For A World Of Change

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31894, 23 January 1969, Page 7

For A World Of Change

(By T. H. McCombs, headmaster Cashmere High School. Reprinted from the Rotarian, 1967.) For a thousand years, schools have been designed to produce more members of the existing society. Students have been carefully trained to accept the norms of the country in which they live. Each nation has developed its own system for the perpetuation of the world as it is. There may be much publicised change in pedagogical method, but the aim of the society in reproducing itself remains unchanged.

It is becoming a cliche to say that we live in a changing world, but few realise

how fast the change is and how different the world of our children will be.

Our education systems are feeling the impact of modern technology. New equipment is being produced and in many instances is just as rapidly discarded. But in too many instances it is being used for the same old goals. The students of today will be in a world we cannot imagine. In the first 50 years of this century the total sum of knowledge doubled. It will double again by 1980. Our sons and daughters will have jobs we have not yet heard of and will exercise skills and use equipment beyond the dreams of science-fiction. How can we prepare them for this world? Our school

systems prepare them for the present world. In their world, skills and knowledge will become obsolete in a few years, and constant retrain-

What can we do about this? Indeed, what must we do about it? As I see it, our aim must be to produce an adult with a student’s mind open to new ideas and change. This will not be easy, but it must be done if my vision of what is to come is true. We will have to provide, too, for further education at intervals or continuously through adult life. The student on graduating from our schools must have the basic skills of communication and calculation developed to a high level—the modern version of the

“3 R’s”—if he is to be able to accept the life of change that is to be his. We can give him these skills and the adaptability he will need for his world only ing will become a feature of tomorrow’s society. if the people and their governments realise that the money and physical resources needed by our education systems must be provided, not only for our own children, but for those in the less developed part of the world. Governments and taxpayers will have to face the fact that investment in education will bring a far higher yield than investment in any other field. The challenge we have to face is this: Can we build a system which will produce the citizens of the future?