China, Next 50 Years
From computer lessons in kindergarten to graduate degrees for the elderly, education over the next 50 years will become a lifelong pursuit.
Key to the expansion of education in the next 50 years will be the computer. In every kind of setting, the emphasis will be on individual instruction. Teaching in elementary grades will be streamlined not only according to ability and IQ but also on the basis of tests revealing how an individual bran works best and in what environment.
In a single classroom, computers will enable students to work at their own speeds and on different subjects at the same time. School programs will be much more responsive to what the students are capable of thinking, which minimize over-challenge and under-challenge.
Just because students will carry a personal computer instead of a book bag, teachers will not disappear. Computers will be effective in teaching subjects such as math, but in areas such as creative writing, where there are many different right answers, machine will never teach as effectively as people.
Use of television, computer and videotapes will also create classrooms in libraries, museums, and at home. As a result, futurists see a surge in public professors. In the next century, academia’s motto “publish or perish” could well become “perform or perish”.
The hope for the future is that as the opportunities for lifelong learning expand, computer literacy will become a basic right for all people.
