Rian posted the recent Washington Post article on Digg. Being no stranger to melodrama he titled it “Will classrooms exist in 20 years?”. It provoked quite a response from the Digg Brain. Example:
“Have you ever met a kid that was home schooled that didn’t turn out to be socially awkward?”
Hell, I went to a public school, and I’m still socially awkward.
And then there was:
Probably not, because by then the world will have been taken over by giant robots……or monkeys. But not “monkey robots” because that’s just silly.
But seriously folks, there is some real discussion over there. It’s a great question. Let’s hear from you. Will they?
Ken Carroll
im guessing that classrooms with be extinct and everyone will be learning virtually via their computers
I think they’ll still be around, if for no other reason than that the governments that run schools are slow to change. I started elementary school 20 years ago, and though schools have improved (in some places, at least) they’re not drastically different now than they were then.
The problem with changing schools is the risks involved — if the experiment fails, you’ve ruined a lot of people’s lives. For that reason, changes in the school system are (rightly) slow.
I think in 20 years that classrooms will still be around, and in fact be rather recognizable as classrooms to us today. What I think will change is how central the classroom and teacher are to learning, as technologies like podcasts and other non-formal means of learning proliferate. That’s the hope, anyway…
John B,
But 20 years ago there was no internet. People were barely even using personal computers at that point. The acceleration of technological advancement likely makes future trends and changes to society impossible to predict. A “common sense” approach might not work at all. (Especially if the singularity happens in the next 20 years!)
-John
This question reminds me of a time not too long ago when the hype was, “Will the online stores make brick and mortar businesses a thing of the past?”
My alma mater is celibrating it’s 150th birthday this year. The past 150 years covers more technological change and of greater magnitude than I think we can expect in the next 20 years. Somehow they had classrooms back then as they do now. In 20 years, they will probably still be the same rooms I sat in 20 years ago.
>“Will the online stores make brick and mortar businesses a thing of the past?”
Will online sex end the human race?
For schools it will always exist. For adult learning too. Online is just another options. Just remember that selfstudy material is out there for decades too.
Even 20 years ago you could buy programs that would teach you calculus quicker and better than a teacher standing in front of a class. As for subjects like literature and history, a library card has always been all you needed. Video recordings of the worlds best teachers of these and other subjects have been easily available for some time now. Yet people continue to attend universities and colleges.
All this suggests to me that there is a whole mass of social reasons for the continuation of our present system. There has always been great resistance to change in the educational establishment, and they are not going to abandon the field without a fierce political fight. And students value the experience of attending classes, whether or not they could learn the material more efficiently by other means.
Considering all this, my best guess is that, 20 years from now, there will still be classrooms with teachers in front of them, just like today. But the number of students in these classes will have dwindled significantly, and the classes will be taken even less seriously than they are today. It will be obvious to all but the most die-hard Luddites that immersive reality computer teaching programs are far more effective and enjoyable ways to learn. But the educational establishment will have come up with even more elaborate rationalizations for the continuing necessity of live teachers.
You have to use your imagination in all this. Suppose you put a crack team of programmers, linguists and teachers together, gave them 300 million dollars and asked them to design a computer game to teach Mandarin. Imagine what they could come up with. Long before 20 years are up, the same thing will be done better and for free by a group of amateurs hooked up on the internet.
Anyway, we might as well protect and conserve the “cultural heritage” which has a very long history, even though they surely have some downsides.
But I do not want to see such a stupid scene where all the students are learning “online” without a flesh-and-blood teacher in their “classroom.”
You guys all make me feel like a dinosuar. But I won’t let my embarassment stiffle my keyboard.
Beleive it or not I enjoy classes and I enjoy school. I especially believe that learning chinese in a classroom setting can be an enjoyable and rewarding experience. My first chinese teacher continues to inspire me to this day.
I can think of a dozen classes in mathmatics, education, biology, history, public policy, and physics which I looked forward to the next class. To be fair, there were at least twice as many that I dreaded. Many of my classes in high school and university were highly interactive. In addition to the class itself, I also enjoyed the opportunity to meet and comisserate with other students. Last, but not least, the chance to meet and be inspired by oustanding teachers has made a profound difference in my life.
I happen to also prefer going to the grocery store rather than shopping online, taking public transportation rather than driving alone, and voting in poll booths rather than mailing in my ballot.
