How will current theories of education look in the future?

“What will people in the future think when they look back at what people now deem educational or not educational? People in the past also felt certain they were right in their views about what constitutes a proper education.”
– Sarah Fitz-Claridge

      

In this 1859 book, there is huge concern about a girl loving chemistry instead of getting a proper education (i.e., learning to sing and play a musical instrument).

“How absurd! [W]hat good can it do her? … [W]hat becomes of her education?”

Learning chemistry instead of music was deemed to be destroying the child’s future prospects, including that of marriage.

THEORIES OF EDUCATION

“That child does not really go into the laboratory, does she?”
“Yes,” said her mother, “and she is really useful to her father ; she has an extraordinary talent for chemistry, and he takes great delight in teaching her.”
“How absurd ! what good can it do her?”
“Much, I think. It expands her mind, and gives her a rational source of amusement, instead of the means of wasting time, that most girls seem to seek.”
“And in the meantime, what becomes of her education? I never hear her play or sing.”
“Because she does not learn music; she has no voice, and no talent for music. She likes to hear it, but that is all.”
“And so you only let them learn what they like?”

- Mrs Ellis, 1859, Two Ways to Wedlock, Chapter V: Theories of Education, p. 83


What will people in the future think when they look back at what people now deem educational or not educational? People in the past also felt certain they were right in their views about what constitutes a proper education.

BTW, notice, also, that going to school was not a thing then. That the education being provided was outside the school system was not even mentioned, let alone the critic’s concern. Will school still be a thing a hundred years from now? How will the current obsession with school-based education look to people in the future?

See also:

Sarah Fitz-Claridge, 2024, ‘How will current theories of education look in the future?’, https://takingchildrenseriously.com/how-will-current-theories-of-education-look-in-the-future

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