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Web-only Exclusives November 30, 2000 From Our Correspondent: Hirohito and the War A conversation with biographer Herbert Bix From Our Correspondent: A Rough Road Ahead Bad news for the Philippines - and some others From Our Correspondent: Making Enemies Indonesia needs friends. So why is it picking fights? |
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Rebooting the Mind Starts at School
Classrooms of the future will be virtually unrecognizable
By Robin Paul Ajello
THE DOG ATE MY homework! Sorry, kids, but that excuse just won't fly in the next millennium. Unless the family pooch can get his jaws around your notebook computer, it's time to come up with a new line. Let's try again. Hmm. How about this? Sorry, teacher, a virus ate my homework. Much better. Mark that down as an A for creativity.
Parents take note: education is in for an epic reboot. And not a millisecond too soon. At this post-Crisis, pre-millennial moment, Asian societies have to figure out ways to instill in young minds the ability - no, the hunger - to think for themselves. Oh yes, and join the Internet revolution. Already the clamor for change is echoing down school hallways and through education ministries. Even traditionalists acknowledge that current teaching methods will not prepare citizens for the next century, when there will be less space for conformity, consensus, deference. Rugged individuals will rule the future.
Selling the concept in Asia will not be easy. Standing tall in a crowd goes against a millennium's worth of behavior that is hardwired into young brains and emphasized at home by parents every day. Can educators reprogram students to challenge rather than accept? To create rather than copy? The region's economic advance depends on it.
There is reason for optimism. Perhaps the most compelling is Asia's traditional emphasis on education - parents lining up all night to get their kids into good schools, sending them to Ivy League universities, even bribing teachers to give junior top marks. (Let's hope that last habit goes the way of the chalk and brush.) As we move into the next millennium, the basic emphasis on schooling will not change. But if current trends are any guide, the classroom of the future will be virtually (and we mean virtually) unrecognizable. The revolution will begin in the region's international and private schools, eventually trickling down to state institutions.
Clearly the humble PC will play an outsized role; it already does. To help children catch up with foreign geeks, schools across the region are starting with the very young. Many Hong Kong primary schools already teach basic computer skills and permit children to surf the Internet for research projects. Japan expects all primary classes to use computers in three years' time. And authorities there plan to provide Internet connections free to schools for five years. Really smart kids will be computer-literate before they're toilet-trained.
Laptops and palmtops will become de rigeur. By no accident is the new Apple iBook portable designed to be tossed in a rucksack. The future student will keep relevant textbook chapters on his or her education appliance. Just think, kids, no more backstrain from lugging those heavy books to and fro. Conventional lectures - the teacher standing at the front of the class, droning on ad nauseum - will disappear over time. Progressive educators will perform more like coaches or mentors - providing individual lessons tailored to individual needs. Instructors will have more time to interact with their charges because they'll have all kinds of neat stuff to help them teach. Chalkboards and overhead projectors will become smartboards that display programmed lessons, 3-D charts, a Web-based documentary on mangrove swamps, whatever. Students will vacuum the information into their palmtop for home study. Classrooms will morph into multimedia auditoriums and purpose-built computer labs, where students can plug in, download and swap e-notes.
Heck, why bother going to school at all? Already, interactive online learning is a worldwide phenomenon. Serious over-achievers will do Internet degrees before they have even graduated from high school. Archeology students will travel along with fossil-digging expeditions without leaving their homes. Is your kid a slow learner? Interactive education will allow him to work at his own pace - without peer harassment. Children will log on to collaborate on projects; already in Singapore, Times Learning Systems uses "mind tools" to help kids understand the concept of cause and effect. In one lesson, they interact with one another to figure out why certain species go extinct. The possibilities are endless.
As the region gets more wired, schools increasingly will share resources over the Internet. A free flow of knowledge and opinions will transcend national borders - and set the creative juices flowing. Since English will remain the principal digital language, proficiency in it will become ever-more important. The recent move to teach children in parochial dialects will founder unless those lingos become online standards - which is unlikely.
Will all of the above instill in future generations the required tools to navigate an accelerating world? The short answer is that interactive learning is only as good as the people teaching it, not to mention those writing the programs. At its best, tele-teaching can provide a nourishing diet of research aids and farflung interaction; at its worst it is little better than old-fashioned correspondence courses. But global education, media and software companies are even now creating new pedagogical systems that will make today's tools look like the abacus.
Still, many parents understandably view the digital classroom with skepticism and disquiet. Will little Arjuna grow up to be an anti-social nerd? Will Kai ever play real basketball? Already in America, where the future classroom is being built, educators are talking about "disengaged citizens." Across Asia, people paid to think about education are taking steps to ensure that, in the panic to embrace technology, the three Rs are not neglected. At the same time, they are tweaking curricula so that, in the next century, instructors eschew the tyrannical rote-teaching that threatens to mentally cripple future generations. It will take several years to undo the prevailing system of cramming kids full of facts and not training them how to use them.
There will be a heightened emphasis on broad, balanced education. A typical curriculum will no longer focus on math and science (the easiest subjects to memorize) but will give equal play to technology, art, culture, the humanities, athletics and languages. At enlightened schools, kids will have more free time to develop their social skills, as well as ponder what they have learned - that is if parents can restrain the impulse to stick them in a cram school. Students will be encouraged to make up their own timetable; by tailoring the program to their own abilities and requirements they will become more individual.
Many more people will attend institutions of higher learning - either in person or online. Enrollment will soar as the region shrugs off the Crisis. In places where many kids still don't attend school, a basic free education will become compulsory. Thailand plans to make grades one to nine mandatory by 2002 and hopes to subsidize elementary students in private institutions. In the early years, quality Western universities will play a key role in Asia's post-secondary revolution. They have both the brand name and the tradition of producing graduates who think for themselves. Regional governments are offering preferential land fees and taxes to woo big-name institutions to set up shop. Harrow and MIT are among a host of elite schools that have already done so, in Thailand and Singapore respectively.
Expect big business to play more of a role in regional education, following the trend in the United States, where debates already are raging about the corporatization of schools. At their most benevolent, big companies are useful because they have a good handle on what skills are lacking in a specific workforce. It is to their benefit to staff their factories or offices with well-trained people. Hence, business-backed vocational colleges will flourish. Honda is leading the way by establishing a training college in Thailand to upgrade skills in the local auto industry.
Much will depend on the jobs of the future. No amount of fancy teaching aids can tell us what we will do to make money 25 years hence - not given the speed at which this world is spinning. And that fact alone will have a profound impact on how schools operate. Curricula will be fluid, especially at the post-secondary level, and courses of study will be only as long as they need to be. Will bachelor degrees still take four years? Likely not. And in the not-too-distant future, we will read about 10-year-old prodigies with online Ph.Ds.
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