[The May 1993 issue featured articles on Problems in Education. Here, David Lewis continues the discussion - Ian]
Everyone is worried about education. Students are worried about their future. Teachers are worried about their jobs. Parents are worried about getting their children into the "right" schools. Administrators are worried about how to run their schools with rising costs and shrinking budgets. Governments are worried about developing an electorate that has job skills relevant to the 21st century. Taxpayers are worried that they will have to pay increased taxesÑstarting nowÑto fund the increased budgets needed to restructure our educational system so that it will be competitive in the next century. An investment that may not bear visible fruit for many years.
The social costs of adequately revamping Canada's educational systems to address the changes that are propelling us toward the beginning of the next century are astronomical. However the cost of doing nothing is even greater. If we do nothing, the oncoming juggernaut of the technological future will overwhelm us.
Governments typically focus most intensely on short-term goals, since these are the ones that have the greatest impact on their chances of getting reelected. The long "lead times" needed to develop educational systems and curriculums appropriate to emerging information-based economies do not easily avail themselves of solutions via political agendas under the present system.
Canada is a geographically, culturally, racially, and economically diverse country. The implementation of a "coherent" nation-wide educational policy that adequately covers this diverse population has, so far, been addressed with little more than a series of "apple pie and motherhood" statements. Canada is renowned for having the highest per- capita expenditures on education, with one of the lowest high-school and university graduation rates of any of the so-called "developed" nations.
Of course everyone wants their children to have a better shot at an excellent education, but very few people are willing to address the financial and difficult-to-quantify social costs of what this means, what it will cost them personally, and what the social implications are of failing to address these issues in an effective manner.
Unless we move rapidly toward developing a fully computer-literate technically competent and productive workforce, Canada will move from being a "developed" nation, to one that is progressively more dependent on simple resource-based industries. In a "Third Wave" post-industrial world that runs primarily on the exchange of informationÑmediated by technologyÑa country that doesnÕt have an exquisitely well trained workforce will not be able to compete. It probably wonÕt be able to get out of the "starting gate".
In effect, if Canada does not quickly upgrade the quality of the students that the system graduates (and thus the relevance, adaptability and intelligence of its workforce) Canada will become a "Third World" nation, no different than those impoverished South American countries who have economies which boom or bust depending upon the current world prices of the raw commodities that they export.
Canada used to be a nation of "lumberjacks and miners and fishermen", and until recently a simple education of "the three R's" was deemed sufficient. This is no longer the case, yet to a large extent, this is what our educational system continues to prepare us to do. There are a relative handful of high tech, forward thinking companies operating in Canada, and if we cannot improve the quality of our emerging workforce (the "product" that our education system "produces") these companies will have no choice but to relocate to where they can find adequately trained workers. Our educational systems must become responsive to the needs of the industries that will exist, not to the outmoded resource- based industries that exist now in a declining resource-economy.
Academic funding cutbacks to universities and school districts saves money in the short run, but these cutbacks have social costs: under- employment, social frustration, alienation, loss of personal self- esteem, unadaptable, inflexible workers. These social costs will end up being much higher in the long run. If we loose what little remains of our competitive advantage, then Canada will be relegated to the "scrap- heap" of history, saddled with an outmoded economic, political and educational system, unfit to compete for the opportunities of the next century.
What's the Answer? The high cost of retooling the school classrooms in Canada, in today's bleak economic climate, probably exceeds the ability of any group of taxpayers' ability to "foot the bill"Ñand with all government budgets drowning in a sea of red ink they are probably incapable of giving sufficient direct financial aid to change the situation.
One (perhaps overly obvious) answer is to force the government make legislative changes that will give the industrial (corporate, entrepreneurial) sector strong positive incentives to pay for the proper training of its (future) workforce that will come on-line at the dawn of the next century. Through an aggressive restructuring of the corporate taxation "rules of engagement"Ñwith tax incentives given to corporations who make large donations of capital, resources, and expertise to help revamp the educational systems in CanadaÑthe resources could be found to put a basic computer on every student desk in Canada.
In effect, this would motivate (i.e.: require) large corporations to put back a significant portion of their windfall profits gained from non- renewable resource exploitation, in the form of development of an infinitely renewable resource...the human resource of CanadaÕs under- trained population.
There are some corporations (for instance, Apple Computer) who have made significant donations of capital and resources to this goal. If properly channeled, altruistic corporate donations can have a lasting effect, both on improving the educational infrastructure, and on the longer-term bottom line of corporations involved in this development. It is possible to set this up as a "win-win" situation!
The "fully networked school of the 21st century" has been tried, in prototype, in several schools in metropolitan southern Ontario, with good results. The initial investment has been in hardware resources and in un-integrated packages of software. This is a brave first step, however the advent of information-based software that provides structured non-linear access to enormous chunks of information (CD-ROM) will have an enormous impact on the school experience than hardware alone.
The development and implementation of psychologically-based (operand- conditioning) teaching-software would save enough teaching manpower (and time) to provide for more quality time and personal interaction between teacher and student. Far from dehumanizing the classroom, the appropriate implementation of high-quality computer-aided education would allow students to proceed at their own pace, with the computer system adjusting the style and content of the teaching syllabus to maximize the development of each student. In effect, the combination of computer-aided instruction programs with human teachers would be like having a customized one-on-one classroom for each student.
The offshoots of the implementation of such a technological base in the classroom would have profound implications for the structure of CanadaÕs future society. The level of "connectivity" between geographically widely separated groups of students has already been increased dramatically, in the course of pilot experiments in the classroom.
Today it does not matter where a student is, or where the resource (be it a person, or piece of software, or piece of data in a data-bank) is located. Using computers and modems, it is theoretically possible to put "anyone" in touch with "anything". Metaphorically, this is like combining enough uranium to achieve a critical mass, a qualitatively distinct shift occurs in the types of interaction that become possible between individuals and between "problems" and "solutions". The rapidly growing advent of computer data networks (such as the Internet) allow for a multitude of different "solutions" to any given "problem" that is presented to the "group-mind" resources available on these networks.
The implications for society at large are indeed staggering. The grassroots base of this new knowledge structure is expanding all the time. Once we reach "critical mass" an entirely distinct phase of social evolution will be able to occur spontaneously. All we need is the socio- political will to create the conditions that will allow this to happen within CanadaÕs educational system, then we will be able to reap our own personal share of the benefits.
In any event, I look forward with anticipation to viewing the future developments of public information systems (like 21st century educational systems) as they move to embrace emerging computer information technology, and develop on-line information services that will be able to foster meaningful interactive participation and communication between the political and social leaders of society, and all other members of societyÑat all levels, regardless of age, gender, status or other such factors.
The upcoming advent of full digital communication networks will, when implemented, allow wide-bandwidth multi-media information exchange between any number of groups or individuals attached to the communications net. This will make possible many exciting forms of communication and education which will streamline the social regulatory process and allow a more informed public to contribute directly to that process. An exciting prospect indeed!
- David Lewis, Vancouver, Canada
