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College Board, Reston, VA August 16, 2004
My work is what's called "trend analysis"-attempting
to understand the changes taking place worldwide - technological,
cultural, geopolitical, spiritual. And what those changes
may mean for us.
This morning we'll look very briefly at three trends, three
categories of change. Then say a word about what they might
mean for education.
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First, globalization. Everyone has some idea of what globalization
means. Most of the discussion about globalization focuses
on trade, currency relationships, and the need for all nations
to adopt free markets and democratic political systems.
But globalization is much more than economic and financial
integration. The essence of globalization is the human instinct
for greater communication between peoples and cultures, and
the subsequent merging of modes of life-including economics-as
well as beliefs.
This process began very slowly in the 16th century with European
exploration and colonialization of Africa, South America and
Asia. It wasn't called globalization then. It was called exploration
and colonialization. That was when the natural resources of
other parts of the world began to be important to the economies
of Europe. Thus the different parts of the world that had
been relatively ignorant of each other began a process of
communication and integration that would increase over the
next five centuries. The world began to shrink, and peoples
of different cultures began to know more about each other.
In its present phase, globalization means that western scientific,
social, cultural and philosophical ideas are gradually seeping
into the fabric of the rest of the world, as well as a reciprocal
transfer of culture and lifestyles from non-western nations
to the west.
Americans sometimes forget that the pace of globalization
is driven by how fast Americans develop new information technology.
No nation today can develop without adjusting to the global
economic system anchored in American information technology.
Thus the faster information transfer technology we produce,
the faster other nations must change their established patterns
of living.
We Americans are often insensitive to the deep psychological
trauma nations are experiencing as they confront the effects
of globalization. Americans, raised on constant technological
change say, "Adapt. Let the old ways go. Embrace the
new." But much of the world says, "Wait a minute.
Too much change too fast is shredding our traditions, and
our traditions are our connection to the past. If we change
them too quickly, we'll endanger our social cohesion and psychic
stability." Many thoughtful Muslims, for example, clearly
fear that the western model of globalization, based on secular,
scientific rationalism, will eventually bring about the end
of Islam.
In the end, the test of globalization is not simply technical
or economic, but a profoundly human challenge as well. Technology
can bring people physically face-to-face with each other in
an instant. But it takes much longer for our minds and hearts
to grow together. The closer nations and cultures come together
through technology and travel, the more important it becomes
for perspective to widen, and for mutual understanding and
compassion to grow. Otherwise we get hostility and conflict,
not friendship and harmony. Therein lies the human challenge
of globalization, and it confronts every single one of us.
The second trend: The world is in the midst of the largest
migration in world history. In China alone, there are one
hundred million people on the move from the countryside to
the cities. This is causing urban problems of a magnitude
never before experienced.
In the West, migration is literally changing the face of
Europe. No European nation is reproducing its Caucasian population.
The OECD estimates the European Union needs 180 million immigrants
in the next three decades simply to keep its population at
1995 levels, as well as to keep the current ratio of retirees
to workers. In Brussels, over fifty percent of the babies
born are Muslim. In Germany, the death rate has exceeded the
birth rate for decades, so they now have to fly in planeloads
of technicians from India just to maintain their high tech
structure. In England, there are now more practicing Muslims
than Anglicans.
In Italy, the Archbishop of Bologna recently warned that
Italy is in danger of "losing its identity" due
to the immigration from North Africa and central Europe. The
Catholic Church is facing the distinct probability of Islam
eventually becoming the largest European religion. The fear
of such demographic shifts and their potential consequences
is the subtext for everything else happening in Europe today.
It's far more traumatic than adjusting to increased economic
integration or to the euro.
The same thing is happening in the United States. The U.S.
accepts more immigrants per year than the rest of the world
combined. As a result of Hispanic immigration, Miami is now
the northernmost city of Latin America. Immigration means
that by 2050, Americans of European decent will be a minority
in the U.S.
In the coming years, the face of many nations will be very
different from today. Traditional images of what it means
to be French, German, Italian or English are going to change
just as radically as the image of what it means to be American
has been changing in recent decades.
Third trend: We have reached a new stage of technology development
for which there is no precedent in the history of science
and technology. For the first three hundred years of modern
science, scientists generally thought that the purpose of
science and technology was to "better the human condition,"
to make life better for people. That is not necessarily true
any longer. Two aspects of this I'll mention are first, the
rate of technological change, and second, the character of
that change.
The rate of change. The technology experts estimate that
the rate of technological change doubles every decade-20%
one decade, 40% the next decade, 80% the third decade, and
so on. In other words, what we're experiencing is the acceleration
of acceleration itself. It's estimated that at today's rate
of technological change, the 21st century as a whole will
experience nearly one thousand times more technological change
than did the 20th century. By 2030, $1,000 worth of computation
will be a thousand times more powerful than the human brain.
By 2050, there will be desktop computers with the intelligence
equivalent to the combined intelligence of everyone on earth.
At that point, people may be of biological origin, but their
mental processes will be a mixture of their biological thinking
and the electronic processes embedded in their brain-the two
processes working intimately together.
Obviously, as the speed of computers increases, the pace
of everything else we do in life accelerates. One only has
to look back at the last two or three decades to see how faster
computers have accelerated the pace of life.
