Praise for Creating the School You Want “Distinguished sociologist and pioneering futurist Arthur B. Shostak has produced one of the most important books of our time. His new Create the School You Want is a master guide for bringing school systems into the twenty-first century and empowering our children by fully preparing them for the coming future. If educators would follow the course that Shostak and his contributors propose, they would bring the present crisis of the American K–12 education to an end.”—Wendell Bell, professor emeritus of sociology, Yale University “A thoughtful companion to Anticipate the School You Want, Creating the School You Want brings together other leading futurists who argue for the many benefits of improving schools by futurizing K–12 education. Anticipate tells you how to do it; Creating expands the many reasons as to why it’s a great idea whose time has come.—Michael Marien, founder and editor of Future Survey “This book makes it clear that, unless we educate our young people to think critically and creatively about the future, we will have failed in our duty to them as educators. Shostak draws on a variety of writers to explore the importance of this key task in troubled times.—Dave Hicks, visiting professor, Bath Spa University, United Kingdom; author, Lessons for the Future
Series in Educational Futuristics Other titles in the series: Anticipate the School You Want: Futurizing K–12 Education. 2008. Arthur B. Shostak.
Creating the School You Want Learning @ Tomorrow’s Edge
Edited by Arthur B. Shostak
R OWMAN & LITTLEFIELD EDUCATION A Division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Lanham • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
Published by Rowman & Littlefield Education A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.rowmaneducation.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom Copyright © 2010 by Arthur Shostak All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Creating the school you want : learning @ tomorrow’s edge / edited by Arthur Shostak. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-60709-643-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-60709-644-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-60709-645-0 (electronic) 1. School improvement programs—United States. 2. Education—United States— Forecasting. I. Shostak, Arthur B. LB2822.82.C79 2010 371.2'07—dc22 2009053631
⬁ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America
Dedicated with deep appreciation to pioneers in Educational Futuristics (by whatever name), including all the contributors to this book, and to Tom Abeles, Joel A. Barker, Helen C. Barrett, Marvin J. Cetron, Debashis Chowdhury, Edward Cornish, Jim Dator, Lisa Dawley, Christopher Dede, Howard Gardner, Nathan Garrett, Paul Goodman, Willis W. Harman, David Hicks, Sohail Inayatullah, Herbert Kohl, Jonathan Kozol, Lionel J. Livesay, David Livingstone, Tom Lombardo, Michael Marien, Gary Marx, Stephen Pinker, Neil Postman, Virginia Postrel, Jonathan Richter, Wendy Schultz, Harold G. Shane, Richard Slaughter, Bruce Sterling, Alvin Toffler, and Warren Ziegler. Whatever potential there is in educational futures will be discovered by those for whom discovery and invention is an exciting enterprise . . . intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. —Warren L. Ziegler*
*“The Potential of Educational Futures,” in The Potential of Educational Futures, ed. Michael Marien and Warren L. Ziegler (Worthington, OH: Charles A. Jones, 1972), 7.
Contents
Preface: Getting Acquainted
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Introduction: Educational Futuristics
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Part I Why Educational Futuristics Now?
1
1 Making a Case for Educational Futuristics Dynamic Encounter—2008–2020: The Venerable Classroom Meets Four Irresistible Forces of Change by David Pearce Snyder
5 17
Part II Implementing Educational Futuristics
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2 Can-Do Tools Scenario Planning: A Remarkable Tool for Transforming Our Worst Fears into Our Best Hopes for the Future by Laura Lefkowits
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3 Getting Educational Futuristics Started Scenarios from Future Problem Solving Program International (FPSPI) by Marianne Solomon and FPSPI Staffers
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4 Upgrading Educational Futuristics Ideal High School, New School Day: Year 2020 (Log in: Cyber School Bus. World History: Teleport to Pangaea Virtual Island in Avatar Dress Code [Arab]. Prepare to Represent Palestinian Authority. Review Oslo Accords.) by Robert L. Frantz
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Part III Refining Educational Futuristics Content
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5
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Ignoring Educational Futuristics
6 Educational Futuristics and Greening Turmoil Optimistic Environmentalism: A Guide for the Responsible Educator by Tsvi Bisk
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Part IV Extending Educational Futuristics
