Happy Earth Day!

I am old enough to remember the first Earth Day celebration, April 22, 1970. I attended what seemed to my eleven-year-old eyes to be a huge event, held under big tents on the campus of Harpur College, now Binghamton University. There were displays about waste treatment, recycling, water usage, and air pollution.

There was a feeling of revolution in the air. Back then recycling was a radical idea. In the same year the Environmental Protection Agency was formed and the Clean Air Act was passed. It was a revolution. In 1970 Bald Eagles were a rarity, thanks to the DDT ban they have recovered we are lucky enough to see them in our community.

Since then we have seen an information revolution. We are now able to access amazing amounts of information and source material from our laptops and cellphones (the PC would not be invented released until 1981, 11 years after that first Earth Day). We used to say "knowledge is power." While that is still true, it is easier to be empowered today.

What will the next big change be? I think that it has already begun. Changes in the way we educate and lifelong learning have been evolving throughout my lifetime, but I think we will see greater, faster changes in the near future.

We need to remember how far we have traveled in less than 39 years, and envision just how far we can go in the next 39 years.

What will be different in 2048? We can only guess, but we need to prepare our students for that future, and the change that they will encounter along the way.