Not everyone is like me. Maybe not everyone has had the good fortune of having great classes and great teacher. I hope that education experiences improve in the future, but no mater what happens, I have no doubt classrooms will still be here in 20 years.
I think we’re definitely entering an era where the pace of change is accelerating. 2 years ago no-one had heard of the Myspace, for example. Now it has 70 million members - almost every teenager in the US! Instead of spending hours watching TV, these kids are online and doing stuff - not generally very high-brow stuff, but doing stuff - writing, discussing, designing their web pages, sharing music, etc. My experience with ChinesePod itself has opened my eyes to the change that web 2.0 is effecting. It’s big and it’s getting faster. There is huge change on the horizon.
But this doesn’t mean that classrooms will disappear in 20 years - they won’t. We need classrooms for all sorts of reasons. But technology will affect how we learn outside of the classroom. That’s going to be a big change. Hell, we’re having an influence on that ourselves.
So, supplementing ChinesePod with classrooms - you bet it can help!
Ken Carroll
I am very pessimistic about change in the nature of schools. I am speaking about the US. Although enormous money is spent locally by school boards the biggest problem is the lack of good teachers.
The teachers union is by far the strongest union in America and will resist any change that reduces the value of poor teachers. Unions primary role is to raise salaries and protect jobs.
What I could see happening in a positive way is with the continuing influx of people to America from overseas expecting to have their children get ahead through education that after school -schools become extremely significant. In these “schools” Web 2.0 type of learning would be a natural for children/parents to select areas to enhance their potential opportunities
Also I see this as a natural occurance at least in the States because either children are raised by single parents or families where both parent must either work or chose to work.
I beleive this is already occurring today but no one has yet established a network of financially successful “schools” to create momentum.
There is no reason that some very enlightened bricks and mortar (most likely private) school of today could establish site all over the country where students would come and utilize technology to learn from super star teachers in specific subject via the internet with the local teacher being not much more than a
facilitator.
But I don’t believe it is healthy to have most kids isolated at home in front of a monitor as their primary way of learning.
Mike in Jubei
Mike,
Steve Jobs shares your views on the Teachers’ Union - see here.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/new.....cleID=6875
Obviously Jobs wants to sell more tech to the schools, and the unions may be thwarting that effort, but I guess it doesn’t mean he is wrong.
Also, as someone who sells training commercially I also think he has a point when he says that ’school principals should act more like CEOs than bureaucrats’, but again, I don’t know enough about the situation in the US to really judge.
So, if the Teachers’ Union get their way, there will most likely be plenty of classrooms in 20 years, but they may look very like they look today.
I wonder what Dai has to say on this subject. He’s a high-school teacher whose views may veer somewhat to the left of Steve Jobs! Dai, are you there?
Ken Carroll
I think schools will defiantly still be arround in 20 years. In my opinion even though I generally disliked schools and found that I got my learning on pretty much by myself teachers provided much more than that. I would never have read half the fantasic books if It wasn’t for one of my English teachers and I wouldn’t have become as interested in design if it asn’t for my crazy Graphics teacher best quotes (when we were stuffing around in class… “if your not going to try and learn you may as well go f**k a chicken” With out looking up from his desk when a piece of work was put in front of him “What did you draw that with? your dick?” Upon looking up and noticing it was one of the few girls in the class “oh sorry.. you don’t have one” On the technical limitations of scanners at the time “If you want to look at porno buy a magazine the image quality on the internet is crap… you can’t see anything that you want to see!” He was an amazing person from hungry who fought in the failed revolution and then fled to Italy he had some grate stories as well.
I think the biggest change will be the focus on student output and creativity and the publishing of it on the internet. Even Maths can be taught creatively. I think the group environment will be as important in 20 years time as it is today.
Charles,
I’m not sure I’d want a teacher talking like that to my kids. In fact, I’m quite sure I wouldn’t. Do you really think this kind of profanity from your revolutionary friend helped people to learn?
Ken Carroll
Hi-
What a great discussion! I’ve never been a fan of classroom learning (forced pace, inconvenience, learning for exams), but I can say that ChinesePod has significantly decreased my reliance on tutoring. And the sessions I have are so much better.
Ken- CPod is definitely influencing this debate. Not an overstatement at all.
