CHANGES IN AMERICAN EDUCATION

Changes in American Education

Changes in American Education

Introduction

Regardless of our roles in society, each of us will be affected by what happens in the field of education in the coming decades. The impact may be personal and direct as our child or grandchild moves through the schooling process. Or, it may well relate to the quality of our employees and, thus, our chances for business success. And, certainly, the impact the educational system in this country will have on the quality of all of our lives is apparent. The knowledge gained, the work habits developed, and even the moral values learned by today's students in our schools will, for every American, at least partially determine the future efficacy of our health care system, affect our place as a country in the world market place, and influence the level of safety and security we will experience individually and collectively in the coming decades.

Within this context, this paper presents both possibilities and critical issues related to what the future holds for the field of education and the facilities that house it. This is done with the hope that, regardless of one's role or position - that is, parent, educator, employer, or citizen - the reader will gain a greater sense of what to expect in terms of the direction of education and how school facilities will be affected by - and affect - that direction. The anticipation is that, by enhanced understanding of educational trends, we individually and collectively will be better able to successfully fulfill our various individual, societal, and corporate roles and responsibilities in the coming years.

Ultimate Education Future

Before delineating specific trends that are foreseen over the next several years, let's begin by speculating where all of the various changes in education and society will eventually lead us. If we are talking about what schooling will look like in the year 2055, or fifty years from now, the answer may be an easy one - and this paper becomes much simpler and certainly a lot shorter. Why? Because in the year 2055 serious doubt exists that there will be a physical place called “school” (Coates, et. al., 1997). There are two reasons for this belief.

First, as we begin the 21st century, we really are still in the very infancy of incorporating technology into the educational process. If we continue to make the advances in the use of technology in education in the next 50 years that we have made in just the past 10, one can only begin to imagine what possibilities lay ahead (Thornburg, 1998). Within less than one generation, we have gone from no computers in classrooms, to a bank of three to five computers in most classrooms, to wireless Internet connections throughout many schools, to entire student bodies carrying laptop computers to class as electronic notebooks. High school students are taking college-credit courses via the Internet. Foreign language courses are being delivered via Distance Education to remote sites where the class could not be taken ...