Education

Education will play a bigger role in our lives in the future. Lifelong education will spread, ICT will be used more in education and many people will be self-educating using online resources. Also many new jobs are likely to require better education.

Miscellaneous Scenarios

Here are some scenarios for the mid-range future of education (2015-2020):

• Schools Go High-Tech. Schools use laptops, computers, as learning aids for students in (more or less) recognizably traditional school environments. Not much change, there are just computers everywhere.
• Public School System collapses (more or less,) and parents enroll their children in Free Schools, self-directed schools (or home school) environments.
• Internet Education, Apprenticeship -- Students teach themselves what they need to know primarily by way of Internet. They prove themselves and work jobs by way of Internet.
• Adults join with Students -- Rainbow's End, by Vernor Vinge, explores the idea: If technology accelerates quickly enough, and if youth are the economic targets of adult retraining, why not just merge adult retraining classes and high school classes?

• Because teaching can mean many things, there might still be the need for personalisation in education. This means that different students have different needs and require deeper or shallower access to an empathetic human mind. Perhaps this is why human beings might still be needed to teach others because their empathetic skills might be able to connect and interface with a less educated or trained brain through perception and processing of sensory phenomena and concern.
• Alternatively information might be downloaded directly into the brain. Teachers might then act as therapists or curators of brains that cannot be managed via formula or prediction engines.

Links

Edit Hint: Please say something about more about what is at these links, especially the Russion ones JC 17:19, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

• Advanced Technologies for Education and Training, particularly the 85-page PDF report
• Robotic teachers, robotic teachers 2 (in Russian)
• Virtual teachers virtual teachers 2 (in Russian)
• Someone who is very enthusiastic about UnSchooling has dropped off a number of links ([1] [2] [3])

Reports

• Reports on the future of educational technology from JISC. See also gUniversities in the Future foresight report.
• UK Foresight division published "Universities of the future", a collection of decent forecasts that can be ordered from their site.

Fiction

• Synthetic Serendipity -- by Vernor Vinge -- takes place in and around a school ~2020-2030; see Rainbow's End for more on the school of the 2020's
• Anda's Game -- by Cory Doctorow -- only tangentially about school, but it does shed light on the social context for schools in the present through (say) 2015.
• Prime institute of technology

Possible future developments

The Public School System

Public schools are funded by the government, and will still exist, even though many middle class families will choose to send their children to private schools instead of these, which can be very poor quality especially in large cities. Some cities have excellent, grade A schools of all levels which can make parents want their child to attend those instead of an expensive private school.

Although education is slowly becoming a frivolous luxury for the wealthy in the 21st century and beyond, many teachers and school counsellors still pressure young people to enroll in university and to become a chartered member of the Establishment--a term for those with a degree or certificate that enables their holders access to high-paying jobs--wearing a suit and tie, making at least forty thousand dollars per annum, while owning a home in the suburbs.

Computers

As the current trend in education proves, most schools are obtaining better and better technological equipment, mainly in the use of computers and electronic media. This trend will continue in the forseeable future, as schools find better quality items to be more and more important in their curricula. The computers in the schools' media centers, for example, will be in greater and greater demand as teachers demand that work be done online. In addition, internet and computer usage will continue to increase, for the following reasons among others:

1. Wikipedia and its sister projects will become more and more influential. Just a look at the exponential growth of all MediaWiki projects, and you can see why it is rapidly gaining influence in the educational system.
2. Teachers are requiring students to turn in their essays and papers to online checking sites such as Turnitin.com, which checks for any instances of a student's copying text from other online sites into their works. As Turnitin and its derivatives become more and more widely accepted, its use will continue to increase and pervade all written assignments.
3. As more and more assignments are transferred from paper-borne to electronic-borne, the students' need for computers will become ever more pressing.
4. More students will become accustomed to such places as Myspace.com or Facebook.com, which allows open flow of information and chat among "friends".
5. Email becomes a means of storing homework and other information, and will therefore result in a greater need to use computers.
6. The internet itself is expanding almost exponentially, and as thus the quality and amount of information on it will continue to increase, resulting in more students' using them.
7. Online reference study guides such as cliffsnotes.com and sparknotes.com, which cover nearly every subject in a school's curricula, become more and more effective in their coverage of material learned in the classroom, leading to more reliability and therefore dependence by the student on this reference.

Online Education

This too is not new. Many grade levels' curricula can now be taught online, though this is extremely disorganized except for sites such as Wikipedia and Sparknotes. The organization of this database will continue to improve. Meanwhile, some advertisers and entrepreneurs are already stressing the value of online education--in some cases, a college degree can be granted through online study. In the future, this will continue to develop.

In today's educational system, a remarkable inefficiency is immediately apparent. Teachers must teach the same material four to eight times in one day (depending on class period length) per one year, year after year, in all the classrooms teaching a particular material, in all classrooms teaching any material, in all the schools in the nation, and all nations in the world. The amount of labor that would be saved by introducing a standard education would be enormous, freeing all these teachers to do professor-level teaching or postgraduate-level work.

One must also think that even today online teachings to monkeys are starting. In the future the online teaching of the monkey will persist. One day the monkey will surpass the human and Planet of the Apes will occur.

