The Rationale for Technology in Schools

There are 3 main arguments for introducing Technology into schools:

Economic
(a)
Here technology is seen as a key to the nation’s economic development and thereby as a braking mechanism for Britain’s on-going economic decline. This decline is seen as rooted in a national culture which dictates that humanistic and aesthetic pursuits be regarded higher than practical and commercial activity, with the consequent result that the more able youngsters are attracted away from careers in business and industry. The long term effect of such a culture has been to produce a shortage of suitably qualified personnel because they have effectively been denied access to a technological education.
(b)
The economic argument is further supported by the fact that technological innovations since the 1940s have meant that the needs of industry and the types of manufacturing processes it employs have changed radically, as, indeed, the entire nature of work. It has been estimated that jobs requiring thinking as opposed to doing will account for some 70% of all jobs by the year 2000, compared to a figure of 30% in 1900. industrialists no longer want youngsters to emerge from school having been taught the skills of a bygone age, but rather they require a flexible and highly skilled workforce able to adapt to a continual renewal of technologies and able to benefit from frequent retraining.

Educational

(a)
Technology is a unique mode of human operation and is therefore worthy of study on its own merits. In other words, technological achievements are as much a part of our culture as literary, scientific or artistic achievements and, as such, deserve study as a part of general education.
(b)
The increasing importance of the subject in schools rests upon the growing awareness of the cognitive complexity inherent in combining knowledge with practical action - as demonstrated by doctors, architects and engineers - and also the manner in which technological activity supports general education by developing problem solving abilities as well as a whole array of personal qualities within students.
(c)
The educational arguments are further supported by the fact that as a practical subject, and thereby a lesser subject on the curriculum in the eyes of many of those who tend towards the traditional view of education, technology is by its very nature attempting to overcome a contempt of manual labour which exists in Britain. It is a contempt which has exited both within education and beyond and which has divided society into manual and non-manual workers - a distinction which denies status, high value qualifications and, ultimately, life chances to students whose bent is towards the practical.

Social

There is a social argument which rests upon the inherent nature of values within the subject. A consideration of values enables students to examine the social issues of technology from the point of view of the consumer and the citizen. It enables students to better understand and therefore better able to understand the restrictions on what particular technologies might achieve and better able to identify problems for which technology might provide solutions. In this way, students can come to understand that problems have both technological and non-technological solutions. For example, a woman who was afraid of being attacked late at night might employ a technological solution to this problem by purchasing a personal alarm or she might employ a no-technological solution by altering her behaviour patterns and making sure that those occasions when she is alone late at night are limited as much as possible.

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Links

Why Should Students Study Technology?
The National Council for Educational Technology
Cyril King
Trenton State College
New Zealand's Ministry of Education
British Columbia Ministry of Education, Canada
Why Should Students Study Information Technology?
North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, US
The Rationale for Integrating IT into the Curriculum?
British Columbia Ministry of Education, Canada
The Rationale for Teaching Science, Technology and Society?
British Columbia Ministry of Education, Canada
The Case For Informatics on the Curriculum?
Educational Computing and Technology Magazine, UK
The Rationale for Teaching Bioethics?
Access Excellence, US
The Rationale for Integrating Environment and Sustainability Themes?
British Columbia Ministry of Education, Canada
Forces Driving Educational Change?
Algonquinc College of Applied Arts and Technology, US

The UK Technology Education Centre is maintained by John Bilton