Nice discussion, also for me because:
1 I am a lecturer at the Open University of the Netherlands, where we try to use the classroom as little as possible.
2 I try to learn Chinese and attend classes, which I like very much but I also find time-consuming; just discovered Chinese Pod as a very efficient way to learn.
My conclusion is simple: we need classes for some things, and we need (computer-assisted) selfstudy for others. Let’s just discover that combination that works best for us.
Last remark: have you ever enjoyed a beer over the internet?
When you talk about classrooms, the concrete form of ‘classrooms’ you imagine varies from one country to another. In my highschool days, each classroom had 55 students. Currently in Japan, the typical figure is 40. (The Ministry of Education wants to decrease the size to provide more tailor-made education, which has not been realized due to budget problems.) I hear in Western countries the number of students per classroom is much smaller, though I haven’t confirmed this myself. I wonder the same is true in China or India.
My point is, as long as there are teachers and there are students, what people call ‘classrooms’ will probably remain, but what that word means will surely change over time.
Certainly classroom will exist- their function is beyond imparting knowledge: they ‘teach’ punctuality, discipline, focus, deadlines respect towards those with greater authority or age,socialisation, team-work and other intangibles that are as or more important than the download from the teacher.
ALthough gifted students are often frustrated in the school system, it is a necessary system whereby one-size-fits-all- the role of supplements such as online tutoring will grow to compensate for the inadequacies of the schooling system but only for those kids lucky enough to have parents motivated enough to push them to better themselves and can afford the additional costs- both time and money.
Ken, he was teaching year 10 and above in Australia all he really did is speak to us in exactly the same language we were going to use within 5secs of being out of a teachers hearing. I’ve found that when I was in England the use of this language is much rarer I silenced a room once when I dropped a glass and said s**t. Take into consideration that I went to a private school (non-Goverment paid) in Australia and as a private school students we were told that we talked too posh. I certainly don’t think his language had a detreimntal effect on me. I’d been listening to Australia sportsmen and politicians using the same language all my life. As to did it make me learn… Yes it did it was a creative environment and knowing that he used that language gave us the feeling that we could express ourselves. I think that it really is the listener that gives power to a word more often than the speaker.
When it comes to information and communication technology, there often seems to be a wave of optimism, followed by a pessimistic backlash, and then a more nuanced, conditional look at just where revolutionary changes are/aren’t likely to occur. This appears to be true, no matter what field we are talking about, education or otherwise.
On the optimistic side, there is this idea of the democratization, if you will, of education. You know, the end of the proverbial classroom, with its top-down, one-to-many pedagogy.
But what is the pessimistic counterpoint? For many people, life online tends to closely resemble life in the “real” world. The Internet, for example, is primarily used for consumption, professional tasks, communication, the pursuit of leisure activities, and keeping up with news that matters. New ways of doing old things. These individual-level consistencies are then reinforced by inertial tendencies in organizations, such as universities and other educational institutions. Many edcuational applications in ICT do nothing more than automate paper-based processes and functions. In the end, the design and efficacy of technological innovations are often significantly shaped by existing power holders and institutional arrangements. It isn’t, in other words, simply a one-way street where ICT alters power arrangements. Power arrangements turn out to influence ICTs themselves in very important ways.
As I see it, we really need to drill down into the educational enterprise, rather than view this as a kind of all-or-nothing battle for supremacy. What specifically are the strengths of classroom education that are hard to replicate elsewhere? What exactly is it that ICTs add to the mix, beyond automation itself? And how are traditional structures of power likely to react to, and influence the design and use of, these specific new capabilities?
Of course, as has been pointed out, all of this is irrelevant if Kurzweil is right about the singularity being near…
Well, in my day job I’m a Distance Ed Librarian, so I obviously have some thoughts on this issue. Will Brick and mortar universities disappear? NO. for the same reasons that we still have “real world” bookstores, shopping malls, meetups, community centers, etc. Man is a social animal, and as much as I adore my online associates (and I have met some of my best friends online), 99% of humans need face-to-face socialization of some sort, especially when they’re working through a new, scary project like an undergraduate degree. Also, different things call for different tactics–I am a happy chinesepod user, but I’m also starting a pottery class next week…at the local art gallery. (can you imagine a distance ed pottery class? or Taiji?)