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7 Educational Futuristics and a Paradigm Shift Fixing Has Failed—Let’s Revolutionize K–12 by Joseph Coates From the Three Rs to the Four Cs: Emerging Technologies’ Positive and Transformative Impact on K–12 Education over the Next Decades by William Crossman
125 133
8 Educational Futuristics: Delivery Possibilities Future, Foresight, and Fulfillment: Incorporating Futuring in an International Baccalaureate Programme—A Work in Progress by Stephen F. Steele and Mary Austin The Journey of Wonder Writers by Govil Gupta
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9 Educational Futuristics Tomorrow Neurons, Networks, and Learning: What Neuroscience Means for K–12 Education by Daniel I. Shostak Beyond Rote Learning: How Online Education Moves Schools to Higher Consciousness by William E. Halal
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163 169 171 183
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Epilogue Vision 2021 Proposes Great Possibilities and Capabilities for Learning by Marsha Rhea K–12 Learning at the World Future Society: We See Farther and Better When We Look Together by Timothy C. Mack
197 199
Annotated Resources: Print and Internet
215
Acknowledgments
225
About the Editor and Contributors
227
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Preface: Getting Acquainted
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe*
I have always been fascinated by choices we can make in helping to shape tomorrow, both by ourselves and in concert with—or in opposition to—others. When for 42 years (1961–2003) I enjoyed being a professor of sociology, I got a lot of help employing this interest from an art form variously known as futuristics (my preferred term), though it goes under many other names—forecasting, foresight, futurology, and long-range forecasting, among them. An ancient, creative, modest, and steadily improving art form, futuristics can help us bring to the surface consequential assumptions about tomorrow, that is, about the four intermingled tomorrows with which we coexist and among which we make decisive choices (deliberately or through neglect)—the probable, possible, preferable, and preventable future. In this way, we can heighten our chances of moving beyond the passivity of the first, achieve more than the temporizing of the second, strive for the heights of the third, and minimize the costs of the fourth. Futuristics draws on a distinct skills set, one that includes creativity, detection, extrapolation, inquiry, logic, modeling, reasoning, trend extrapolation, visioning, and other such tools, all in the service of upgrading questions of consequence: “Absorbing and acting on today’s answers is simply
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not enough. . . . The only thing we can count on to see us through our uncertain future is our ability to ask questions . . . [our ability] to ensure that the generations to come are prepared to ask the questions that will force the constant reexamination that is at the heart of America’s democracy.”1 Futuristics, in short, helps users learn how to draw significant lessons from the past (as from veiled cycles of consequence), make better sense of the present (as in being able to separate passing fads from “switching points” in history), and improve life chances in the future (as from being early adopters of profitable ways). Uses vary widely, as made clear by forecasts I found in just 12 days’ worth (July 20–31, 2009) of scanning three prominent newspapers—the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Wall Street Journal—that I was reading when starting this volume. IBM, for example, boasted of a new system that could forecast heart attacks based on patients’ frequency of doctor visits and the type of lab tests ordered for them.2 A major think tank identified five states it expected would have to wait until after 2015 before returning to pre–Great Recession job levels.3 Environmental scientists warned that at the current rate of global warming, California’s abundant harvest of fruits and nuts could decrease by 50 percent before the century was up.4 And Dow Jones claimed its new Economic Sentiment Indicator could forecast economic cycles more than five months earlier than traditional sources.5 Within the same randomly chosen 12-day period, I found several forecasts of special relevance to K–12 education. Children’s consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, for example, might be reduced by 8 percent if a proposed federal tax caused a 10 percent increase in their price.6 Global oil production might peak around 2040, and a few decades later we might have to switch to alternative sources of energy—something schools might get started on immediately.7 And the number of centenarians might soar from 340,000 worldwide today to nearly 6 million by 2050, with the highest concentrations in Japan and the United States.8 Such forecasts could have K–12 educators pondering whether to support tax-prodded price increases to help improve childhood nutrition, help leverage energy policies to end reliance on overseas fossil fuels, or respond to unprecedented gains in average life expectancy by adding to the curricula course work in wellness education. Decisions about any of these are better made when informed by futuristics.
