MATTHEW  ISOM

 

 

 

What will the future hold?  It's a human tendency to project our minds into the future in hope and in fear to anticipate how life will be for us, for our children, and even for the species.  As a parent and teacher, the question that I ask myself is what will the learning environment for my grandchildren be like and what kind of world will be created by that learning environment? For the last four or five years I have seen trends in the lives of my high school students that have worried me a bit concerning the near future and what high school and college holds for my grade school children. In the last few months, however, I have come to realize that at select schools, the future of education is already upon us and I see education changing in dramatic ways, ways that will change the world that my grandchildren will inherit.  In the pages that follow I will offer my predictions concerning the world one generation from now.  Because I am a teacher, my ten predictions deal with the changing state of education, but as I discuss each prediction I will show the ramifications for society in general.

 

Here are my predictions for the year 2034:

 

1. Students will focus on learning skills that will enable them to be producers. To a large extent, education for education’s sake will disappear.

2. All classes will be “elective” classes.  Core subject concepts will be taught in classes that focus on the creation of products.

3. A good percentage of top-achieving students will attend private schools funded by big money.  The public school system will comprised of charter schools, each focusing on a different trade.

4. The top students will be creative problem solvers, not linear thinkers

5. Teaching will once again become a highly respected profession and some teachers will be paid very handsomely.

6. The top 5% of Americans will earn an equivalent of $300,000 per year compared to the $200,000 per year of today and the $100,000 per year of 30 years ago.

7. Wealthy people will live in the countryside.

8. Students will be much more engaged in their learning because it will be linked to their interests and their abilities.  I think that students will be happier and will live with a sense of purpose

9. Nearly a third of the highest paid people in America will be schooled online, often living with their parents in remote parts of the world

10. I’m tempted to end with the glib statement that “in 2034 people will be more content than they are now”

 

I realize that many of these predictions may strike some of you as fairly disturbing.  Educational purists will not be happy with the idea that top students might not be spend enough time in school in the pursuit of knowledge as they do learning skills that will make them effective producers of products. This may or may not be true.  Because of increased productivity, the amount of leisure time for the privileged class should increase. hThis, coupled with a desire for a more bucolic life, will undoubtedly give many people the opportunity to spend more time reading and philosophizing than they have in the past (and, admittedly, many people will do just the opposite and America will struggle with the allure of the hedonistic life).  On the other hand, to a large extent schools will have given up on the idea of trying to teach the average student literature and history.  Instead, those students will lead a life akin to that of apprentices in the guild system. What I predict might sound elitist in that a huge number of students will attend private schools (free of charge, by the way).  Am I describing an Orwellian society that is downright un-American?  That depends on how you define “American.”  But will the quality of life for all members of society, even the underprivileged, increase?  I think so.

1.      Students will turn away from core subjects and focus instead on learning skills that will enable them to be producers. To a large extent, education for education’s sake will disappear.

In The End of Science, John Horgan makes bold predictions about the future of society concerning the quest for knowledge.  The book starts with an interview of the British physicist Roger Penrose and the idea that superstring theory “might turn out to be the unified theory . . . of everything” (Horgan, 1997).  When Horgan asks Penrose if he thinks that scientists might soon find “The answer,” Penrose responds that yes, someday fairly soon we will have the answer.  He continues, “I guess this is rather suggesting that there is an answer, although perhaps that’s too pessimistic.”  “What is so pessimistic about a truth seeker thinking that the truth is attainable?” Horgan queries.  “Solving mysteries is a wonderful thing to do.  And if they were all solved, somehow, that would be rather boring” (Horgan, 1997).

As I look to the future of our society and the quest for knowledge by students and adults alike, I wonder if the “big questions” will no longer take center stage in a world that has already found the answers to issues that intrigued the thinkers of the past.  If you think about it, we have, indeed, already solved the vast majority of the big questions and all that remains is fine-tuning.  The origins of the universe and even man himself have been explained.  Areas of knowledge like human psychology and sub-atomic forces had not even been conceptualized 200 years ago and now the average high school graduate feels that he has mastered these concepts. By 2034 the majority of students will no longer be interested in taking year-long courses in biology, chemistry, psychology, or history.  Education for education’s sake will be, if not dead, maimed.

What students will be interested in is learning the concepts of biology or history that enable them to be producers of information and products.  In The  World is Flat, Thomas Friedman refers to an idea that Kevin Kelly published in 2005 in his essay We are the  Web:  “It is not impossible to imagine that one day in the future, everyone alive will write a song, author a book, make a video, craft a Weblog, and code a program” (Friedman, 2005).  It is so satisfying to be a producer rather than simply a recipient that virtually everyone will want to do this.  And how will students be able to achieve this dream?

2.      All classes will be “elective” classes.  Core subject concepts will be taught in classes that focus on the creation of products.