Psychologists tell us that one of the by-products of such
rapid change is that overwhelming people with more technological
change than they can absorb and fit into their mental picture
of life, clearly leads to various forms of emotional and mental
instability. And we see mounting evidence of that happening.
Multiplying social pathologies indicate human resistance to
too rapid change. Thirty years ago, major corporations didn't
have to think much about stress and the mental health of their
employees. Now, mental and emotional health is the fastest
growing component of health insurance for many companies.
To help relieve the mounting pressures, some companies provide
employees with special rooms for relaxing, meditation, prayer,
taking naps or listening to music or reading poetry.
Other indicators tell of further psychic disturbances caused
by too rapid a pace of change. Loneliness has reached epidemic
proportions. ADD-attention deficit disorder-is skyrocketing
not just for children, but also for adults. Books are now
written for eight year-old children advising them how to recognize
the symptoms of stress, and how to deal with it. Addictions
stemming from an ever-increasing tempo of life are on the
rise. Thus the University of Louisville concludes in a study
on health that our very mode of life has now become our principle
cause of emotional and mental instability.
Then we must consider the character of change. Science is
now in the process of redefining our understanding of terms
first given us at the dawn of human consciousness: such terms
as "life," "nature" and "human."
Some examples. One of the world's foremost authorities on
artificial intelligence predicts, "When machines are
derived from human intelligence but are a million times more
capable, there won't be a clear distinction between human
and machine intelligence-there's going to be a merger."
He sees the time when hundreds of nanobots-computers the size
of a molecule-will be racing around in our bodies monitoring
our physical functions, transmitting that information to a
chip embedded in our brain, which then transmits it further
to a central computer. Other scientists suggest that genetic
advances will give every woman the "right to a custom
made child." They believe that women should be allowed
the right to "choose the characteristics of their child
from a catalog." Designer children.
Thus arrives what some scientists call the "post-human"
or "post-species" age. And let me emphasize, this
is not science fiction. What we've been talking about makes
up the life work of some of the world's most brilliant and
accomplished scientists, most of them at our best universities.
Finally, what are the implications for education of all we've
been discussing? I'd like to consider this question in the
context of a speech given by a student leader at the graduation
ceremony at one of America's most prestigious universities.
He described his class as "not knowing how it relates
to the past or the future, having little sense of the present,
no life-sustaining beliefs, secular or religious," and
consequently, "no goal and no path of effective action."
Against this background, I suggest the primary question is
this: In an age when globalization is erasing all the old
boundaries that provided identity, when young people get more
information from watching TV than they do from sixteen years
of classroom instruction, when all knowledge is available
by the press of a computer button, when TV's commercial advertising
has become the primary source of value formation, then the
basic question becomes, "What is education? What is the
product education seeks to produce?"
The world is experiencing an upheaval of greater consequence
than-to put it in terms of the Western experience-the Renaissance,
the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution
combined. Thus education needs to enable young people to grapple
with questions far beyond the conventional concerns of traditional
education. Questions such as: In an age of global impressions
and easy mobility, how does education foster a sense of rootedness
in time and place? In a technology-driven age, how does education
strengthen the enduring human values that give meaning and
fulfillment to the individual? In an age where everything
is in flux-national purpose, collective values, institutional
integrity-how does education help the individual find stability
and anchorage? How does education equip students to decide
what is essential to know-not just academically, but within
the wider culture-when there is so much that can be known?
Then there's the question of how does education help us understand
the human-technology relationship? Technology is not a passive
tool. It is an active agent that affects the user. The computer
and Internet are primary in this respect. Dr. Philip Tobias
of South Africa, one of the world's foremost anthropologists,
has described the Internet as "the most significant social
development since the advent of language." In a sense,
the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century
pales in comparison with the coming of the Internet. So what
does this imply for educating students about computers and
the Internet? Students need to be taught to be aware of the
potential negative effects of technology so they control their
technology and don't let technology control them. This is
not easy, but it's a major factor in avoiding the boredom,
loneliness and alienation so many students feel today.
Finally, the question of how does education help answer the
crisis of identity that is engulfing our young people? All
the traditional sources of identity are in upheaval-family,
ethnic group, nation, culture and religion. Thus we see students
increasingly turning to technology to seek some source of
identity. Young children used to find identity in relationship
to animals-the family dog or a pet gerbil. Now they turn to
computerized toys or computer games. Adolescents increasingly
find identity through various "chat rooms" on the
Internet. As they jump in and out of these chat rooms, they
intentionally display differing aspects of their personalities,
depending on whom they're talking with and how they want to
appear. The result is that young people are not being true
to their deepest inner selves, and they're developing what
psychologists call "multiple personalities." Many
are finding it easier to cope with the "pseudo-reality"
of a chat room than with life's authentic reality off the
Internet. This is the antithesis of the purpose of human growth
and maturation-indeed, of education-which has been to develop
a unified personality. Helping students understand and come
to terms with such issues is one of education's greatest challenges.
Such issues are not easily answered. But it seems to me that
the task of education in a time of upheaval is to at least
set a student on the path of seeking answers to the right
set of questions. For the historic function of education is
not so much to provide answers, as it is to equip young people
to ask the right questions.
Now I'd be happy to respond to any questions you may have.
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