SETTING THE STAGE My special interest across the years has long been in a sector-specific application known as educational futuristics (EdF). An imaginative pedagogy,
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EdF makes the most of the desire of learners to explore choices with which to both help construct a better tomorrow and help prevent a worse one. It is a self-conscious effort to raise consciousness among educators about futuristics and get schooling (pre-K through lifelong learning) to glean more from it and vice versa. Although a relatively new field (perhaps half a century old as a formal undertaking), EdF has already gotten help from many talented individuals from different specializations, such as, Tom Abeles, Marvin J. Cetron, Chris Dede, Howard Gardner, Gary Marx, Stephen Pinker, Wendy Schultz, and the contributors to this volume (see Annotated Resources section for details). Although grievously underemployed in this country, it is the subject of concerted national projects in Australia, Canada, England, Holland, New Zealand, and elsewhere—no small matter when you consider how competitive young learners are and will increasingly be in the emerging global job market. Given its youthfulness, wide scope, and many unanswered questions, EdF is blessedly free of an ossified canon and a paralyzing orthodoxy. Rather, it proudly hosts a zesty mix of conflicting ideas about some key matters. Certain users, for example, forecast far more use in the near future of tech-boosted home schooling than do others (see the essay in this volume by Joseph Coates). Some expect microchip brain implants to soon alter the very meaning of learning, while others dismiss this as so much sci-fi wishfulness (see Daniel Shostak’s essay). Some forecast an ever-wider gap in educational gains between well-off progeny and have-less peers, while other EdF users expect massive new governmental funding efforts to help reduce the gap (see the essays by Joseph Coates and David Pearce Snyder). There is a semblance of agreement on four key matters. First, young learners are not the children we were: “Kids are home on the Xbox playing games against kids in other countries who don’t even speak their language, while they’re texting on their cell phones.”9 Some 97 percent play games in cyberspace, and over half tend to their profiles on MySpace and Facebook.10 Second, many K–12 practices drawn from twentieth-century-based education do not compute, so to speak, and are not what twenty-first-century youngsters need. The “sage-on-the-stage” approach, for example, should give way to the guide-on-the-side approach. Third, this entire situation warrants our use of the equivalent of a refresh button—much as is offered by judicious employ of EdF. While more evolutionary than revolutionary, EdF goes far beyond rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Finally, EdF can be delivered in three ways, only one of which can be recommended: as made clear in the essay by Joseph Coates, it can come through a single “edutainment” course or as a series of grade-sensitive single courses, or it can be treaded throughout the entire curriculum—this last being the soundest approach.
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Believing as such, in 2008 I enjoyed bringing out the first volume in a new series in EdF that I now edit for the publisher of this volume. Titled Anticipate the School You Want: Futurizing K–12 Education, it made a case for custom-tailored adoption of EdF, detailed how to go about this, and called for a national campaign in support of the idea (more on this 2008 volume later in this volume’s introduction). While these two volumes (2008 and 2010) go better together, they also stand independent of each other, and I include only fresh and/or updated ideas in this 2010 volume. Since 2008, so many sound and searching questions have come my way that I resolved not only to prepare this volume in your hands but also to facilitate a continuous give-and-take dialogue, hence the development of a website to help advance the matter, one I hope you will visit and share ideas there with the rest of us (http://www.educationalfuturistics.com).
TAKING NOTE Thanks to the earlier volume’s positive reception among local school principals and superintendents, I had several speaking engagements in 2008 and 2009 that identified issues in sharp need of further exploration—hence, this follow-up volume (enriched by 13 new short essays by 13 colleagues). Friendly questions from knowledgeable audience members identified what remained unclear, unconvincing, or even off-putting in the earlier volume. I was asked, for example, to drill deeper into the subject, to come up with more examples of affordable high-payoff projects, and to address the skepticism of supporters and counter the cynicism of EdF opponents (the more extreme of whom I have come to think of as “killers of the Dream,” to borrow an apt term from civil rights writer Lillian Smith).11 On September 15, for example, educators asked me how were they to help students maintain self-esteem as human beings while brilliant robots and “Hal”-like software gained more and more put-down influence? How were they to nurture skepticism in young learners regarding the offerings of suspect websites? Above all, how were they to get dollar-pinching school boards to authorize expenditures necessary to maximize gains from hybrid learning formats (“bricks and clicks”)? In turn, I got to ask superintendents, teachers, parents, and students what they thought about the state of futures-oriented schooling, and I got an earful. I remember in particular talking informally with high school seniors about the lack of attention paid in school to the future. Only one course, a highly regarded senior-level course in personal finance (e.g., how to manage your earnings) looked over the (near) horizon, and then only in a narrow dollar-focused way.
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Likewise, I recall being comparably dismayed by well-off parents who had come out to spend a Saturday urging improvements in their suburban school district’s curriculum and ethos. By the day’s end, I had heard heartfelt debate about the length of class time, the size of a class, the number and type of test-prep electives, and so on, but nary a word had been uttered about the future per se or any aspect of EdF. The situation did not differ when I got a strategic opportunity to do a two-hour workshop early in 2009 for nearly 40 Philadelphia-area school superintendents. I was plaintively told that “my plate is already full,” “my energy must be focused on working out details of transfers among overcrowded classes,” and so on. When later I asked an especially thoughtful member of the group if he could recall anyone making use of EdF over his very long career, he took several days before e-mailing me back a wane note admitting that he could not remember a single case. Most recently, I got a different sort of wake-up signal, this one pointing to future-shaping unintended—and frightful—consequences of a piece of well-intended educational technology. I asked an experienced teacher of youngsters with severe learning disabilities (autism, brain damage, emotional hardships, and so on) about his latest experience with EdF. A sparkling new $6,000 “razzle-dazzle” keyboard device had been purchased by higher-ups and promoted to him as capable of enabling autistic youngsters to “speak” a word by striking any of 200 logo-marked keys. Instinctively uneasy about it from the start, my friend tried using it with a young autistic girl with a spoken vocabulary of only six words. After a few weeks of growing dependent on the device, she declined to speak at all. But when my friend took the machine away, she was soon speaking over 30 words and looking eagerly to add more. The razzle-dazzle gadget nevertheless remains in wide use elsewhere in the school and school system. Shortly before completing this volume in the late fall of 2009, I got to lead a workshop for 30 New Jersey school superintendents. They agreed that today’s students are very information technology oriented and expect it to play a large part in their schooling. And while they insisted that superintendents were alert to future-shaping developments, they were quick to concede that they found all of it dizzying and even a bit dismaying, so short were they of any framework (such as EdF offers) within which to make sense of it. As if to top this all off, the December 2008/January 2009 issue of Edutopia (“What Works in Public Education”), an outstanding pro-change magazine, included a one-page selection of readers’ answers to the question, “What is the most critical skill students should master to succeed?” While teachers recommended communication skills, creative problem solving, critical thinking, interpersonal skills, perseverance, and so on, none cited an ability to look over the horizon, an ability to anticipate and make the
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most of major high-probability/high-impact changes coming a youngster’s way—this, a core reward of EdF involvement.
