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Futuristic education

Futuristic education John H. Holcomb We must prepare children in schools to face their future, not enter our past Two-thirds of the jobs described in the Dictionary of them to assume their responsibilities in the year 2020 and Occupational Titles did not exist a generation ago. The beyond. need for white-collar workers has increased 1,200 per cent in the last 80 years. We have added almost 10,000 words We must teach them to be lovers of lear ning. This is of everyday use since Sputnik. We have machines that can probably the most important task we have. The illiterate talk to each other at rates of over 100,000 words per of the future is not the one who has not learned, but the minute. We have more learned people than society can one who has not learned how to learn. We must absorb. The children entering our kindergartens today constantly remind ourselves, as a society, that the person will spend their entire adult lives living and working in who elects not to learn has no advantage over the person another century. All this change…new values, new who cannot learn. As an example of how this might affect systems, new technology…and the only thing we do not our curriculum, every major research study in the past want to change is the school! several years has indicated that listening – not reading – is now our primary source of information. We all have We, as a society, feel that if we can somehow keep the courses in our schools titled Reading, but how many of schools the way they were when we were kids, those days our schools have courses titled Listening? None. will come back… days of sunshine and friendship, when we did not know about the clay feet of our leaders, or the I wonder why we do not have listening courses. Maybe it war in some far-off country we did not even know about, is because listening is a passive activity. You do not have or whose name we could not spell, or the loss of the to do anything to listen. Just sit there and take it in. It Earth's ability to support the human race and the would be hard to design a course in listening and make it vanishing of the protective atmosphere which surrounds very interesting – I am sure it would be tagged as an us, or…and on and on, through a dozen other disasters or educational frill and be the first thing dropped from the fears which prey on each of us. curriculum when the money gets tight. Still, listening is the most important learning skill we have, according to No, we cannot use the schools to bring back our own the data – and we do not teach it. childhoods. Schools are designed, or should be, to teach children how to cope in an adult society. They must be That is just an example of one way in which our schools more than holding-pens for students until they become might have to change in order to meet the needs of the adults, more than just warehouses in which we store kids adults of the twenty-first century. There are many others, until they are old enough to tax. Schools must be places tough to define and develop programmes for, but part of where we pass on the accumulated knowledge of previous the task of each American generation has been to identify generations in order that future generations will not have problems beyond its capacity to resolve. I am sure we to learn everything through trial and error. There is not could do it…if we ever really decided to give it a try. the time. There is too much to learn. With the cutbacks in the funding of the public schools We are all concerned about the pace of our world today. perhaps we will be forced to ask ourselves honestly, as a We would like things to slow down and give us a chance nation, “What are schools supposed to do?”. It would to catch up. We have to run just as hard as we can just to seem that, after 2,500 years of asking the same question, stay where we are, and if we want to get ahead we have to someone would come up with an answer. run twice as fast. But we can not expect this slowing- down process to take place in our schools. We must prepare children in our schools to face their future. We must prepare them to cope, at an adult level, in order for John H. Holcomb is a Professor at Tarleton State University, Stephenville and Director of Cross Timbers International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 9 No. 1, 1995, p. 41 School Development Council, USA. © MCB University Press, 0951-354X http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png International Journal of Educational Management Emerald Publishing

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Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 MCB UP Ltd. All rights reserved.
ISSN
0951-354X
DOI
10.1108/09513549510076014
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

John H. Holcomb We must prepare children in schools to face their future, not enter our past Two-thirds of the jobs described in the Dictionary of them to assume their responsibilities in the year 2020 and Occupational Titles did not exist a generation ago. The beyond. need for white-collar workers has increased 1,200 per cent in the last 80 years. We have added almost 10,000 words We must teach them to be lovers of lear ning. This is of everyday use since Sputnik. We have machines that can probably the most important task we have. The illiterate talk to each other at rates of over 100,000 words per of the future is not the one who has not learned, but the minute. We have more learned people than society can one who has not learned how to learn. We must absorb. The children entering our kindergartens today constantly remind ourselves, as a society, that the person will spend their entire adult lives living and working in who elects not to learn has no advantage over the person another century. All this change…new values, new who cannot learn. As an example of how this might affect systems, new technology…and the only thing we do not our curriculum, every major research study in the past want to change is the school! several years has indicated that listening – not reading – is now our primary source of information. We all have We, as a society, feel that if we can somehow keep the courses in our schools titled Reading, but how many of schools the way they were when we were kids, those days our schools have courses titled Listening? None. will come back… days of sunshine and friendship, when we did not know about the clay feet of our leaders, or the I wonder why we do not have listening courses. Maybe it war in some far-off country we did not even know about, is because listening is a passive activity. You do not have or whose name we could not spell, or the loss of the to do anything to listen. Just sit there and take it in. It Earth's ability to support the human race and the would be hard to design a course in listening and make it vanishing of the protective atmosphere which surrounds very interesting – I am sure it would be tagged as an us, or…and on and on, through a dozen other disasters or educational frill and be the first thing dropped from the fears which prey on each of us. curriculum when the money gets tight. Still, listening is the most important learning skill we have, according to No, we cannot use the schools to bring back our own the data – and we do not teach it. childhoods. Schools are designed, or should be, to teach children how to cope in an adult society. They must be That is just an example of one way in which our schools more than holding-pens for students until they become might have to change in order to meet the needs of the adults, more than just warehouses in which we store kids adults of the twenty-first century. There are many others, until they are old enough to tax. Schools must be places tough to define and develop programmes for, but part of where we pass on the accumulated knowledge of previous the task of each American generation has been to identify generations in order that future generations will not have problems beyond its capacity to resolve. I am sure we to learn everything through trial and error. There is not could do it…if we ever really decided to give it a try. the time. There is too much to learn. With the cutbacks in the funding of the public schools We are all concerned about the pace of our world today. perhaps we will be forced to ask ourselves honestly, as a We would like things to slow down and give us a chance nation, “What are schools supposed to do?”. It would to catch up. We have to run just as hard as we can just to seem that, after 2,500 years of asking the same question, stay where we are, and if we want to get ahead we have to someone would come up with an answer. run twice as fast. But we can not expect this slowing- down process to take place in our schools. We must prepare children in our schools to face their future. We must prepare them to cope, at an adult level, in order for John H. Holcomb is a Professor at Tarleton State University, Stephenville and Director of Cross Timbers International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 9 No. 1, 1995, p. 41 School Development Council, USA. © MCB University Press, 0951-354X

Journal

International Journal of Educational ManagementEmerald Publishing

Published: Feb 1, 1995

Keywords: Curriculum; Education; Learning; Organizational change; Schools; Technological change

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