COE Exchange

In 1971, a group of 12 educators at a small liberal arts college worked with Ken Craver, Monsanto Corporation’s future planner and his Cross Matrix concept, in order to hypothesize the future of education over the coming three decades.

1990 — 2000

1. Drugs available to control mood, temperament, emotion.

2. Adults have “Educational Bill of Rights” enabling them to have paid education experiences throughout life.

3. Widespread decentralization of education.

4. Traditional school districts experiencing disintegration. Parent groups organize education for children.

5. Colleges and universities concentrate on research and dissemination of their research about the learning process.

6. Teacher organizations in state of flux during decade as pressure exerted by new education entities.

7. Steady rise in guaranteed annual income.

8. Relatively inexpensive access to cable television.

9. Business and labor assume training in specific occupational skills.

10. Strong emphasis upon affective education and group process.

11. Ethnic and racial education gains in acceptance.

12. Linkages of people on a national level who desire similar education experiences for children.

13. Significant increase in funding for research on learning process.

14. International cooperative ventures in education more common.

15. Common for children to travel throughout the world.

16. New techniques for teaching languages.

17. Genetic engineering reduces number of mentally retarded children.

18. Disappearance of the concept that children are tested for knowledge.

19. Development of international student organizations.

20. Computer linkage of educators with parents who seek specific eduction for their children.

21. New methods developed to fund education.

The group identified the following issues:

1. Decentralization of schooling creates a parochial education for many children who are placed in schools with a specific philosophy and staffed by people with that philosophy.

2. The use of Cable television will create arguments over responsibility for education.

3. Growing knowledge by government agencies about the nature of learning and techniques of teaching will produce conflict over using these ideas in schools.

4. Disintegration of formal certification processes and decentralization of the educational process will raise questions concerning the certification of teachers and who is responsible for it.

5. The decline, if not the virtual end of a formal role for colleges in teacher training will increase ambiguity about the function of universities in teacher education.

REFLECTIONS

I had not looked at this material for over 25 years. Ken Craver made clear when we began the process that it is impossible for any human to predict the future. An important part of the process was learning how the minds of educators viewed the future of their profession. As Arthur Clarke has noted, the future, by definition, is born in the present just as our present is the child of our past. Educators reading these words are engaged in creating the future of education by what is done,said, not said and not done.

Reviewing these predictions highlights once again how our present experiences shape the contours of how we view the future. The shock of Russia’s Sputnik dramatically impacted American educators and led to questioning the curriculum in place, the Vietnam War, and the Civil Rights movement shaped the manner in which education was regarded. In 1966, students at my high school in Port Washington, New York, staged a “Teach-In” about the war in Vietnam that began at 4:00 p.m. and lasted until 3:00 a.m. The NCSS estimated in 1966 there were over sixty projects developing new social studies materials with an emphasis on inquiry. Those in the group which tried predicting the future believed what we were experiencing would shape the future.

There is no “future of education” since in a modern post industrial world, there are always “futures.” Ken Craver emphasized how one’s desires, hopes, and occupational needs, shape the manner in which one regards the future. For example, today’s educators continually discuss the impact of testing on teachers, students, parents, and learning. How does this concern shape the emergence of several reactions to testing? Some will desire an end to testing as we now know it, some will create new forms of testing, some will focus on changing the curriculum which, in turn, might cause rethinking about evaluation processes, and so on. The UK is already experiencing a backlash against testing.

Ken Craver always emphasized the importance of what he termed, the “nightmare scenario.” What might happen that would dramatically alter the ability of educators to teach as they desire or for students to have their learning needs addressed? In the early months of 1933, liberal German educators had to cease teaching as they desired because Adolf Hitler had become dictator and imposed new goals for education. In 1933, American educators witnessed the arrival to power of Franklin Delano Roosevelt who impacted education in many ways from creating the Civilian Conservation Corps to funding authors and artists and musicians and even funding high school graduates to attend college.

Any educator reading this material is involved in shaping the future of education. There are aspects of one’s future which are imposed from outside forces, there are aspects over which we exert greater control, and there are ways in which educators shape the future for their students based on their goals, methodology of teaching and processes of thinking. Never forget, what is done or not done, shapes the future. We welcome reactions to the thoughts of the 1971 educators.

We also welcome any predictions about the future of education. Ken Craver never ceased reminding us that the importance of future thinking was to expand one’s grasp of variables that are always in play and impact predictions.

P.S. This is being written on an UMSL education blog. Ken Craver’s “nightmare scenario” for the Webster College education faculty in 1971 was the emergence of the then young UMSL as an important teacher education institution. He thought that “nightmare scenario” would impact enrollment at Webster College.