Educational Assumptions for Tomorrow...

Assumptions and Projections for 2005 and Beyond.

IN GENERAL

• The biggest business in the World is "mind-works" and the degree of a person's quality-of-experience determines his/her worth to the self and humanity. The potential of this "business" has not been touched. Without this educational utility, mankind would be no higher than the animal kingdom. Amplification of the Human Intellectual Utility is our only "winning" strategy.

• Education is and will be the most important key to America's future economic status. Without a business driven directive...a career oriented objective that addresses the entire spectrum of human potential, the old liberal arts system will continue to breed poor learning results from out-of-sync methodology.

• A rebellion on the part of the Business Community will totally revamp the old educational establishment from its stagnant foundations. Those trendsetters that get the jump on technological concepts for communicative (virtual reality, simulation technology) delivery systems will become the benchmarks of civilization in the 21st Century.

• Educational institutions and those businesses that supply creative services in software and program-related products will constitute some of the most important growth-industries to America's future job market. Massive hyper-world/media (mirror environ see Google’s world map) will link all known data into instant mirror-jective systems that work with any hardware.

• School Districts as we know them today will gradually collapse into fewer, yet more efficient administrative entities built on less-labor-intensive computer technology rather than political empire structures. Only the lean and relevant will survive if at all.

• Automation of administrative duties and elimination of redundancies will free states of financial emphasis on administrative overhead thus allowing the correct focus to fall on the teacher/facilitator/technologist and the classroom. This new focus will reverberate to the universities requiring massive updates of relevant teaching courses to meet the demand of America's business leaders and our economic strategy.

• A redirection toward community and family can be recaptured by society with emphasis on the schools as collectives of learning for day-care programs with high school students learning parenting, old age programs with young students of Health Care Vocational courses learning first-hand -- how to care for our aging community. Finally parents join their children in the classrooms for mixtures of Adult education courses during the day. The entire scope of the macro is brought to light within the micro world of the automated/facilitated community school. The school becomes the focus of the community. All facilities become accessed by the community (adult sports programs, children's programs, library use, data and workstations, etc.)...The campuses never close. Dialogue is amplified.

TEACHERS
• Renewed respect for the pedagogue and the spirit of wisdom accumulation will be a major strategy applied by economic leaders in the future. This much-maligned profession, which needs to increase by two million within the next 5 years, is currently impacted by burnout, inferiority, disillusionment and financial worry. In the next 5 years 40%-50% will leave the profession.

• Pedagogues of the future will be paid better than most middle managers. More males will be attracted to the profession many coming from the military establishment. Congress will pass a tax credit that will encourage educators to return to college each year. Seminars in the leading economic areas will offer teachers rate-reductions on tuition. Many corporations will sponsor select master-teachers in amplified study programs. These efforts by the business world will reap returns-on-investments with better, more productive employees.

• The "professionalization" of teachers (like the Bar Associations or the medical versions) will spur teachers to be less impacted by trivial class-size policies, or lack of chalk. They will become dynamically driven through respect and remuneration deserving of a professional dedicated to altruistic and scientific amplification for all our students.

• Though only 60% of the future teaching jobs will be filled within the next ten years, a new marketing campaign communicating a "vision" of a more relevant educational world being fulfilled, will encourage young people to join the profession. Also, a program to reclaim former or retired teachers back into the profession seeded by incentives like a semesters tuition filled with courses on the new info-tech methods, will help them to "reclaim knowledge" enough to rejoin the educational environment. Older citizens should also be encouraged to give back to our smallest learners at day-care centers, some of their vast knowledge and experience. (We must lobby for alternative certification concepts.)

• Vocational teachers now known as Career Technologists will be required to undergo extensive and intensive retraining at "surge" seminars spread throughout the year so they may stay current with burgeoning technology. In some areas weekly "surge” training sessions may be necessary. Career Technology programs will become the major emphasis of high school and community education curriculums in the future. Spectral and interlinking or interdisciplinary activity will almost dissolve classroom walls in the Career-tech programs allowing students to perceive the totality through "topsight" computer simulation curriculums.

• Teachers, termed "Catalysts" will be charged with the responsibilities of presenting to the student body a weekly update on new research developments that are impacting the future courseware of the "Moving Curriculum." Catalysts will stay informed of any and all information that can be plugged into the on-going dynamics of everyday study. Catalysts will be special effects wizards in terms of presenting all news of technological development via multimedia in the most stimulating and entertaining manner. Their jobs will be to pique the interest of all students through "what-if" creative brainstorming methods. Through perceptional testing, Catalysts will then be able to direct students into database servers that will expand on the interest factors.

• Creative Therapists, teachers of art oriented expressions, will be called upon more in the future with each passing day of complexification. Frustration will run rampant in the 21st Century and people will need various means of releasing tension and stress. Teachers that specialize in expressive utility such as painting, drawing, music, drama, dance, multimedia, computer art, sculpture and any mental health connective courses, will be charged with helping these persons develop a method of release which will point them in directions that lead to renewed interests in academic learning or perhaps to new entrepreneurial undertakings that will lead into their own businesses. Future Creative Therapists will also be trained in these programs. These programs will continue around the clock for community programs to redirect persons needing a reclaim of societal position lost through a past criminal act. Other areas of Creative Therapy will mirror the old Outward Bound programs, the Bio-2001 program for those wanting to return to the Primary Technology, and the Pink and Green Boot-Camp program for students that need a firmer reinforcement of discipline. Teachers who are Catalysts will be trained in both Freudian and Jungian psychological concepts/methods for a balanced (right and left brained) approach to therapy. Transpersonal psychology will be encouraged to allow individuals to develop creative methods to go beyond the self to interface with society.

NOTE: In order to make any system function in the future, complex-world that some call a Phase-2 Civilization, there will need to be some very important alterations to our social/political philosophies as they relate to the division and fragmentation of our peoples. This is about the process of Human Leveraging on the part of our elected officials who use methods to induce and to cause action on any issues that divide our nation into factions for narcissistic or selfish purposes. "A nation divided against itself cannot stand" (Lincoln). The collective community of this nation must make an effort to develop a liking for dialogue and compromise in political affairs. Those in the business and high finance worlds must develop a different strategy that allows the people to prosper over a selfish tendency to put profits for shareholders over the future of our economic world. Sharing of our wealth will insure the continuance of future markets. Political parties that seek to divide and conquer this nation with taxation, abortion, race, or any other issues designed to buy votes at the discredit of others, does not represent statesmanship. Division as a leveraging technique must be cooled. Merit must return to the top of human effort. This current "every man for himself" attitude found prevalent in the upper echelons of government and business must return to moderate levels so our society can survive.

A doctrine of fairness must become the watchword of all who aspire to higher responsibility in life. We the opinion leaders of America must take note of the Japanese insistence that their way of life be protected. In view of the present world threat of Terrorism this becomes even more important. Though we are members of the Global Community, we must also secure our worldly philosophies to better the lives of our charges, our people. Topsight is important here. Protection of the all is more important than the success of the few. The few will prosper with the society if it succeeds. If the collusion that represents today's political atmosphere continues we will not make the jump from this social crest wave to the top of the next greatest crest wave of civilization. The alternatives are evident and serve to guide the course of what we as developers of tomorrow's future educational directions, know to be true.