Australian Left Review
Article Title
Education and the Scientific and Technological Revolution
Abstract
The paradox we are facing is this — the traditional system of education takes 12-20 years to prepare people for life, that being the usual time span accepted today, and this preparation has actually to equip people for life fifty or more years ahead, because their active lives will last that long; but the methods we use correspond to today’s and not to the future stage of development. We have no choice — either we have to comprehend the perspectives to that extent and direct training for life accordingly,101 or we assume implicitly that life in the future will be much the same as it is today, or perhaps that changes in human abilities will play no substantial part in future civilisation processes — in other words, we project the present aspect of the world and its industrialisation processes in to fu tu re decades, abstracting from the nascent scientific and technological revolution and the social transformations of our day. And to the extent th at this picture is divorced from reality, we shall be confining society within its present dimensions and making education a drag on the future progress of civilisation.