In the United States, unlike in most developed countries in the world, technology as a subject has largely been ignored in the schools. It is not tied to graduation requirements, has no fixed place in elementary education, is absent altogether in the college preparatory curriculum, and does not constitute part of the content in science courses at any level.

However, that situation is now changing. There is growing awareness that technology works in everyday life to shape the character of civilization. Design projects are becoming more evident in the elementary grades, and the transformation of industrial arts and other subjects into technology education is gaining momentum. And the Science-Technology-Society (STS) emphasis in the curriculum is gaining adherents.

The task ahead is to build technology education into the curriculum, as well as use technology to promote learning, so that all students become well informed about the nature, powers, and limitations of technology. As a human enterprise, technology has its own history and identity, quite apart from those of science and mathematics. In history, it preceded science and only gradually has come to draw on science—knowledge of how the natural world works—to help in controlling what happens in the world. In modern times, technology has become increasingly characterized by the interdependent relationships it has with science and mathematics. The benchmarks that follow suggest how students should develop their understanding of these relationships.

This chapter presents recommendations on what knowledge about the nature of technology is required for scientific literacy and emphasizes ways of thinking about technology that can contribute to using it wisely. Chapter 8: The Designed World presents principles relevant to some of the key technologies of today's world. Chapter 10: Historical Perspectives, includes a discussion of the Industrial Revolution. Chapter 12: Habits of Mind includes some skills relevant to participating in a technological world.

Technology is an overworked term. It once meant knowing how to do things—the practical arts or the study of the practical arts. But it has also come to mean innovations such as pencils, television, aspirin, microscopes, etc., that people use for specific purposes, and it refers to human activities such as agriculture or manufacturing and even to processes such as animal breeding or voting or war that change certain aspects of the world. Further, technology sometimes refers to the industrial and military institutions dedicated to producing and using inventions and know-how. In any of these senses, technology has economic, social, ethical, and aesthetic ramifications that depend on where it is used and on people's attitudes toward its use.

Sorting out these issues is likely to occur over many years as students engage in design and technology activities. First, they must use different tools to do different things in science and to solve practical problems. Through design and technology projects, students can engage in problem-solving related to a wide range of real-world contexts. By undertaking design projects, students can encounter technology issues even though they cannot define technology. They should have their attention called to the use of tools and instruments in science and the use of practical knowledge to solve problems before the underlying concepts are understood.

Young children are veteran technology users by the time they enter school. They ride in automobiles, use household utilities, operate wagons and bikes, use garden tools, help with the cooking, operate the television set, and so on. Children are also natural explorers and inventors, and they like to make things. School should give students many opportunities to examine the properties of materials, to use tools, and to design and build things. Activities should focus on problems and needs in and around the school that interest the children and that can be addressed feasibly and safely.

The task in these grades is to begin to channel the students' inventive energy and to increase their purposeful use of tools and—in the process—broaden their understanding of what constitutes a tool (a container, paper and pencil, camera, magnifier, etc.). Design and technology activities can be used to introduce students to measurement tools and techniques in a natural and meaningful manner. For example, five-year-olds have little trouble in designing and making things for their teddy bears built to an appropriate scale. Measurements should deal with magnitudes that are comprehensible to children of this age, which excludes, for example, the circumference of the earth or the diameter of a microbe.

These years should build on the previous ones by increasing the sophistication of the design projects that students undertake. This approach entails students' increasing their repertoire of tools and techniques and improving their skills in measurement, calculation, and communication. Activities calling on the use of instruments such as microscopes, telescopes, cameras, and sound recorders to make observations and measurements are especially important for reinforcing the importance of the dependence of science on technology. Just as important, students should develop skill and confidence in using ordinary tools for personal, everyday purposes.

Students should begin now to write about technology, particularly about how technology helps people. Most of the complexities of the social consequences of the use of technology can wait, but students should begin to consider alternative ways of doing something and compare the advantages and disadvantages.

Students can now develop a broader view of technology and how it is both like and unlike science. They do not easily distinguish between science and technology, seeing both as trying to get things (including experiments) to happen the way one wants them to. There is no need to insist on definitions, but students' attention can be drawn to when they are clearly trying to find something out, clearly trying to make something happen, or doing some of each.

Furthermore, as students begin to think about their own possible occupations, they should be introduced to the range of careers that involve technology and science, including engineering, architecture, and industrial design. Through projects, readings, field trips, and interviews, students can begin to develop a sense of the great variety of occupations related to technology and to science, and what preparation they require.

In addition to participating in major design projects to deepen their understanding of technology, students now should be helped to develop a richer sense of the relationships linking technology and science. That can come from reflection on the project experiences and from a study of the history of science and technology. Certain episodes in the history of science illustrate the importance of technology to science and the difficulty of clearly separating science and technology. The Industrial Revolution is especially important in this regard.