SUMMARY This volume, completed in late November 2009, is a response in large part to helpful reactions to its 2008 predecessor volume, much as I hope another such volume down the road, say, perhaps, in 2012 or thereafter, will grow from responses to this one (as received, for example, on the related website http://www.educationalfuturistics.com or at an Edutopia magazine group website, one proposed by me as I finished this manuscript). It contends that “exclusive preference for either the past or the present is a foolish and wasteful form of snobbishness and provinciality.”12 Its purpose is to stir enthusiasm for the artful employ of EdF; its point is that K–12 youngsters—actual and still unborn—merit nothing less than a three-part focus—past, present, and future.
NOTES *John Cook, ed., The Book of Positive Quotations (New York: Gramercy, 1993), 390. 1. Andrea B. Schlesinger, The Death of Why? The Decline of Questions and the Future of Democracy (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2009), 3. Inquiry is a “process of discovery, asking, re-asking, synthesizing, and evaluating until we can get close to something that approximates truth” (1). 2. William M. Bulkeley, “IBM’s Shift to Strategic Consulting Pays Off as Tech Slowdown Drags On,” Wall Street Journal, July 20, 2009, B-2. 3. Andrew Ross, “Jobs Rebound Still Years Away in State,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 30, 2009, C-1. The states are Connecticut, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Rhode Island. 4. David Perlman, “Winter Heat Will Harm Crops, UC Study Says,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 22, 2009, D-3. “Because new orchards can take years to go from planning to productivity, farmers need to consider looking now for growing areas farther north.” 5. Ad (Dow Jones), Wall Street Journal, July 31, 2009, A-12. 6. Thomas Frieden, as cited in Betsy McKay, “Cost of Treating Obesity Soars,” Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2009, D-3. A spokesman for the American Beverage Association claims that it is “hard to make the connection that there’s a unique tie between soft drinks and obesity.” 7. Anonymous (ad), “The Future of Cars,” New York Times, July 24, 2009, ZM2. 8. Anonymous, “News of the Day,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 20, 2009, A-4. 9. Miguel Helft, “We Rent Movies, so Why Not Textbooks?,” New York Times, July 5, 2009, BU-3.
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10. Anonymous, YES!, Spring 2009, 16. 11. Lillian Smith, Killers of the Dream (1949; reprint, New York: Norton, 1994). See also “Foreword: A Letter to My Publisher,” where Ms. Smith asks, “Are we—the nation that first embarked on the high adventure of making a world fit for human beings to live in—about to destroy ourselves because we have killed our dream?” (20). 12. Mortimer Adler, as quoted in Cynthia Crossen, “Dear Book Lover,” Wall Street Journal, November 20, 2009, W-2.