That said…there has been a steep decline in the percentage of classes offered on-campus of my university, and that trend is going to continue. For adult learners, grad students who have had the college experience already, and other groups of people, the conveniences of distance learning outweigh the drawbacks. As long as the key services of education are still being provided, I don’t see a problem with this. I did approximately 3/4ths of my master’s degree online (and the rest of my classes were held at a sattelite campus), and there are things to recommend 100% online learning, F2F/Online hybrids (which can be either the best or the worst of both worlds, depending on how they’re managed), and weekly “traditional” classes.
I think it’s as someone said above–there’s the initial boom when people think technology X will “revolutionize everything”, a panicked bust when people think it “revolutionize nothing”, and then a settling into a realistic upward trend as people figure out that like all technologies, Technology X is good for some things, but not for others. That’s where the real growth opportunities kick in.
(note: I was in strategic marketing for a once-major telecom during the dot com boom/bust, so I may be a little cynical on this topic…)
Ken,
I can’t believe you’d think my ideas might “veer somewhat to the left of Steve Jobs!”! Haven’t you seen my platform on education: http://www.skydamon.com/Education.html
The fact is, we don’t need schools; we’ve never needed schools. If our species exists in twenty years–and that’s a big if–let’s hope we no longer have them. That said, I disagree with anyone who says our schools aren’t performing well.
Schools are doing perfectly well the job they were designed to do. Firstly, they keep our children off the street and competing for jobs with adult workers; secondly, they sort our children into leaders, managers, and followers. This is a holdover from the old factory system, but it still holds. Schools serve many other functions as well. They create little unquestioning workers and selfish and greedy consumers that keep our unsustainable economic afloat, at least in the short run; and they indoctrinate our young into swallowing the American myth (of rugged individualism, can-do spirit, and opportunity for upward mobility resulting in a moral people steeped in democracy living in the greatest country on earth) all of which is a great big lie. For proof, one need look no further than the arrogant oligarchs now ruling our country, running it into the ground, and plunging the world into chaos and terrorism with their arrogant and ignorant foreign policy.
As for Steve Jobs, he IS a corporate CEO, so of course he’s anti-union. The fact is, unions are now almost completely irrelevant in the U.S. because of years of corporate control of our government. That the teachers’ union is now one of the most powerful is evidence of this. I also believe that without teachers’ unions, wages would be much lower and benefits nil. Unions serve an important function in our dysfunctional education system: a check on the autocracy; US schools are one of our least democratic systems we have (right up there with the corporate oligarchy and our national government). Until we have systemic change, we will continue to need strong teachers’ unions as a check on power. Ironically, Jobs may be right about the unions’ resisting change; almost everyone involved in education resists any real, systemic change. And by systemic change, I mean a wholesale dismantling of our education infrastructure: we need , in the words of Ivan Illich, to “de-school” America.
Cheers.
Hoping to be a former school employee, Dai
I feel funny saying this, as a homeschooling mom … but yes, classrooms will continue to exist, because they serve a function. People are social creatures, and social interaction is, for many folks, a key component of learning. Sooner or later, schools will have to change — perhaps they’ll be forced to start serving the needs of the learners. Wouldn’t that be refreshing!
To put this in a Chinese Pod context: one can learn a great deal from working with the podcasts, but nothing works quite so well for practicing a language than interaction with real live people. I guess some folks in Oregon have already figured this out…
Meanwhile, we homeschoolers are deschooling America one family at a time.
The teachers union are miserable people. It seems they are inevitably the leftists who woke up too late to the fact that life is competitive and they didn’t even know the game was on. They end up teaching high-school and see others actually doing things so they feel cheated. They want to blame someone for that, but rather than do anything about it, they think the government should solve their problems, so then they blame the goverment, too. It’s all society’s fault.
It’s interesting that so many of our teachers are under the same illusion: “Our democracy isn’t good enough for me. I can’t prove it so I’ll whinge and whine and use absurd Marxist ideas about exploitation that are really beyond debate - surely marx has already been proved wrong. Viva la revolution!” as if sociery owes them something more than it owes me or you!
Steve Jobs is right. The teachers union is a disgrace. Jobs is a doer. He doesn’t need any marxist analysis to prove his point. He goes out and does stuff. The reason our schooling is so bad is because we have so mnay miserable people posing as teachers. The damage they are doing to our kids by passing on this radical resentment of our society is immeasurable.
