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If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow." This seems an appropriate opening line for an issue of The Agricultural Education Magazine that focuses on using 21st century technology in the high school classroom... it seems even more appropriate considering that quote is from the father of Agricultural Education - John Dewey.
To put Dr. Dewey's life in perspective let's start with his birth year (1859) and what the world looked like when he attended high school. When Dr. Dewey started high school in 1873, Jesse James was robbing trains in Missouri (1875), Alexander Graham Bell had not patented the telephone (1876), and the first public exhibition of an electric light had not occurred (1876). It is hard to imagine Dr. Dewey's high school days without the use of electricity and no practical use of telephones. Dr. Dewey was a long lived man; he lived to the age of 92 and passed away in June of 1952. In his life he saw the birth of television (1926), the first atomic explosion (1952), and he lived in the same decade that the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik (1957).
The amount of technological change that Dr. Dewey experienced in his lifetime provides a context for his statement "If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow." In 92 years he saw acceleration not only in the number of technological changes, but also the rate of adaptation by the general public. This trend has continued since his death and evidence indicates a continuation of this trend in the future.
So what? What does acceleration in technology development mean for agriculture teachers? Teachers have moved past asking if new technologies should be adopted and are busy learning new technologies. There are two major questions to consider: 1) what technologies do agriculture...