Engineering is the professional field most closely, or at least most deliberately, associated with technology. Engineers solve problems by applying scientific principles to practical ends. They design instruments, machines, structures, and systems to accomplish specified ends, and must do so while taking into account limitations imposed by time, money, law, morality, insufficient information, and more. In short, engineering has largely to do with the design of technological systems.

Perhaps the best way to become familiar with the nature of engineering and design is to do some. By participating in such activities, students should learn how to analyze situations and gather relevant information, define problems, generate and evaluate creative ideas, develop their ideas into tangible solutions, and assess and improve their solutions. To become good problem solvers, students need to develop drawing and modeling skills, along with the ability to record their analyses, suggestions, and results in clear language.

Gradually, as students participate in more sophisticated projects, they will encounter constraints and the need for making trade-offs. The concept of trade-off in technology—and more broadly in all social systems—is so important that teachers should put it into as many problem-solving contexts as possible. Students should be explicit in their own proposals about what is being traded off for what. They should learn to expect the same of others who propose technical, economic, or political solutions to problems.

Feedback should be another main concept learned in the study of technological systems. Students are likely to encounter it often in biology, physiology, politics, games, conversation, and even when operating tools and machines. Students should also learn that technologies always have side effects and that all technological systems can fail. These ideas can be introduced in simple form early and gradually become more prominent in the upper grades. Just as with trade-off and feedback, these new concepts should be encountered in a variety of contexts. Daily newspapers provide an inexhaustible supply of examples to analyze.

Children should design and make things with simple tools and a variety of materials. They should identify a need or opportunity of interest to them, and then plan, design, make, evaluate, and modify the design with appropriate help. They might need help identifying problems that are both interesting to them and within their capabilities. After they gain experience working through one problem, they may find their next design project easier and feel more confident about trying it.

One design consideration to be introduced right away is constraints. Safety, time, cost, school policy, space, availability of materials, and other realities restrict student projects. Teachers can point out that adults also face constraints when they design things, and that the real challenge, for adults or children, is to devise solutions that give good results in spite of the restrictions. In the early grades, children may be inclined to go with their first design notion with little patience for testing or revision. Where possible, they should be encouraged to improve their ideas, but it is more important that they develop confidence in their ability to think up and carry out design projects. When their projects are complete, students can tell what they like about one another's designs.

Students should become increasingly comfortable with developing designs and analyzing the product: "Does it work?" "Could I make it work better?" "Could I have used better materials?" The more experience students accrue, the less direct guidance they need. They should realize early that cooperative efforts and individual initiative are valuable in spotting and ironing out design glitches. They should begin to enjoy challenges that require them to clarify a problem, generate criteria for an acceptable solution, suggest possible solutions, try one out, and then make adjustments or start over with a newly proposed solution.

As students undertake more extensive design projects, emphasis should be placed on the notion that there usually is not one best design for a product or process, but a variety of alternatives and possibilities. One way to accomplish this goal is to have several groups design and execute solutions to the same problem and then discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each solution. Ideally, the problems should be "real" and engaging for the students.

An idea to be developed in the middle grades is that complex systems require control mechanisms. The common thermostat for controlling room temperature is known to most students and can serve as a model for all control mechanisms. But students should explore how controls work in various kinds of systems—machines, athletic contests, politics, the human body, learning, etc. At some point, students should try to invent control mechanisms, which need not be mechanical or electrical, that they can actually put into operation.

The concept of side effects can be raised at this time, perhaps by using actual case studies of technologies (antibiotics, automobiles, spray cans, etc.) that turned out to have unexpected side effects. Students should also meet more interesting and challenging constraints as they work on design projects. Also, students should become familiar with many actual examples of how overdesign and redundancy are used to deal with uncertainty.

Adequate time should be spent fleshing out the concepts of resources (tools, materials, energy, information, people, capital, time), systems, control, and impacts introduced in earlier grades. Students should also move to higher levels of critical and creative thinking through progressively more demanding design and technology work. They need practice as individuals and as members of a group in developing and defining ideas using drawings and models.

New concepts to be introduced in high school include risk analysis and technology assessment. Students should become aware that designed systems are subject to failure but that the risk of failure can be reduced by a variety of means: overdesign, redundancy, fail-safe designs, more research ahead of time, more controls, etc. They should also come to recognize that these precautions add costs that may become prohibitive, so that few designs are ideal.

Because no number of precautions can reduce the risk of system failure to zero, comparing the estimated risks of a proposed technology to its alternatives is often necessary. The choice, usually, is not between a high-risk option and a risk-free one, but comes down to making a trade-off among actions, all of which involve some risk.

