Experts Debate the Schools of 2021

Happy Labor Day, America! You better not be working! Speaking of work, what will school work be like in 10 years? New York Times, do you have an answer?

What's that? You spoke with a bunch of experts and educators and asked them that very same question? What a wild Labor Day miracle! Let's sample a few of the answers before everyone who's not working today jumps on over to the Times for the full audio clips:

Karen Cator, director of educational technology, United States Department of Education, sees a huge shift taking place when digital media finally usurps tree-killing textbooks and other printed materials. This is good! Books are great, but trees are better. Have you ever seen a book take carbon dioxide from the air and give it back to you as life-granting oxygen? The fuck you have! Case in point.

Larry Cuban, emeritus professor, Stanford University School of Education, basically says everyone should hold their damn horses. Progress is coming, but it's really slow! His buzzkill answer is all about how things will drag on for a while before flying schools and virtual reality classroom headset conference calls with Asian moonbases become the norm.

Eileen Lento, education strategist, Intel, predicts that rural areas will become ripe testbeds for new technologies and experimental approaches to education. Why sully our urban and city folk with tests that could go terribly wrong, right Eileen? Saddle the farm folk with that burden, and let us city slickers zip around Manhattan in our robo taxis. Oh, and she says online classes are going to do something or other a lot more in the future too. I bet it involves Intel chips!

There are a few more educational brainiacs making predictions about schooling over at the NYT beyond these few, so take a look! Just don't work yourself too hard today, ok? [NYT]