Jeff,
This is a bit harsh, and something of a generalization. I don’t know how left-wing the TU is, but I doubt that joining the Revolutionary Socialist party is an entry requirement.
I do agree that life is competitive by nature and we cannot expect the government to protect us from all of life’s challenges…if that’s your point???
Ken Carroll
Without getting into the substance, the post Jeff was reacting to was more than a bit harsh itself. Can we get back to our regularly scheduled programming?
个人个样的看法， 了吧！
Steve,
I guess Dai’s comments are quite harsh/critical. I personally don’t subscribe to them but I don’t mind people offering their opinions.
I’m also OK with allowing the conversation where it will - as long as it doesn’t get too personal! Feel free to elaborate on your views.
Kebn Carroll
Jenny,
My most interesting students are kids who are home schooled. Where I teach, parents who home school are able to take advantage of whatever courses they want for their children on an ad hoc, ala carte basis. So, if a kid wants, say, Chinese, they can enroll just for that class. If I were a parent, I would certainly be doing just what you are; I wouldn’t subject a kid to the American school system. It only works for a small minority of privileged kids, and even then, not very well. Many parents simply like to use the warehousing/baby sitting function that schools serve. Unfortunately, everyone (except the students themselves) who engages with our education system (government bureaucrats, the unions, school administration, parents) has a stake in things not changing. Even parents who complain about the system don’t want any radical changes lest they interfere with their lifestyle.
蓝天，
我同一你所提的意見：各人有各样的看法！应该是这样。
Lántiān，
Wǒ tóngyī nǐ suǒ tí de yìjian：gèrén yǒu gèyàng de kànfǎ！Yīnggāi shì zhèyàng.
I’m having trouble parsing the following:
我同一你所提的意見
It seems that my dictionary (the zhongwen.com one) lists 同一 as an adjective …
Where is that on-line dictionary that uses pop-ups?
Richard, that’s a typo. It should be 同意tóngyì.
Ahhh, one of my resident native speakers suggests that that sentence should be:
我同意你所提的意見 …
Ken says he doesn’t mind where this conversation goes as long as it remains civil. I’ll try, but to be honest, people like Dai truly are a menace to our young people. When I look at the US I do see a great country and a great democracy. God knows it has its faults, but to describe it as plunging the world into chaos and terrorism for the sake of corporate profits is not only morally evil, it is plain unhinged. In Dai’s eyes we are as bad as Nazis. This is so far out of touch and so downright nasty that it beggars belief. This man is in our educational system, with a fair chance that he is indoctrinating our young people with this hatred. (He’s happy to do it here, as well in front of an intenational audience - no shame has he.) It’s a testament to the sheer intellectual violence of these leftits that we have to defer to this level of toxicity and and act as if it’s just another ‘opinion’ when in fact it’s pretty much as low as you can go. Shame, shame shame.
ummm until 2008 roles round I’m going to pretty much side with dai on this one.
The actions of the American president in defiance of the new congress and the American people is VERY reminiscent of the past you refer to. there are too many similarities for comfort. Creating a false economy by driving the government insanely deep into debt. Separation of church and state now non-existent. You have a war started on false premise, I really hope that it’s not going to go any further than Iraq but looks like that’s what the white house wants. Fairness of the press eroded until opinion, propaganda and fact are indiscernible. Any dissent is branded as being un-American.
As for America being a democracy it’s about as close to one as China is.
One other thing is that Dai isn’t so much expressing the ideas to an international audience as he is just repeating what the international audience has been saying for some time. Living in China the vast majority of Americans I meet say the reason for leaving America was the goverment.
CharlesChinese (who appears to not be an American), take it to the “I hate America” section of the internet. You’ll have plenty of company. I’m struggling to understand what your post has to do with classrooms existing in the future. Ken hasn’t built this blog to offer a soapbox to anyone to rant about what’s wrong with the world; this isn’t a general discussion forum.
Cripes.
Signed, an American
I must admit I do have an insatiable need to feed trolls. There by becoming one myself. Maybe we’re back to the Lessons Learned: Uncertainty engages the mind thread. If only I could tap this fervour in my Chinese learning. I’ll have to ask you to forgive me on that one. Oh and I don’t hate Americans when I do indulge my self in these little rants I do try and keep the administration/system separate from the people. Generally I find them a very hospitable people and I know at least one that cooks a most scrumptious pumpkin pie.
