Leading the teaching profession toward the best possible instructional programs for children and youth will be difficult because our concepts of teaching must change fundamentally. The intensity of the school must be enormously increased in light of other more potent factors determining what a child learns and becomes. In the current era human-to-human instruction is in full bloom; one job for the next 10 to 15 years is to implement the human-based innovations we have been talking about for the past 15 years. The era of man-machine interaction will replace the current era; the problem is not whether we like the idea but what we are going to do about it. We must identify the truly human tasks of the human teacher and the more routine, highly programed tasks which can be done better by the computer. A third, still embryonic era is the future one in which the school as we know it will be obsolete. It will be replaced by a diffused learning environment (homes with computer consoles, public parks and museums, and an array of guidance and programing centers) in which the formal process of instruction must involve all the most able members of our society. The means of humanizing 21st century education must seriously occupy our attention in the next decade, but we may also need to raise new questions about the ends. What kinds of human beings do we wish to produce? (JS)