So what will schools be like in the year 2025? As noted by faithful viewer Echo Greco Smythe, that's what Newsweek asked a slew of "leading teachers, inventors and entrepreneurs," in hopes of cobbling together a sense of how learning will change over the course of the next couple of decades. And lookee here, kids: the first guy on Newsweek's list of visionaries just happens to be Steve Jobs. And why not? After all, this is a guy who runs a company that is both preoccupied with the realm of education ("it's in our DNA," he recently stated) and constantly well ahead of the technology curve. Who better can foresee the shape of education two dozen years from now?

Indeed, as far as some people are concerned, Apple is already providing the classroom of the future; Prof. Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University thinks that in 2025 "all of our students will have personal laptops connected to the world with wireless networks"-- iBooks and AirPort in Henrico County, anyone? Since that rather pedestrian vision has already been accomplished, clearly Steve's take on the future of education must be full of way-out sci-fi stuff like robot teachers, floating chalkboards, and field trips to Mars. In short, it'll be Elroy's classroom straight out of The Jetsons. Right?

Well, not so much, actually. Instead of going on about time-traveling hoverdesks, Steve makes some very lucid and thought-provoking points about teaching children "to express themselves in the medium of their generation." In other words, we're at a transition point; people used to read books and write letters, but today's generation is far more steeped in video than print. While we're constantly bombarded with television as a society, "regular people" are only just getting around to making our own video content-- to create in that medium, instead of simply consuming the work of others. We're not going to get all messianic on you and compare iMovie to the invention of the printing press, or anything, but it's some nice food for thought. Of course, then Steve concludes with some out-of-left-field comment about wanting to trade in all of his technology "for an afternoon with Socrates," which sounds either terribly profound or the product of an acid flashback-- we're not sure which. (Surely an afternoon with Socrates would be terribly boring, right? After all, the guy's dead, fer cryin' out Pete's sake.)

So what does the AtAT staff think education will be like in 2025? We can summarize in just two words: flying cars. 'Nuff said.