As I mentioned before, the average student will become an apprentice of sorts, working in a specialty field.  Any biology or chemistry that students will learn will take place in a hands-on, practical setting.  This truly is the best way to teach in my opinion, and all students will benefit greatly from this move.For select students, rather than studying biology in the abstract, they will tackle, say, the problem of the decline in the caribou population in the Yukon Territory.  This learning will not be based on a textbook, however, because textbooks will no longer exist.  Experts and students alike will contribute to wikis and blogs with real-time on-the-spot footage and updates uploaded from cell phones.  [As I think about this I’m tempted to chuck my public school teaching job and return to teaching private school, I must say.  More on that later.]

3.      A good percentage of top-achieving students will attend private schools funded by big money.  The public school system will comprised of charter schools, each focusing on a different trade.

The example I give of researching the caribou population will most likely be limited to what I choose to call the privileged students.  There simply will not be enough money in the public school system to fund this type of field learning, and for this reason it seems that the majority of students will not have access to this kind of learning.  

The corporations that fund these schools will be looking to groom specialized workers, and top students will be given free-ride scholarships to these schools.  

4.      The top students will be creative problem solvers, not linear thinkers.

For years I have been telling my best friend that the public educational system has failed my oldest child as well as his oldest child.  And why is this?  The current system works only for linear thinkers. For all the talk about "thinking outside the box," it's amazing just how few teachers and leaders in education are willing to change the educational approach to foster such thinking. And it absolutely does not make sense to continue marginalizing our creative thinkers either directly (by labeling them as ADHD) or indirectly by maintaining a curriculum that does not interest them. And yet it is the creative thinkers who will keep the United States from falling behind other countries in this new age of outsourcing.  Thomas Friedman states that the only way we will be able to keep up with China and India will be to do what we should be able to do best:  teach our students to think creatively.  Once we do this, outsourcing is no longer a problem, for then the cutting technology and other products will be ours and we'll be glad to outsource the manufacturing of future iPhones and other products.   

When I said before that these top students will attend private schools because only private schools will have the money for this kind of education, I have to admit that I said it with some hesitancy.  Although I do hold to my view that there will be a privileged set of students who will be given great advantages by all of the benefits that money can pay for, the availability of information has greatly changed in the last ten years and this change could dramatically “level the playing field” (as Friedman loves to say) for underfunded students.  With open source information, everyone has access to what was once reserved for only the select few.  Friedman says, “It was long assumed that producing any product of substance or complexity takes some kind of hierarchical organization or institution.  The assumption was that you needed top-down vertical integration to get such things done and out into the world.  But thanks to our newfound ability to upoad . . . you can now produce really complex things, as an individual or a part of a community, with so much less hierarchy and so much less money than ever before” (Friedman, 2005).    

But there will still be a dramatic difference for students in private schools.  They will have the top teachers.

5.      Teaching will once again become a highly respected profession and some teachers will be paid very handsomely.  

Top teachers will be recruited by companies looking to groom future employees.  Rather than resorting to merit pay for public school employees, the America of 2034 will have conceded that private schools will simply be able to recruit the top teachers and that those teachers will be paid much more than public school teachers—in some cases, three or four times as much as the average public school teacher. Most of these teachers will be in technology field, including creative innovation.

6.      The top 5% of Americans will earn an equivalent (today’s dollars) of $300,000 per year compared to the $200,000 per year of today and the $100,000 per year of 30 years ago and the gap between haves and have nots will widen.

American society will stratify more and more with time.  Most of the top wage earners in America will be in technology fields.

7.      Wealthy people will live in the countryside.

They will do this for two reasons.  A certain angst will have further permeated modern society by 2034.  Many people (dare I say the more intelligent people?) will have grown tired of the constant stimulation of visual images and the constant interruptions of what we still call “texting” today (who knows what the equivalent of texting will be in 2034.)  These people will seek freedom from the very technology that gave them the money to be able to lead such a free life.  Their houses will be very sophisticated, but by 2034 computers will have become nearly invisible.  Simply walking into your house with your cell phone in pocket will announce to the mainframe computer (in the cloud, no doubt) that you are there and all of your specific, individualized needs will be taken care of.  All you will need to do is simply talk with your HAL 9000 in the soft voice that he prefers and everything will be taken care of.    The second reason that people will live in the country is that their businesses will be in the field.  Today’s Microsoft could very well be located in Fiji (why not?).   Companies that use natural resources could very well be in the places where the resources are found. It is very likely that the corporations that run the private schools will set up colonies in different parts of the world.  There will be little need for a downtown complex of office buildings when all of the benefits of working in close proximity can be had from any place in the world (chant Friedman with me: “Because the world is Flat.”)

8.      Students will be much more engaged in their learning because it will be linked to their interests and their abilities.  I think that students will be happier and will live with a sense of purpose

9.      Nearly a third of the highest paid people in America will be schooled online, often living with their parents in remote parts of the world rather than in U.S. cities.  

10.  I’m tempted to end with the trite statement that “in 2034 people will be more content than they are now.”  It sure seems like they should be, living in Fiji if they choose, working a 30 hour work week, with virtually every need that money can buy met.  

 

The question is, “Will we suffer from that inexplicable sense of loneliness that comes when it should be least expected?”