If only I lived in an anarco-sydicalist commune.
**Now back to your regular viewing**
带老师，
你的改正，我看到了，“各”人有“各”样的看法.
谢谢啊
To me, this has been a very interesting discussion.
When discussing the issue of classrooms, I think the issues of home schooling and podcasting are very closely related. In my research, I’ve found that the majority of home schooled families aren’t particularly politically motivated in their decisions.
What is typical is a consideration of many options and saying ‘no, thanks’ to the traditional method for various (and often mundane) of reasons. As Jenny points out, for some it can mean ‘cherry picking’ classes.
And I’ve found that the home-schooled, social-misfit stereotype is largely a myth. Many such families plan community-interaction activities in similar fashion to planning an academic program.
So I believe Chinese Pod very much fits into this category. And rather than replacing classrooms, such alternatives serve as supplemental options.
As an aside, I believe Ken is right on with posting policy. As long as the posts aren’t personal attacks, let them ride.
Ron
The actions of the American president in defiance of the new congress and the American people is VERY reminiscent of the past you refer to.
If you really believe that Congress correctly expresses the will of the American people, then I think you are more than wearing rose tinted glasses.
While I am not (yet) an American, I cannot see that Bush II is acting any worse, say, than Lincoln.
If the US had a direct democracy, then perhaps your argument would have more force, but I happen to think that a direct democracy would be even worse than the system the US currently has, and the only good thing I can say about representative democracy is that it is a better system than all those other systems (with apologies to Churchill).
Here is something that is interesting in the light of this discussion.
http://www.courierpress.com/ne.....a-mystery/
I find the quotes by the teacher particularly:
“I don’t think we’re teaching students to think, analyze, solve concepts,” Hassman said. “Basically what we do in education is show them how to pass a test and then move on to the next chapter.”
to be interesting.
Given that the brick and mortar store of Barnes & Nobles closed recently in our city because in part it has lost so many customers to online shopping, it’s hard to say where the internet is going to ultimately take things. One of my friends who has been laid off numerous times has often said he wanted to work at universities because they seem like the most stable, like they’ll be around forever, but the fact that this conversation here is even happening is proof that his assumption may be very far off. One thing to keep in mind when looking at changes in education is that historically education was not organized the way we know it today anyway. It wasn’t universal, it wasn’t organized publicly with everyone in their peer group studying at a certain physical place at one time for years on end. Traditionally in most societies prior to the advent of the modern era, the trend was that rich families hired tutors, usually someone with a good scholarly reputation and normally a man, to come to their homes and teach their children, usually boys but not always excluding girls, in a little one room school with all ages together, oddly similar to what modern homeschooling looks like now. The idea that it will change again, perhaps return to that decentralized form where it began and stayed for centuries, shouldn’t be surprising or threatening. What we should be concerned about is whether the changes will allow for continued access to education for all and that the quality of that education is good. That was the point of the brick and mortar school to start with from what I’ve read.
Examples of this are rife in education in the U.S., especially with the Bush administration’s so-called “No Child Left Behind” policy which emphasizes standardized tests (the makers of which were big Bush campaign contributers in each of his elections). My sister teaches math in a high school in Arizona and is forced to teach to the state exam at her peril. She’s a bit of a rebel, though, and has thus far managed to impart a little in the way of critical thinking skills to her charges. The schools are under the gun, also, as they can lose federal funding if their students don’t perform up to expectations on these high-stakes exams. These exams really get in the way of acquisition and learning if they are being used as cudgels over students and teachers.
My sister teaches math in a high school in Arizona and is forced to teach to the state exam at her peril. She’s a bit of a rebel, though, and has thus far managed to impart a little in the way of critical thinking skills to her charges.
Ahhh, the duel of relative tales, eh …
My wife is a teacher in California … and while I agree that NCLB is a load of crap, I regard it so for perhaps different reasons.
It is indeed simply a political manoeuvre, since the states are free to set the bar, and thus, are under lots of pressure to lower the bar to appear to be improving in education.
My wife’s biggest contribution, it seems to me, is in coming up with simple techniques (many of which are adaptations of what she learned in Hong Kong as a child) that enable students to consisitently get the correct answer to problems. This improves their confidence in doing math and converts them into students that are prepared to be engaged in math.
