to read. He doesn't have to
raise his hand and say, `I'm illiterate.' "

    If computers take over so much of the job, what role will
be left for the teacher? A different yet essential one, say the
experts. Rather than just presenting information and issuing
instructions, like a coach directing a football team, the
teacher will inspire, motivate and serve as referee for the
human-to-human discussion that computerized instruction is
designed to provoke. A teacher will thus act more like the
floor captain of a basketball team, directing the overall flow
of action but allowing other team members to take the lead when
the situation warrants it. "Teachers will become much more like
facilitators, guides," says Hugh Osborn, director of the New
Media Group at public TV station WNET in New York City. "They
won't be able just to have their answer book and have that be
the main thing that differentiates them from the students."

    The greatest mystery for the next century is whether
scientists will discover fundamental ways to affect how the
mind learns. The human brain has evolved over millions of years
to process information in a certain way -- the very act of
perceiving the world is an integral part of the way it is
understood. Can learning speed and capacity be "souped up"?
While scientists have found ways to improve the learning
ability of people with damaged and dysfunctional brains, nothing
has yet emerged that could radically improve a normal brain's
ability. No secret pill or process is on the horizon, just a
steady enhancement of abilities people already have. And the
most powerful ingredient will be motivation, since the working
world will become ever more knowledge driven and information
intensive. In the 21st century, nothing will be more
fashionable -- and essential -- than doing one's homework.