If you really want to know about the future, don't ask a technologist, a scientist, a physicist. No! Don't ask somebody who's writing code. No, if you want to know what society's going to be like in 20 years, ask a kindergarten teacher.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of understanding societal change through the perspective of educators rather than technical experts.
Clifford Stoll highlights the idea that the future of society is shaped more significantly by the values, knowledge, and emotional intelligence imparted by educators, particularly kindergarten teachers, than by the technological advancements or scientific developments proposed by technologists and scientists. This suggests that the foundational experiences and social interactions fostered in early education play a crucial role in shaping the future culture and behavior of individuals in society.
In practice
In a speech about the future of technology, one might quote this to emphasize the role of education.
Data isn't information. ... Information, unlike data, is useful. While there's a gulf between data and information, there's a wide ocean between information and knowledge. What turns the gears in our brains isn't information, but ideas, inventions, and inspiration. Knowledge-not information-implies understanding. And beyond knowledge lies what we should be seeking: wisdom.
Data is not information, Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not understanding, Understanding is not wisdom.
Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers - not the defined.
As parents, the most important thing we can do _x000D_ is read to our children early and often. Reading _x000D_ is the path to success in school and life. When _x000D_ children learn to love books, they learn to love _x000D_ learning.
Any nation that expects to be ignorant and free," Jefferson said, "expects what never was and never will be." And if the gap between the educated and the uneducated in America continues to grow as it is in our time, as fast as or faster than the gap between the rich and the poor, the gap between the educated and the uneducated is going to be of greater consequence and the more serious threat to our way of life. We must not, by any means, misunderstand that.
Take young researchers, put them together in virtual seclusion, give them an unprecedented degree of freedom and turn up the pressure by fostering competitiveness.
In my own view, some advice about what should be known, about what technical education should be acquired, about the intense motivation needed to succeed, and about the carelessness and inclination toward bias that must be avoided is far more useful than all the rules and warnings of theoretical logic.
I was born 50 years after slavery, in 1913. I was allowed to read. My mother, who was a teacher, taught me when I was a very young child. The first school I attended was a small building that went from first to sixth grade. There was one teacher for all of the students. There could be anywhere from 50 to 60 students of all different ages.
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