Like this:

In 1922, a day student in the “fourth intermediate” class at Emma Willard (eighth grader in modern terms) wrote an article for Triangle entitled “School in the Year 2000.”  Here’s what she envisioned:

1. “…aeroplanes [sic] will take the place of streetcars.”  Well, the streetcars have vanished from the streets of Troy, but air transportation hasn’t exactly replaced them.

2.  “The luxurious cars of to-day will be out-of-date.”  It’s doubtful she was referring to gas consumption, but it is certainly true that the large gas-guzzling cars of prior eras are no longer as fashionable.

3. “…an adding machine and a typewriter will be part of the equipment of each pupil’s desk.  The adding machine will be run by electricity, doing a problem that takes us fifteen minutes to solve in one minute and a half.  The typewriter will be guided by wireless.”  Every laptop in use today combines the properties of the adding machine and typewriter that she foresaw–and it all works by wireless technology!  What she didn’t predict is that the reduction in time needed for arithmetic problems would be accompanied by a proportional loss of mental calculating ability!

4.  “Perhaps some girl in a boarding school will have a wireless station of her own, just outside of her window.  Some evening when lights are out, she will listen to some famous person speaking in London or Paris.”  Would she be surprised to learn that girls in boarding school, when the lights are out, not only listen to people around the globe, but actually converse with their friends and families all over the world in real time and with real video?

5.  “French, German and Spanish classes will visit countries to learn more easily the languages they are studying.”  Spring break trips abound, making this part of her fantasy a reality.

All in all, I would say that this was one prescient young scholar, and I was delighted to know her when she was in her eighties.  Her enthusiasm for progress never ended.

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