Introduction: Educational Futuristics
We did not come here to fear the future. We came here to shape it. —President Barack Obama, address to joint session of Congress, September 9, 2009*
If as educators we are to help youngsters make sense of our bewildering times, we have to answer (and to regularly reassess our answers to) five future-focusing questions. First, what are our major assumptions—overt and covert—about tomorrow? For example, do we assume that an ample number of good jobs will always be available, or should we be helping youngsters anticipate how to make the most tomorrow of scarce, irregular, and insecure jobs? Second, why do we believe this? For example, do we understand how much of our futures perspective covertly derives from our own life history, personality, politics, racial background, religious beliefs, and social class of origin? And, if we have looked into this, what do we make of the mix? How well do we honor the Socratic adage “Know thyself”? Third, what sort of rewards and penalties attach to holding alternative views of tomorrow? For example, how free are we to reassess and possibly revise our legacy views? How reasonable and “healthy” are inducements and discouragements from believing this or that about key aspects of tomorrow, as from significant others, political parties, pop culture, or American-style mullahs or pundits? Fourth, how do assumptions about tomorrow influence our attitudes and behavior as K–12 educators? For example, how do our expectations of betrayal of xix
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trust by power holders color our teaching? How much do barely recognized expectations about class membership, ethnicity, gender, human nature, race, sexual preference, or the like, shape what we expect from this or that K–12 student? What do we make of forecasts like this one: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”1 Finally, how can we help shape aspects of the future closer to our heart’s desire, even while allowing for honest differences among us? For example, how do we incorporate explicit and mature advocacy into our teaching without being autocratic or overbearing or slipping into illicit hucksterism? How do we play fair with both sides of a difficult question?2
A FRIEND IN COURT Educational futuristics (EdF) can help us wrestle with the five previously posed questions in both a personal and a professional context. An art form of ancient lineage, it promotes the use of a distinctive set of methods (extrapolations, scenarios, trend analysis, visioning, and so on) and a rewarding philosophical approach (the future is largely ours to make). EdF would have us understand that while an abstraction, the future can and should be studied. It is not a predetermined extrapolation of a linear past but instead a congeries of crazy-quilt overt and covert possibilities— some more probable than others, many of them more preferable, and some of the worse of them, it is hoped, preventable. Fortunately, we come to EdF advantaged by our being natural futurists of a sort. That is, we are anxious problem-posing, problem-solving animals endlessly curious about what may be coming next and how might we better prepare to make the most of it. Our futures perspective is a hardwired given in our brains, a talent to which we owe considerable credit for our advance across time. Indeed, it is one of the distinctions that help explain our high perch on the animal kingdom ladder. This is not the same thing as saying that we are good at every aspect of forecasting—quite the contrary. Our evolutionary psychology preconditions humans to put off responding to threats we think we can tackle later. While ours appears a relatively intelligent species, we move toward the future with behavior that ranges erratically between admirable and suicidal: “All the evidence of history suggests man is indeed a rational animal, but with a near infinite capacity for folly.”3 One has only to reflect on the mess that self-styled financial wizards made of the world economy in 2009–2010—experts (once) trusted to see far ahead, maximize gain, and minimize risk—to better appreciate
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the problematic nature of human choice making. Or ruefully recall our panic in 1999 over Y2K forecasts of a computer apocalypse as the calendar changed to 2000, along with flamboyant promises of a “paperless office” and nuclear energy “too cheap to meter.” Our brains have apparently been programmed by evolution to react to only certain kinds of threats: for example, if the issue is complex, full of trade-offs, and more cerebral than visceral, “it doesn’t activate our warning systems . . . the kinds of dangers that are most serious today—such as climate change—sneak in under the brain’s radar . . . our brain circuitry is often cavalier about the future.”4 Long-term risks, particularly those involving complex global processes, confound us. Given this little-known neurological limitation, we have always needed to employ more and better EdF. With its help, we can understand and acknowledge our mental handicap and “try to compensate with rational analysis. When we work at it we are indeed capable of foresight.”5 It is possible “to change the lens through which we unconsciously construe the world . . . even though most of our reactions are fast and automatic, we still have free will and control.”6 EdF reassures somewhat with its nonnegotiable belief that history is “not inevitable, that there are spaces where it can bend, change, become more just.”7
EDF AS ALLY In 1972, a pioneering book, The Potential of Educational Futures, helped “announce and promote a possible revolution in the way we think [about schooling] and the way we shape our direction.”8 Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of EdF-oriented courses existed in the K–12 world. Activities ranged from “analyzing values to building dymaxion domes [great fun, or so claimed college students in my elective futures course], from political action planning to science fiction reading and writing.”9 EdF was “not a hypothetical hand about to write on the wall: teachers, administrators, and students were already responding to a visible message.”10 Many other books have since continued the “revolution,” as, for example, two by leading futurists represented in this volume: Marsha Rhea and William Crossman (for details, see the “About the Editor and Contributors” section at the end of this volume). Inspired and guided by them, I authored in 2008 a comparable advocacy volume, Anticipate the School You Want: Futurizing K–12 Education, a vital predecessor to the volume you now hold in your hands or read as an e-book. My 2008 volume began by characterizing futuristics—itself an ancient, creative, humble, multidisciplinary, and evolving art form—as a “a frame-
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work for acquiring the knowledge and skills to understand future possibilities, and the ability to collaborate in creating a preferred future.”11 EdF has a theory of knowledge, complete with equal valorization of cognitive, affective, and existential dimensions. It has a distinctive toolkit of creative methods for imaging possibilities, estimating probabilities, evaluating preferences, and blunting preventable futures. It has its own research methods, systematic principles, and many decades worth of empirical research findings. It has its own organizations and outlets (hard copy, websites, and so on) and its own ethical principles and professional ideals. Much was made at the start of the 2008 volume of the contribution of futures research, a multidisciplinary science with four main schools: the environmental science school (embracing climate, emissions, land, water, and so on), the management school (concerned with corporate strategy and management consultancy), the social and political science school (dealing with soft systems), and the systems science school (dealing with the built environment, energy, transport, urban planning, and so on).12 Chapters in part I explored the history of futuristics, made a case for creating a Futures Committee in every school building to help guide a school’s EdF efforts, and delved into the particulars of a futures-oriented curriculum. Chapters in part II discussed the design, content, and operation of a magnet or charter high school for youngsters considering a career in futuristics. Chapters in part III urged the holding of a biannual, upbeat, wholeschool Futures Fair. They also discussed how a school’s Futures Committee could help meet staff reeducation needs, human capital investment needs, the artificial intelligence challenge, and the climate change challenge. In the epilogue, chances were weighed of our soon rising to the challenge of gaining EdF employ, and an urgent call was made for the development of a national EdF advocacy organization. The volume closed with an extensive annotated bibliography of both print and Internet material, a reminder of the many exciting contributions being made all the time to the subject.
