The Education of the Citizen in Industrial Society

"The Education of the Citizen in Industrial Society," Daedalus, v91 n2 (Spring, 1962): 249-263.

Excerpt:

Modern societies present certain characteristics previously unknown, and observers agree and putting these original traits of modern civilization to the credit (or debit) of science. In the United States, the application of scientific knowledge has enabled less than 10% of the workforce to produce enough food for the entire population. Science has enabled machines to replace the hand and, in certain circumstances, the brain of man. The fundamental needs of mankind have remained the same: food, lodging, clothing, transportation, and communication. Technology has simply furnished the means both to lights in the effort necessary to satisfy these needs and to diversify and multiply the means of satisfying them. What’s are known as durable consumer goods correspond to these 2 categories: some are household appliances, which are to the housewife what machines are to the worker in the factory (vacuum cleaners, refrigerators): others permit the fulfillment of secular and previously utopian desires  to triumph over space, to be suspended in midair, and to be everywhere at once (radio, television, automobiles, and airplanes).

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