L'évolution technologique,la société et l'éducation

In the first part of this article the author recalls and emphasizes the way in which education and society are interrelated. It is considered impossible to pose a problem of education without referring to the social framework in which its solution is to be found. Education involves preparing the child for tomorrow's world — knowledge of this world being the point of departure of all pedagogic reflection — and at the same time not cutting it off from its roots. Presenting personal experience rather than launching into technical demonstrations the author recalls some of the changes over the past fifty years. The different educational milieus which the child and adolescent encounter, such as family, school and professional life, are affected by such technical changes. As far as the school environment is concerned, technological revolutions modify the relationships between pupil and knowledge, and create new relationships between teachers and pupils as also among pupils themselves. In addition, a new type of creativity has arisen as a result of the utilization of computers and databases. Schools have in fact experienced a series of revolutions which deeply transformed the access to knowledge: books, daily papers and the mass media, informatics. According to the author the book presents the ‘day before yesterday's knowledge’; the daily paper brings you up to ‘yesterday’; radio and television up to ‘today’. Informatics will make the pupil accustomed not only to seek knowledge but also to reconstruct or even construct it. Where does the school stand amidst this vast reconstruction? What is its present role? What will become of the teacher and his new roles? If the school wants to prepare itself for tomorrow's world it has to change radically today.