ONCE OVER LIGHTLY In this follow-up volume, you will find more exacting treatment of the 2008 material, as exposure of ideas in that earlier volume to audiences and readers has spotlighted matters that warrant further thought, refinement, and even revision. Accordingly, with the help of nine chapters, an epilogue, and 13 short invited thought pieces, we revisit the case that can and must be made for EdF—hopefully the next “Big App” in K–12 education (provided that you and I—with a cadre of like souls—artfully promote this).
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In the volume’s preface, I explained that, in essence, concerned school people asked for this volume and played a large part in guiding its contents. I discussed the subject’s current costly neglect in K–12 circles and the challenging questions provoked by any attention paid to it. In this introduction, I first raised and then tentatively answered five questions that we, as educators, must tackle where the future is concerned. I move on now to lightly preview the contents of this volume, which includes 13 original essays written especially for this volume by some very busy and knowledgeable people—educators, professional futurists, and three current students. Each of the essays was completed independent of the other and with no knowledge of what I was busy writing at the same time. That there is considerable synergy and that the whole is greater than its parts is a very welcomed outcome. In part I, chapter 1, “Making a Case for Educational Futuristics,” I explore EdF’s relevance to some of the major anxieties struggled with by students and staff, such as questions about the gains and costs of always-on communication technologies, the prospects of non-college-attending youngsters, the challenge of how to buoy the hope and morale of all students, and so on. The first guest essay, “Dynamic Encounter—2008–2020: The Venerable Classroom Meets Four Irresistible Forces of Change,” by David Pearce Snyder, shares a no-nonsense account of the most likely next decade in the K–12 world—and then some (in this connection, see the three chapters in part IV, where I explore possibilities both in gaining EdF adoption and in EdF’s own future). In chapter 2, “Can Do! Tools,” five mechanisms for implementing EdF are reviewed, with special emphasis on the wisdom of adapting them to the culture unique to each and every school building or, better yet, every one of America’s 14,000-plus school district. They involve 1) a framework (a five-year plan), 2) an operating mechanism (a Futures Club or Futures Committee), 3) a research device (Appreciative Inquiry), 4) an enrolling/ empowering device (storytelling), and 5) a framing device (paradigm-shift terminology). The second guest essay, “Scenario Planning: A Remarkable Tool for Transforming Our Worst Fears into Our Best Hopes for the Future,” by Laura Lefkowits, offers pragmatic advice on how to make the most of a major EdF tool. Lefkowits explains that scenarios enable us to “anticipate likely futures, prepare for those futures, and build a future we may not have imagined before.” (A good example is provided by a 2099 scenario in a guest essay by Tsvi Bisk in chapter 6.) In part II, chapter 3, “Getting Educational Futuristics Started,” I share many programmatic ideas that go beyond those mentioned in the 2008
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volume and take into account developments since that volume was published. Drawn from actual ongoing project reports and also “armchair” design possibilities, the material accents affordability, appeal, ease of development and maintenance, and high payoff. “Scenarios from Future Problem Solving Program International (FPSPI),” by Marianne Solomon and FPSPI staffers, first explains their highly acclaimed program and its educational process. They next provide two engaging examples of prize-winning scenarios youngsters have developed here and overseas as part of the program. (Full disclosure: I am a pro bono reader of the futuristic scenario-writing exercises prepared annually for the students worldwide.) Chapter 4, “Upgrading Educational Futuristics,” builds on the preceding chapter and shares ideas for projects of a more demanding nature, projects best undertaken only after gaining ease and craft in accomplishing those recommended earlier. We begin by assessing forecast impacts and move next to forecast-making advances and also limitations, followed by seven major types of forecasts: company, textbook, place-based, seer, “what-if,” dire, and singularity forecasts. The guest essay “Ideal High School New School Day: Year 2020,” by Robert Frantz, explores where we might go with the creative use of distance learning and videoconferencing. In chapter 5, “Ignoring Educational Futuristics,” lessons are drawn from limitations in developing in 2006 the $63 million Philadelphia High School of the Future—a high-profile test lab for trying to meld computer technology with new twenty-first-century learning approaches (e.g., projectbased learning). As transferable lessons in implementation are quite varied and as the public may mistake this venture for an EdF project (which it is not), there is much to learn from separating EdF from