What Caused Great Boosts in Educational Achievement in the Past?
Key Understanding: We need to use systems thinking to understand why great movements & improvements happened in the past. Our current prosperity and leadership in the world during the last several centuries owes much to a great educational revolution that occurred several centuries ago when the Western World adopted the textbook as a key, new technology. It all began with Johannes Gutenberg and his invention of movable type in the 15th century. Gutenberg, in fact, was recently chosen as the most influential person of the last one thousand years by a specially selected A & E Television Networks Biography panel. Gutenberg was chosen because his invention resulted in a tremendous leap in the ability to communicate and share information, which is a major enabling force to all learning and progress. But not all areas of the world put this technology to use in their educational systems.
