An OP-ED By Philip M. Smith
June 22, 1995
If you want to see the future of education, don't watch children in the average classroom. Watch children play a video game. You'll see them engaged, excited, interacting, and learning -- even if its only about how to get to the next level of the game.
The generation of children entering school today aptly have been dubbed the Nintendo generation. They play computerized video games. They listen to music on digital compact disks. They help their families program the VCRs.
Because of their immersion in a computerized world, children absorb information differently than their parents do. Instead of following information passively from beginning to end -- as people tend to do with television shows, newspapers, and books -- children interact with the new technologies. Watching them use a computer is more like witnessing a conversation than a monologue. They skip from place to place and draw connections. They construct their own realities by experimenting with what already exists.
Schools now have an opportunity to apply the information technologies that are so effective outside the classroom for educational purposes. But to make the most of these technologies, we have to rethink education from the ground up.
The power of information technologies to reshape education already is becoming clear. In scattered locations around the country, schools are using these technologies and interactive multimedia to engage students more actively in learning and to teach them the skills they will need to thrive in an information-based age.
Furthermore, we are on the verge of a transforming event in education. The worldwide communications network known as the Internet -- which has been doubling in size every year -- gradually is starting to reach the schools. As the information infrastructure is developed, more and more students and teachers will gain access to a global web of information.
I remember how frustrated I was as a child when I couldn't find what I wanted at the local library. Soon books from around the world -- and much, much more -- will be at our fingertips. Already the Internet and other information technologies are bringing interactive instruction to schools in small towns, allowing students to build communities with their counterparts around the world, and forging links between schools and the communities around them.
Taking advantage of this new capability will require profound changes in the roles of teachers, students, and schools. Instead of being the repository of knowledge, teachers will be guides who help students navigate through electronically accessible information. They will use the new technologies to build networks with each other, with parents and students, with academic and industrial experts, and with other professionals.
Schools will look less like the factories they were set up to emulate and more like the workplaces of a postindustrial age. The distinction between learning inside of school and outside will blur.
It will be too expensive to outfit every classroom with the latest technologies, even as their prices fall. Educators therefore need to tap into broadly available technologies. They need to apply home computers, television, and even video games to education. They need to take advantage of a growing body of educational software developed for the home.
Turning opportunity into reality requires four important changes:
I don't mean to imply that computers will solve all the problems of education. Many difficult issues will remain. But the new information technologies provide an unprecedented opportunity to re-examine how we educate our children.
Schools cannot avoid the coming changes. They are being caught up by forces that are global in scope: changes in economies, in technologies, in cultures.
Our nation cannot wait for the next generation of hardware, for the software now on the drawing boards, or for the next generation of teachers. The tools are available. The time to act is now.