The educational system of the industrial age no longer meets the technology and economic needs of today. Modern jobs which contribute to a world economy require workers who are mentally prepared to meet a variety of challenges. Rather, it is the talent for grasping new ideas, adapting to change, coping with ambiguity, and working collaboratively to solve problems that will empower a worker in today's marketplace. Our current inherited mathematics curriculum conforms to the past and contains little vision for the future. However, new computer technology allows the introduction of pertinent new material into the curriculum and provides new ways to teach traditional mathematics.
New technology challenges the importance of some aspects of traditional curriculum.
This leads to and can result in the rethinking of what should be taught to meet the needs of the 21st century. In the United States, the concern among educators and textbook writers has been to explore many topics rather than to relate concepts to real world situations. The future requires students to be better learners by researching and locating information, evaluating data, and correlating acquired knowledge from several sources to produce a product. To meet these goals, our students must be able to analyze information, develop problem solving strategies and synthesize new data with previous knowledge. President Clinton, in his State of the Union Address, called for changes in education to meet the needs of our increasingly technological society.