The Autonomy of Technology as a Challenge To Education

Abstract

Technology is not just another casual concern to the educator, consumer or manufacturer. It affects every man, woman or child in one way or another. Consider how it would affect U.S. citizens in the year 2000 if we did nothing between now and then. There would be less productivity and economic growth in the United States than in Japan, Korea, Germany and other industrialized countries; there would be less manufacturing than in the countries mentioned; the U.S. trade imbalance will be far higher than at the present; the U.S. would be a debtor nation to a far greater extent than it is at the present time; there will be less money for the support of public education; there will be fewer students with greater needs; there will be more functional illiterates since we will be less able financially to help them; and, our standard of living as well as the quality of our lives will decrease.Futurists tell us that manufacturing will provide only 11 percent of the jobs in the year 2000, down from 28 percent in 1980. Jobs related to agriculture will drop from 4 percent to 3 percent. The turn of the century will find the remaining 86 percent of the work force in the service sector, up from 68 percent in 1980.1 There are two generalizations to be drawn from the above: we are losing our technological edge as a nation and our educational system is apparently becoming less responsive to societal needs.The problem seems to be that the United States has no game plan to sustain the impetus it achieved in technology. Our technological leadership and commercial success has been taken for granted, leading us not to appreciate the undergirdings that have supported our achievements. Those undergirdings are mandatory to maintaining our technological and educational leadership. The United States appears to be fighting the leadership battle on two fronts: the economic battle with countries in the Far East and the military struggle with the Russians. The anomaly is that we fight both of those battles with foot soldiers having the same background, namely, technology. Even worse is that we do not know which battle is more important to our national security. 2 A major, but incomplete, solution to these problems is that we must start an educational revolution that would emphasize the major characteristics of our society. People from all levels of education will have to be responsible for creating a groundswell that will bring technology to its proper place in the total educative experience.Schools are created by a people to perpetuate the important aspects of their society. Our society has three major characteristics: It is democratic by choice and persuasion; it is 1 Marvin

An investigation of trends and issues of technology education

“…DeVore, 1987;Lux, 1984;Maley, 1987b;Moss, 1987;Sterry, 1987). Technological literacy means that a student must understand basic scientific concepts; know societal needs and moral constraints; be cognizant of the application of scientific principles to tools and materials; and, to a certain extent, be able to utilize these tools and materials (Waetjen, 1987). The need for technological literacy education in the public schools has been addressed by numerous national reports on education innovative curricula and several publications (Boyer, 1983;Buchen, 1980;Friedman, 1980;Murchland, 1982;Lisensky, 1985 10.…”