Schooling in the year 2020

Abstract

This chapter describes the author's vision of what schools will need to be like in the year 2020. The first part of the chapter talks about the label "information society." The author sees the term as a disguise for what is really increasingly advanced industrialization. We are still living, and probably will for a long time to come, in an industrial society. Almost all the central characteristics of an industrial society continue to exist today. The second part of the chapter talks about what schools will need to do in this future, further industrialized era. The author sees five major tasks: (a) Shaping the world of work, (b) constructive use of computers, (c) decoding of mediated experience, (d) re-emphasizing the pedagogical dimension, and (e) regaining the future. The third part of the chapter describes forms of knowledge that should play a role in designing schooling for the future. Finally, social education (skills in social areas such as instrumental and productive knowledge, contextual problem solving, and communication) should be the major curriculum of the schools of the future. © 1992.