Technology Education and History: Who's Driving?

Abstract

Standard 7 of Standards for Technological Literacy calls for understanding “the influence of technology on history” (ITEA, 2000 [hereafter STL], p. 79). Standard 7 and its STL narrative are a curious mix of myth and outdated historiography (the way history is conceptualized and written). Even more problematic, they imply a perspective that is inconsistent with the basic assumptions of technology education as expressed in Standard 6, which focuses on the “role of society in the development and use of technology” (STL, p. 73). Standard 6 focuses on humans’ active role while Standard 7 avoids humans’ active role in favor of how technology influenced history. Why are standards 6 and 7 so opposite in conception? What difference does it make? How could we redesign Standard 7 to reflect an active human role in history? In this essay, I argue for historiographic approaches that emphasize how people designed and constructed technology, including technological education, in their own contexts in the past. From a historiographic perspective, such historical accounts of the challenges that our predecessors faced in their own contexts will be significantly different from accounts of the effects or “influence of technology on history” as stipulated in Standard 7.