Why ICT will Destroy the Building and Teacher Monopoly
Return to Politics and Culture
Speech given at ESRC/NESTA Futurelab Seminar 4: Play and Learning
Date: 09/09/2004
Venue: Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh, UK
Preface
Since the 1870 Education Act the school classroom has been a reflection of and the precursor to the factory but both will soon disappear. Human productivity will lie in two areas: where people out-perform machines (with a premium on information conflation, assignment of value and creation); and where media literacy sharpens perception. Classrooms will be resource centres and the focus for collective activity and teachers will become facilitators but that is all that will remain of the educational mass production of the past 130 years. These trends will call into question the relevance of solo achievement and pattern recognition and place a much higher value on collaboration and communication. 'Play' that centres on intellectual hermeticism will damage children just as play which concentrates on communication will enhance life chances.
Sections
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