it and helping ensure that its major mistakes are not soon repeated. In chapter 6, “Educational Futuristics and Greening Turmoil,” attention is paid to what the K–12 world may soon experience as opposition likely intensifies to proposed school outlays for green gains, arguably the major next focus of K–12 innovation—and of controversy—for the foreseeable future. Israeli futurist Tsvi Bisk’s essay, “Optimistic Environmentalism: A Guide for the Responsible Educator,” explores what the K–12 world can expect as accelerated climate change intensifies and what might be constructively done ahead of time and also in response. (See also chapter 6, “Educational Futuristics and Greening Turmoil,” where I take the matter to the level of the school building and warn pro-green educators that they may have blowback problems ahead.) Part IV, “Expanding Educational Futuristics,” includes three chapters that focus, first, on the case for a paradigm shift; second, on ways of promoting
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adoption and adaptation of EdF at three levels (classroom, school building, and federal); and, third, on the future of EdF per se. In chapter 7, “Educational Futuristics and a Paradigm Shift,” a case is made for assisting an ongoing major change in the dominant paradigm by which we understand K–12 education. Five attributes of a school with a decided EdF orientation are explored (ethos, experimentation, entitlement, entanglement, and expiration), and the resulting model is cited as indispensable in the next K–12 education paradigm. The guest essay “Fixing Has Failed—Let’s Revolutionize K–12,” by futurist Joseph Coates, lays bare the forces in K–12 that oppose “innovation, change, the identification of failure and shortfalls, and the moves to remedy them.” After reviewing nine issues beyond a trivial fix, it calls for making the future the core of the curriculum and expresses confidence that a “brilliant activist” is out there to dramatically move the reform campaign along. (Refer back to chapter 1, where I highlight ways in which EdF ably addresses some of Coates’s concerns.) “From the Three Rs to the Four Cs: Emerging Technologies’ Positive and Transformative Impact on K–12 Education over the Next Decades,” by William Crossman, usefully explores the world if and when literacy is no longer confined to reading but moves on to rely instead on our information technology options. (See chapter 9, “Educational Futuristics Tomorrow,” where I join Crossman in pushing the envelope, so to speak, about far-out possibilities of relevance to K–12 education.) Chapter 8, “Educational Futuristics: Delivery Possibilities,” considers ways in which EdF might best be introduced first into a typical K–12 school, and second into the nation’s school system. Attention goes to pragmatic guidelines thought useful in both disparate settings. The chapter closes with a salute to ongoing zesty change efforts outside the EdF realm, as despite this independence, they increase the odds of EdF soon becoming adopted. “Future, Foresight and Fulfillment: Incorporating Futuring in an International Baccalaureate Programme—A Work in Progress,” an essay coauthored by Stephen F. Steele and Mary Austin, explains how much can be gained by collaboration among organizations that recognize in EdF many obvious and also not so apparent mutual “win-win” possibilities. It is followed by “The Journey of Wonder Writers,” by Govil Gupta, a high school senior. He tells of his successful effort to create an outlet for young writers, this being a sound example of what caring young people are capable of where shaping tomorrow is concerned. His short and engaging essay demonstrates the capacity of such young learners to take the future artfully in hand and do some good. Chapter 9, “Educational Futuristics Tomorrow,” is unapologetically highly speculative, as befits at least one chapter in a volume grounded in
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futuristics. Community organizing could yet achieve more power and significance than commonly expected. Cognitive neuroscience could yet shake pedagogy to its roots and recast schooling in ways hard to imagine. And our possible dependency soon on an intelligent personal agent constitutes what futurists call a “wild card,” an exotic game changer that we ignore at great peril. “Neurons, Networks, and Learning: What Neuroscience Means for K–12 Education,” by Daniel Shostak, artfully explains the caution that organizations should employ in assessing the current utility in K–12 education of cutting-edge research (specifically, advances now occurring in cognitive neuroscience knowledge of our brain and the possible relation of this to classroom practice, textbook content, distance learning, and so on). “Beyond Rote Learning: How Online Education Moves Schools to Higher Consciousness,” by William E. Halal, explores changes that have “androids replace humans, intelligent agents act as assistants, smart computers talk, discoveries in neuroscience model the brain, and so on.” Halal raises the possibility of a type of learning beyond the fact-focused cognitive type that reigns alone within contemporary K–12 schooling, as, for example, through spirituality, and by doing