Education in the US has been greatly harmed over the last 20-30 years by buffoons who insist that students should understand math. It’s like saying kids should not be allowed to ride a bike until they understand the principles that allow them to stay upright when they ride and go around corners (angular momentum).
The reality is that for most kids, what they need is a set of techniques that are simple to employ and get the correct answers. If they are going on to become math professors, then they need to understand math.
Interesting question about classrooms existing in 20 years. It’s arguable that classroom don’t even exist today in the sense that they exist physically but their role in shaping the individuals thoughts, behaviour and knowledge continues to diminish at an alarming rate, especially with the proliferation of this giant brain we call the Internet. I think an international survey on school kids in developed countries about their thoughts on the role of the classroom and the Internet in shaping their lives would reveal some alarming insights.
On a slightly different tangent, I recently wrote a China-centric novel (first one and all) that poses the question: What if the technological singularity starts in China? I had fun exploring this premise in a work of fiction. My protagonist flashes back to his time at an international school in Hong Kong 10 years previously and if you read between the lines you realise that the heavy use of technology in schools has basically transformed them from institutions were classrooms are central to the education system to ones were technology is the key enabler. The IT departments of schools are growing as laptops are being deployed in classrooms and educational content/homework etc. is increasingly being delivered by servers rathar than teachers. I can imagine a world in which a school is essentially a content-certified server farm delivering “education” to geographically dispersed students in a standard government approved way. This of course will allow government education departments to standardise curriculums, teaching methods nationwide, thereby creating a level playing field for students.
I am ranting but the point is schools and classrooms suffer from some efficieny and cost issues (not to mention the social ones) and over the next 20 years we will see increased use of technology to address these. By the way, the novel is called Shanghai Dream (it’s set in 2028) and can be found on Amazon. You can search through it for keywords such as “quantum computing” or “artificial intelligence”, “school”, “university” using their page search feature.
I’m no prophet, but I bet classrooms will exist for the sole purpose of supporting students who cannot motivate themselves. There are plenty of books, and various media for self-educators. As far as classroom interaction is concerned, in almost all my courses at University no one spoke except for the professor. Interaction is just fine emaling the teacher or showing up to their office.
I think a lecture with several hundred people in attendance is not very personal - this medium is actually more personal than that.
Ken Carroll
Ken says:
I think a lecture with several hundred people in attendance is not very personal - this medium is actually more personal than that.
That is very true, but it really depends on what an individual’s goals are and how capable they are.
I suspect that traditional classrooms in universities will be around for some time to come because such venues offer what students of a certain age and type want.
I also suspect that we will find more and more on-line courses being developed over time as well, and these courses will become more interactive and more able to correct the student to improve their competence.
Of course, none of this can do very much about the fact that 50% of people are below average and 50% are above average (and taking it further, only 16% are one standard deviation above average, and I suspect that it is only these people who have any hope of really learning a second language).
For me, the formal classes that I take in Mandarin are a complement to ChinesePod. I am hoping to take a crash course in Cantonese at De Anza college over the summer (fingers crossed, they will have one), and I just wish that there was a CantoPod to help. I guess I will have to make do with 無間道.
Beg to differ with you here, Richard, when you wrote:
….only 16% are one standard deviation above average, and I suspect that it is only these people who have any hope of really learning a second language).
All people can acquire a second language. It doesn’t matter if one has an aptitude for learning since it doesn’t involve learning: it involves acquiring, which everyone is pre-wired to do. All one needs is scads of comprehensible input. That is where traditional classrooms often (read, most times) fail students; and that is why resources like ChinesePod are so valuable.
LECTURES - I don’t remember lectures as something “I” wanted at university. Our campus was one of the first to have a campus wireless network, and you bet many students went outside after that.
Big lectures had high attendance to “check-out who’s sitting 3 rows back with such and such,” and to gaze at others. I only had 2-3 memorable lecturers and one was a physics prof who kept us entertained by swinging a pendulum ball at a unlucky volunteer to prove the law of conservation.
So, is Chinespod considering on expanding it’s services to include podcasts directed at child education? This would be one way to promote learning and alternatives to traditional classrooms:)
Right now we have no plans to tackle children’s education.
Ken Carroll