The nature of Education is changing and Computational Science is helping to find the way into its future. The need for change in education is currently most evident in our public K-12 school system. It was set up to provide minimal skills to a large number of people so that they could participate fully in our society. It does deal with a large number of people, but the skills taught are out of synch with the times and the changed world situation. The very fact that the model for education is teaching rather than learning is indicative of the entrenched nature of the problems in K-12 education. The good news is that there is essentially universal agreement that K-12 education is "broken," and, consequently, it is fairly certain that it will soon be "fixed."
University education (including graduate education) remains fairly static in the U.S. There are a few notable exceptions where innovations are being implemented at the graduate level, but it is interesting to note that an undergraduate program in Computational Science is already in place at the National University of Singapore.
We believe that we are the best educators in the world; that we set the standards to which our competitors aspire; that we are a fixed point of reference in a changing world. We continue to believe all of this while our undergraduate schools are encountering increasing numbers of high school graduates requiring years of remedial help. Soon, assuming success in fixing the K-12 problem, universities may be overrun by students who cannot even relate to conventional teaching styles. They will have "learned" in K-12 and will not adapt well to being "taught" in higher education.
Successful learning involves openness, inquiry, experimentation, communication, collaboration, the absence of artificial disciplinary boundaries, and access to information and to expert advice and assistance. These are the attributes of Computational Science. In this talk I will make the case for Computational Science being a pathfinder into the future of Education.