Tomorrow's Lesson: Learn or Perish

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

The group is trudging along a pathway through the forest, looking something like an extended family on vacation: small children, teenagers, middle-agers and older people. But when the walkers suddenly emerge in a wide meadow, it is clear that something strange is happening. On one side of the clearing stands the gray-clad army of Robert E. Lee, and on the other the dark blue-uniformed infantry serving under George Meade. As the hikers stand and watch, bugles sound, guns begin to fire and the battle of Gettysburg is under way.

Real as it seems, the entire scene has been staged. The year is 2067, and the spectators are students who are learning about the battle in the safety of a classroom through the technology of virtual reality. By putting on special goggles and bodysuits, the generationally mixed students "enter" the bloody scene and experience it as if they were really there. The sights, smells, sounds -- perhaps even the sensation of warm summer breezes against the skin -- all help make an indelible impression. In the course of their studies, the pupils will experience many other important historical events that have been carefully re-enacted and digitally filmed. The technology also enables them to transport themselves to far-off places, ranging from the top of Mount Everest to the moons of Jupiter.

This kind of total-immersion experience, already being explored in places such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab and the University of Washington's Human Interface Technology Lab, will be just one part of a great leap in learning that will take place by the middle of the 21st century. Part of the change will be technological: highly advanced computers will serve as both tutors and libraries, interacting with students individually and giving them access to a universe of information so vast that it will make today's Library of Congress look like a small-town facility.

An even more fundamental change will be the almost complete breakdown of education's formal rigidity. It will be replaced by instruction tailored to the individual student. For example, instead of forcing most 10-year-olds to sit through 10 months of fifth grade while a few gifted ones skip forward and others fall back, all the children will learn at their own pace, taking several core courses and a wide variety of electives.

The standard high school diploma will be replaced by a series of achievement goals. Advancement into college, a trade or a career will be based on the attainment of those personal goals. The venerable concept of apprenticeship, which thrived in 18th and 19th century America, will be revived; young people will divide their time between school and training with mentors in areas ranging from carpentry to wildlife biology. At the same time, adult education will boom as workers retrain for new jobs, bone up on developments in fast- moving fields and learn new skills and hobbies for their retirement years.

As with the last big revolution in education -- the imposition of universal public schooling in the mid-1800s -- this one will be driven by the Federal Government. The impetus will be political, social and economic. Such competitors as Japan and the European Community, which pour substantial resources into education, have already caught up with and surpassed the U.S. in the quality of their workers, and the trend will continue. In America a growing, uneducated, unemployable and mostly minority underclass will put increasing pressure on society to pay more than lip service to education.

The result will be a federal effort that will rank as, to quote Jimmy Carter's response to the energy crunch, "the moral equivalent of war." Much more money will be funneled into public schools to upgrade them physically and boost teachers' salaries dramatically. Teaching will become, as it was in the past, a hero-like profession that lures some of the brightest college graduates. A massive public relations campaign will promote teaching as a career and learning as a central theme of national life.

Competition from low-cost, entrepreneurial private schools will pressure public institutions to abandon such inefficiencies as the tenure system. They will also give up the 10-month school year, a relic of the time when students had to do farm work in summertime. Year-round schooling is a more efficient use of resources; summer breaks tend to make the first and last months of the term virtually useless anyway.

Beyond the first five grades, the standard curriculum will probably disappear. Basic mathematical, reading and writing skills will still be required of advanced students, along with, for Americans, a solid background in U.S. history and government. But there will be greater specialization for students who want it. The mass-production approach to the high school diploma will vanish in favor of competency tests in subjects as diverse as physics, metalwork, music and graphic design. Potential employers and college admissions officers would then have a much more specific idea of a student's skills and training.

Learning will no longer stop with high school or even college. Specialized knowledge will become obsolete so quickly that adults will be encouraged to take frequent breaks from work, subsidized by their employers, to catch up. "Learning vacations," even for entire families, will become a major part of the travel industry as well as a big moneymaker for colleges whose campuses and faculty would otherwise be idle.

The loosening of strictures will throw older and younger people together in the same classrooms. That might pose an instructional problem: What level does the teacher aim for? But within a few decades, technology will make it possible to provide tailored instruction within a single class. Students will become adept at using interactive multimedia, a system consisting of computers, exhaustive data bases of information, moving images and sound.

The suitably epic term for such an educational odyssey is "knowledge navigation," a term coined by James Dezell, president of EduQuest, a division of IBM. In an experimental EduQuest program, students reading a passage from Tennyson's epic poem Ulysses can select a distinguished actor to read it aloud, call up a panel of experts to discuss the text, or read background on the Trojan War. Most important, students will receive this information in any order that suits them. The technique is expected to help open up vital areas of study that transmit many of the ethical underpinnings of a society. "How do we pass on morals and ethical issues to our kids?" asks Dezell. "Most of those issues have been examined in the great works, but those things are very difficult for a student to read." Multimedia programs, he believes, will make literature -- and thus these ideas -- far more accessible.

Computer-aided instruction will be a key to solving the problem of adult illiteracy, according to Kent Wall, co-creator of the Buddy System, a program now used in Indiana public schools and homes. "Suppose Mom's out shopping," Wall imagines. "Johnny, the fourth-grader, is in bed. And Dad's sitting there thinking about the fact that he can't read, or maybe he reads at the second- grade level. But if Dad can go over and find the "on" button, he can teach himself how to read. He doesn't have to raise his hand and say, 'I'm illiterate.' "

If computers take over so much of the job, what role will be left for the teacher? A different yet essential one, say the experts. Rather than just presenting information and issuing instructions, like a coach directing a football team, the teacher will inspire, motivate and serve as referee for the human-to-human discussion that computerized instruction is designed to provoke. A teacher will thus act more like the floor captain of a basketball team, directing the overall flow of action but allowing other team members to take the lead when the situation warrants it. "Teachers will become much more like facilitators, guides," says Hugh Osborn, director of the New Media Group at public TV station WNET in New York City. "They won't be able just to have their answer book and have that be the main thing that differentiates them from the students."

The greatest mystery for the next century is whether scientists will discover fundamental ways to affect how the mind learns. The human brain has evolved over millions of years to process information in a certain way -- the very act of perceiving the world is an integral part of the way it is understood. Can learning speed and capacity be "souped up"? While scientists have found ways to improve the learning ability of people with damaged and dysfunctional brains, nothing has yet emerged that could radically improve a normal brain's ability. No secret pill or process is on the horizon, just a steady enhancement of abilities people already have. And the most powerful ingredient will be motivation, since the working world will become ever more knowledge driven and information intensive. In the 21st century, nothing will be more fashionable -- and essential -- than doing one's homework.

With reporting by Sophfronia Scott Gregory/New York