While reading through Teachers and Machines, I couldn’t help but visualize the divide between historical classrooms and present classrooms.  There is a significant difference between the class of the past, and the class of the present.  According to Cuban, early classrooms taught in a unifom manner, “passive, routine, and clerical.”  In the same way, the teacher was more like a drill sargent.  The teacher talked the majority of the time and the instruction consisted of lecturing and asking questions.  In the same way, the children were seated in bolted down seats which were all facing teachers’ desk at the front of the room.  Furthermore, the classroom was extremely structured.  On the other hand, according to Cuban, classrooms later strived on “Pedagogical progressives that called for instruction that built upon student interests, that opened up classroom windows to the larger world, and plunged students into activities that had intellectual and social outcomes.”  This is more the direction of our classrooms today.  Thus, the idea is the teacher acts as a coach/advisor instead of a ”drill Sargent.”  Likewise, there is more moving around the classroom and different teaching styles/methods.  Moreover, teaching is ideally to accommodate diverse learning styles and meet the needs of all individuals in the classroom.  Nonetheless, it is amazing to think of the past classroom and how far education has progressed into the classrooms that we have today.