Drawbacks

True, online education does have its drawbacks. One, it cannot be applied to only partially disciplined children who have not become accustomed to endlessly staring at a computer screen. This is a major difficulty for students grade three and under, and a less problematic issue up to fifth grade, ceasing afterward.

One major aspect in this regard is the social environment in which the children will be raised. Over the course of the next generation, an entire flip may occur in which studying by computer/internet will become increasingly more prevalent and a much more common sight. For these children who will grow up in the decades to come, such an environment will serve to propel them into the rigorous form of study that online education involves.

Discipline of young children is particularly hard to tackle. One way that this issue can be negated is the formation of computer-lab-classes, in which a single instructor can act as an overseer for hundreds of students working in the one lab. The more efficient way is to introduce a particular type of program that will start off easy to learn--seemingly like an educational game--and which gradually steeps its pupils into harder and less entertaining studies. For the purposes of this article, then, we will call that program and associated methods as the Fountain of Knowledge.

Fountain of Knowledge

Main article: Fountain of Knowledge

Fountain of Knowledge is an educational program that will be adopted in this time period.

Standardized Testing

Without teachers and grades, the Fountain of Knowledge program will need a method of ensuring that students actually learn. Aside from a social change in the coming generation that will shift toward veneration of those who know material (as evidenced in honor for today's Doctors of Philosophy and Doctors of Medicine). This will be accomplished with a standardized test, akin to that currently espoused by the College Board (ACT, AP, SAT, SAT 2). The new standardized test would include every subject, each attached to a course based from the Fountain of Knowledge program. These tests would be administered regularly--once a week--and change problems each time.

In preparation for such standardized tests, students would "cram" or study very quickly in depth but in rather short-term memory. Therefore, while they will be able to ace the topics one after another (these tests do not have to be taken simultaneously; they can be taken as the student finds him/herself prepared for it), they will very likely forget this material.

Therefore, the standardized tests would have to be renewed annually until the person enters society by performing a set function (such as acting as a physician for medicine school, or performing basic laboratory research for biology school). In addition, the Fountain of Knowledge program's reliance on theoretics and mnemonics over rote memorization will also help to this regard.

Some believe that the situation is not as bad as it seems; they argue that as students become more focused on a particular subject area that interest them, and as they also have less homework to do and less material to study, that they will actually devote themselves to studying what they must and therefore be less likely to forget their curricula.

Advent of Robotics

Gradually, sometime between 2020 and 2040, robotics will become a definite part of our lives. Not only in everyday life, but in what work the members of the Establishment must do (ie. those who "have an education"). This change means that much of what students once needed to learn no longer needs to be taught, except to a couple of Stewards should either the system fail/crash or if there is a debate on the nature of that knowledge (ie. mathematical proofs, advancement of theoretics, etc.). The rest will have considerably less of the boring material to learn, allowing them to progress to harder, even more challenging but nevertheless more necessary material. All other functions will be handled by machine.

Demise of Education

Gradually, the increased influence of robotics and computers in everyday life will result in the eradication of much of education. Currently, ear jewels such as the telephone service provided by Bluetooth already allow communication between the subvocalizing person and the ear jewel. In addition, work is being performed on an eye jewel which will allow a person to tap into vast amounts of knowledge. With its application into the general populace, standardized testing will become obsolete as it will be impossible to ensure that a test taker not get an unfair advantage from the use of an eye jewel. This eye jewel will gradually supplant formal education as the next means of garnering knowledge for immediate application. However, the Stewards (as mentioned earlier) will remain the guardians of that knowledge that has not been removed from the standard person's curriculum.

The Human Mind Project

The Human Mind Project forecasts the end of the eye jewel as well, further sealing off education as the means of garnering knowledge is moved to the realm of the thought. Hermes--a nanotechnological fleet of attuned neural interdictors--will be able to immediately, efficiently, and safely alter a person's memory so that what one would normally have to learn through education would be directly present just through expressing the will to access such data.

The Human Mind Project is, in a sense, the millenium catalyst. When informatics becomes so widespread and easily accessible, people will be able to work together on formulating a thought. Therefore, theories and applications not otherwise possible will be achieved at last. Who knows what it may result in? The singularity is one possible result, after which education may finally be laid to rest in peace.

Obstacles to education reform and obstacles to the future

There are many obstacles that stop education reform and futuristic plans from taking place. Perhaps they will not stand up forever but they do currently exist. The first obstacle is one of consciousness - are people willing to give up trust in a personal teacher who is a human to have it replaced by a robot? The second one is institutional. This is a major obstacle. Currently education is highly institutionalised, which means there are people and governments who have spent billions of dollars in money creating programmes, buildings and employing people in certain ways so that the education system remains the same way or changes very little. 

The implications of something being institutional is that institutions want to preserve themselves and remain relatively the same over a long period of time. They keep wanting to have children fill the halls of schools, and have adult people discipline and direct children. Computers could or could not replace this role also. It remains to be seen.

A future where all work is replaced by robots is highly radical. Other professions like doctors, accountans and lawyers could also be theoretically replaced by super intelligent robots who have all the rules of the profession super-progammed inside of them. This would have radical implications for society and for capitalism. There could possibly no longer be a class system of better and worse jobs and jobs might become increasingly redundant or morph into other kinds of jobs that organise the world at a meta-level.