Students should realize that analyzing risk entails looking at probabilities of events and at how bad the events would be if they were to happen. Through surveys and interviews, students can learn that comparing risks is difficult because people vary greatly in their perception of risk, which tends to be influenced by such matters as whether the risk is gradual or instantaneous (global warming versus plane crashes), how much control people think they have over the risk (cigarette smoking versus being struck by lightning), and how the risk is expressed (the number of people affected versus the proportion affected).

More and more, citizens are called on to decide which technologies to develop, which to use, and how to use them. Part of being prepared for that responsibility is knowing about how technology works, including its alternatives, benefits, risks, and limitations. The long-term interests of society are best served when key issues concerning proposals to introduce or curtail technology are addressed before final decisions are made. Students should learn how to ask important questions about the immediate and long-range impacts that technological innovations and the elimination of existing technologies are likely to have. But intelligent adults disagree about wise use of technology. Schooling should help students learn how to think critically about technology issues, not what to think about them. Teachers can help students acquire informed attitudes on the various technologies and their social, cultural, economic, and ecological consequences. When teachers do express their personal views (to demonstrate that adults can have well-informed opinions), they should also acknowledge alternative views and fairly state the evidence, logic, and values that lead other people to have those views.

Understanding the potential impact of technology may be critical to civilization. Technology is not innately good, bad, or neutral. Typically, its effects are complex, hard to estimate accurately, and likely to have different values for different people at different times. Its effects depend upon human decisions about development and use. Human experience with technology, including the invention of processes and tools, shows that people have some control over their destiny. They can tackle problems by searching for better ways to do things, inventing solutions and taking risks.

Case studies of actual technologies provide an excellent way for students to discuss risk. There is a vast array of topics: the Aswan High Dam, the contraceptive pill, steam engines, pesticides, public-opinion polling, penicillin, standardized parts, refrigeration, nuclear power, fluoridated water, and hundreds more. Teachers and students can assemble case-study material or use commercially developed case studies. Good design projects and case studies can help students to develop insight into experience.

Design projects give students interesting opportunities to solve problems, use tools well, measure things carefully, make reasonable estimations, calculate accurately, and communicate clearly. And projects also let students ponder the effects their inventions might have. For example, if a group of the children in a class decides to build a large shallow tank to create an ocean habitat, the whole class should discuss what happens if the tank leaks, whether this project interferes with other projects or classroom activities, whether there are other ways to learn about ocean habitats, and so forth. More generally, young children can begin to learn about the effects that people have on their surroundings.

Students at this level are old enough to see that solving some problems may lead to other problems, but the social impact matters should not be pressed too hard now. That might overemphasize constraints and take much of the fun out of doing simple projects by requiring too much analysis.

Students can become interested in comparing present technology with that of earlier times, as well as the technology in their everyday lives with that of other places in the world. They can imagine what life would be like without certain technology, as well as what new technology the future might hold. Reading about other civilizations or earlier times than their own will illustrate the central role that different technologies play. Students may get involved in current campaigns related to technology—saving energy, recycling materials, reducing litter, and the like. Waste disposal may be a particularly comprehensible and helpful topic in directing their attention to the side effects of technology.

To enrich their understanding of how technology has shaped how people live now, students should examine what life was like under different technological circumstances in the past. They should become aware that significant changes occurred in the lives of people when technology provided more and better food, control of sewage, heat and light for homes, and rapid transportation. Studying the past should engender respect for the inventions and constructions of earlier civilizations and cultures.

Both historical and literary approaches ought to be used to imagine what the future will bring and to reflect on people's somewhat limited ability to predict the future. Science fiction and novels set in future times suggest changes in human life that might occur because of yet uninvented technology. Stories selected for this purpose should raise many different issues regarding the impact of technology, and students should probe beneath the plot to analyze those issues. Student groups can formulate and compare their own scenarios for some future time—say, when they are adults.

As suggested earlier, the real-world work of students as supplemented by case studies probably provides the most effective way to examine issues related to how society responds to the promise or threat of technological change—whether by adopting new technologies or curtailing the use of existing ones. What must be avoided by teachers is turning the case studies into occasions for promoting a particular point of view. People tend to hold very strong opinions on the use of technologies, and not only of nuclear reactors and genetic engineering. The teacher's job is not to provide students with the "right" answers about technology but to see to it that students know what questions to ask.

Students can also add detail to their awareness of the effects of the human presence on life. For instance, they should be able to cite several examples of how the introduction of foreign species has changed an ecosystem. Out of this should come an awareness that people can make some decisions about what life on earth will survive and a sense of responsibility about exercising power. Students also should learn that people cannot shape every aspect of life to their own liking.

For example, most Americans recognize that technology has provided new goods and services, but not that industrialization of agriculture, by eliminating the need for children to work in the fields, made it possible for them to attend school, thereby increasing the general educational level of the population. These kinds of social impacts should be studied as well as those that affect human health and the environment.