Chapter 6: Rethinking Education

After reading this chapter I was able to understand how different aspects of education have changed throughout the three eras of education which are the apprenticeship era, the universal-schooling era, and the life-long learning era.  The reasons for education have changed throughout these eras because of the reason why people need to be educated and the new developments of technology that occurred in those three separate eras.  Technology affected these eras of learning immensely because the reasons why people were educated the way they were was because of the types of technology that were around during that time period.  During the apprenticeship era technology was very minimal and people had to create everything themselves by trades.  The people at this time were just educated for their trade.  They were taught what they needed to learn to succeed in life and that was pretty much it.  They had a little bit of reading and writing but it was mainly things that would help them make it though life and support a family.  Then during the industrial revolution there was large technology boom so trades were being relied on less and less.  Universal schooling was implemented because they wanted people to be educated so they could live in a democratic country.  The new technology allowed people to learn mass amounts of information and use it to do other jobs then just what they were apprenticed for.  Technology allowed for people to get more information because they didn’t have to just focus on being able to support a family because there were plenty of jobs.  Now the focus was just getting an education from a public school.  This allowed for students to be more social and reach out because they weren’t limited on learning little information from their master.  They were now able to learn lots of information from teachers and schools.  Technology was able to transform this trade type education to everyone getting educated because of the industrial revolution.  Now with the large advancement of technology all over the world it boosted us into the life-long learning because now people can learn anywhere and everywhere.  Computers allow us to constantly get information.  They also allow us to become more independent by not relying on just teachers and parents to learn.  Students can now learn new things on their own with search engines and videos at the tips of their fingers.  I think that this is a great thing to be able to constantly be learning and gaining information.  I think society as a whole can benefit from it by being more intelligent.  The problem with this is that people have to be motivated to learn.  They also need a good foundation to be able to read, write, and have comprehension skills so they can analyze what they are learning and adapt it to every day life.  It is very important for students to be engaged and like what they are learning because without that motivation nothing will stick and their will be no reason for learning new material.  As a future teacher I have to realize that there is so much information and technology out there that students can use to learn.  I want to direct them to this information and technology and give them the tools they can use to apply this for their future.  It is important to include and application of this education for a students future or they will not be motivated to learn.  I have to realize that I will be teaching in this new Life-long learning era and tell students to always want to continue learning and apply that learning to their future.