patth@dasys1.UUCP (Patt Haring) (04/09/88)
Used with permission of Education Daily Copyright 1988 Capitol Publications,
Inc.
EDUCATORS MUST BEGIN STRESSING 'NEW BASICS' OF THE EMERGING WORLD, SAYS
TOFFLER
NEW ORLEANS -- Schools are failing because they are preparing children for a
world that no longer exists, says a noted author and futurist.
Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock and The Third Wave, told members of the
National School Boards Association meeting here last weekend that they must
trade a back-tobasics approach to the current crisis in education for a
forward-to-the-basics mentality.
Toffler said rapidly advancing technology is leading the world to a new
diversified structure, away from the uniformity and massification of the
Industrial Age, which shaped the way today's schools operate and what they
teach.
The new revolution is making today's ways of educating children outmoded
because schools are not addressing the new questions and problems, the "new
basics" of the emerging world, Toffler said.
Proposals to fix the education system are not going to solve the problems, he
said. "The basic proposal is not to eliminate the smokestack school, the
factory education. The basic proposal is to run the factory better."
But the technological transformation demands that educators determine what
"new basics" students will need to function in the 21st century, he said.
For starters, educators should consider the impact of the changing family
structure, the changing definition of literacy, the impact of instantaneous
forms of communication and ethical questions born of technology, Toffler said.
"We cannot cure the crisis in education by substituting money for
reconceptualization or by running today's smokestack schools faster or
harder," he said. "We need to start the extremely difficult intellectual work
of defining the new basics of the future. It is only by addressing the
conceptual crisis of education that we will be able to solve the functional
crisis.""We are the beginning of the end of the smokestack school." --Cindy
Decker Rowland
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Patt Haring {sun!hoptoad,cmcl2!phri}!dasys1!patth
Big Electric Cat Public Access Unix (212) 879-9031 - System Operator
Three aspects of wisdom: intelligence, justice & kindness.mtbb34@ms.uky.edu (Becky McEllistrem) (04/13/88)
In article <3775@dasys1.UUCP> patth@dasys1.UUCP (Patt Haring) writes: >Used with permission of Education Daily Copyright 1988 Capitol Publications, >Inc. > >EDUCATORS MUST BEGIN STRESSING 'NEW BASICS' OF THE EMERGING WORLD, SAYS >TOFFLER > Would you like to know how many times this trend in thinking comes around in our society. I think it's a five-year-thing... where the parents get worried about back to the basics stuff and then the new stuff gets bumped out. It's sad because there's some good in the new stuff... and each school system treats it differently with very few realizing how to integrate the new with the old again. I think this is a scare tactic that I've seen before but I could be wrong. (I sort of doubt it, though) Becky -- -- "I ALways push the doors marked pull!"- (I don't know who said that.) -- Becky McEllistrem (Tadger) -- mtbb34@ms.uky.edu, mtbb34@ukma.bitnet, {rutgers,uunet,cbosgd}!ukma!mtbb34 -- University of Kentucky in Lexington Kentucky, USA