By Martin Horejsi  

     A seminal event in television advertising was the 1984 Apple Macintosh commercial that ran only once (as long as you don’t count the 1 a.m. showing in Twin Falls, Idaho, to make the commercial eligible for certain awards) and that was during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII. The 1984 ad finished with, “And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”  

     The second reference to 1984 is to the vision of dystopian society conjured up in the 1948 imagination of George Orwell. While it’s impossible to know if Mr. Orwell would have preferred Apple over IBM, it is clear that he dreamed up an awful place emerging a mere 36 years in the future. Had Orwell run the calendar backward instead of forward, he would have encountered 1912, which, by some accounts, was the beginning of a revolution in almost everything, thus making those next 13,000 days capable of unimaginable progress, or regress.  

     The concept of the 20th century is a generalized portion of time centered around 1900, but certainly inclusive of as much as a decade either side of the pivotal date. In similar fashion, the 21st century is considered to be both a reference to so-called “modern times” as well as “today,” even though we are already deep into the 2000s. In education, one might feel justified, comfortable even, transposing the first 13 years of the 20th century onto an equal span of time in the 21st century, yielding roughly the same implications. And they would be right. However, education in the early 20th century wandered around little more than a casual observer of the early 20th century, while the mechanics of society were evolving at a spectacular rate. The same could be argued about education in our most recent 1.3 decades.  

     Many of the so-called advanced technologies actively used in schools these days are actually relics of the previous century, including word processing software, cell phones, PowerPoint, the Internet, LCD projectors, Google search, interactive whiteboards, probeware, digital cameras, and even digital video. Yet, many powerful instructional technologies from this century are not leveraged well in education, or worse, banned outright. Examples include: the iPod (2001), Wikipedia (2001), Moodle (2002), Facebook (2004), YouTube (2005), Google Earth (2005), and Skype (2005).  

     But we are not alone in the line of folks who missed the boat of 21st century education. Education has been in this line before. You would have been hard pressed to identify specific differences in the classroom teaching practices of 1900 compared with those of 1913, even though some pivotal events occurred in those 13 years, including:

  • Planck formulates the Quantum Theory of physics

  • The Wright Brothers make the first powered flight

  • The first Trans-Atlantic Radio Signal

  • Einstein proposes his theory of Relativity

  • Rutherford discovers the structure of the atom

  • The first message travels around the world

  • Kodak produces the Brownie camera

  • Upton Sinclair writes The Jungle

  • Picasso introduces Cubism

  • The first electric washing machine is sold

  • New York subway opens

  • Ford begins selling the Model T

  • Plastic is invented

  • Peary reaches the North Pole

  • The air conditioner is invented

  • The first flight across the English Channel

  • The first woman to receive a pilot’s license

  • Amundsen reaches the South Pole

  • Machu Picchu is discovered

  • The first talking motion picture

  • The first parachute jump from an airplane

  • Great San Francisco earthquake and accompanying fire

  • Harriet Quimby is the first woman to pilot a plane across the English Channel

  • Airplanes first used to drop bombs

  • Theory of Continental Drift proposed

  • The Titanic sinks

  • The first landing of a plane on a ship

  • Halley’s Comet is studied

  • The first Nobel Prizes are awarded

  • Browning’s M1911 auto pistol is invented

  • The first Indianapolis 500 race is held

  • Superconductivity is discovered

  • The first airmail flight

  • The first phonograph is manufactured

  • The first electric bus is put into service

  What this list demonstrates is that the world of 1913 was vastly different from that of 1900 in terms of discoveries, inventions, and the pushing of physical limits. Yet education as practiced was not tectonically shifted like the other fields, and possibly even failed to grasp the potential change in student expectations looming on the horizon due to the emerging new world of understanding and ability.  

     Educational theorists, including John Dewey, did detect the exponential growth in knowledge as well as the necessary interpretative methods schools must embrace in order to encourage students to make sense of the world; AKA: Constructivism. The technological advancements also held a dark side fully demonstrated in the World War I, which arrived just half a century after the U.S. Civil War.  

     The march of time and its trail of discoveries, knowledge, and invention cannot be ignored by educators. Each major change also changes the students. Dick Tracy no longer inspires imagination. Star Trek no longer seems futuristic. And you can buy moon rocks (meteorites) on eBay. To motivate students of the 21st century we should take some lessons from 1912. Don’t run from strange new knowledge. Don’t discourage dreaming big. And don’t pretend we cannot fly. The students know better.

     Dr. Martin Horejsi is associate professor of Instructional Technology and Science Education in the Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Montana, Missoula. He was previously a middle and high school science teacher, and his areas of specialty include mobile technologies, collaborative applications, digital creative expression, standard and nonstandard digital assessments, wireless data collection, hybrid and blended learning environments, and innovative classroom uses of consumer technologies. Dr. Horejsi is a board member of the Northwest Council for Computer Education (NCCE), writes a column and blogs for the National Science Teachers Association called Science 2.0, and has been blogging about meteorites and space science since 2002 in his Meteorite-Times.com column titled “The Accretion Desk.”