so opens up a fresh realm for creative exploration—much as does all of EdF. In a deliberately cogent epilogue, EdF is nominated as an overdue remedy of sorts for much that ails K–12 schooling, a remedy that would set a school apart from and ahead of others, even as it would do so for the nation astute enough to adapt and grow with it. The guest essay “Vision 2021 Proposes Great Possibilities and Capabilities for Learning,” by Marsha Rhea, shares the vision that elementary school principals have of a finer learning culture in 2021, along with pragmatic ideas for getting there from here. (See in this connection my chapter 9, where I take risks with far-out speculations, and also guest essays by Coates, Frantz, Halal, and Snyder.) “K–12 Learning at the World Future Society: We See Farther and Better When We Look Together,” by Timothy Mack, president of the World Future Society, then makes the case for K–12 professionals utilizing the world’s oldest, largest, and leading organization of futurists, one that has always had a very large membership from the ranks of K–12 school administrators and classroom teachers here and abroad. The better to underline the point that both the EdF bookshelf and the Web inventory are constantly expanding, this volume concludes by citing resources of special value. For, as futurist Wendell Bell puts it, “In the 21st century, no one’s education should be adequate without a clear futures studies component. We desperately need a future-oriented curriculum at all levels of education.”13
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SUMMARY EdF can help us expand our imagination; create useful scenarios; make informed probabilistic forecasts; scan, identify, and extrapolate trends; estimate the impact of trends; and formulate strategies and plans of action.14 As it is based in an art form, it comes from a deep place and enables us to risk more, to dare more. It sides with those who believe that “the inspiring future of school reform lies in less bureaucracy and more democracy; in collaboration more than in competition; in innovation and inspiration, more than in data-driven intervention; [and] in the fear factor giving way to the peer factor as the driver of reform.”15
NOTES *http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/09/obama.health.care.transcript/index .html. 1. Alvin Toffler, “Foreword,” in Rethinking the Future, ed. Rowan Gibson (London: Nicholas Brealey), first written in a slightly different form in Future Shock (New York: Bantam, 1984), 414. 2. Naturally, there are also subsidiary questions of merit: How has the subject been tackled over the course of human history and with what results? How do different cultures, ethnicities, genders, nationalities, races, and religions differ from and resemble one another where futuristics is concerned? And, since the Age of Enlightenment, how have advances in science and technology—reputedly our new “religion”—particularly impacted the subject? 3. Robert McNamara, in a 1966 speech, as quoted in Errol Morris, “McNamara in Context,” New York Times, July 8, 2009, A-21. 4. Nicholas D. Kristof, “When Our Brains Short-Circuit,” New York Times, July 2, 2009, A-21. 5. Kristof, “When Our Brains Short-Circuit.” “If we can floss today to prevent tooth decay in later years, then perhaps we can also drive less to save the planet” (A-21). 6. David Brooks, “The Young and the Neuro,” New York Times, October 13, 2009, A-27. Social cognitive neurosciences “may even help policy wonks someday see people as they really are.” 7. Linda Christensen, “Teaching for Joy and Justice,” Rethinking Schools 52 (Summer 2009): 50–54. 8. Michael Marien and Warren L. Ziegler, eds., The Potential of Educational Futures (Worthington, OH: Charles A. Jones, 1972), xii. Although it celebrated the “immense potential” of the subject, the book also warned “against the bowdlerization of a potentially good idea—a phenomenon that should be well-known to the astute educator.”
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9. James M. Oswald, “The Future as a School Subject,” in Marien and Ziegler, The Potential of Educational Futures, 112. 10. Billy Rojas, “Problems and Prospects for Educational Futuristics,” in Marien and Ziegler, The Potential of Educational Futures, 103. 11. I draw here on a definition not of educational futuristics per se but of a clone— “anticipatory learning”—as I believe that it admirably captures what futuristics means for education. Marsha Lynne Rhea, Anticipate the World You Want: Learning for Alternative Futures (Lanham, MD.: ScarecrowEducation, 2005), 2. 12. Robert H. Samet, Long-Range Futures Research: An Application of Complexity Science (North Charlestown, SC: BookSurge, 2008), 15–30. 13. Wendell Bell, “Foreword: Preparing for the Future,” in Lessons for the Future: The Missing Dimension in Education, by David Hicks (London: Palgrave, 2002), xvi. 14. Tom Lombardo, “Understanding and Teaching Future Consciousness,” On the Horizon 17, no. 2 (2009): 91. 15. Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley, “From Fear Factor to Peer Factor,” Education Week, September 16, 2009, 31.
Part I WHY EDUCATIONAL FUTURISTICS NOW?
We’ve forgotten many of the fundamentals: how to live within our means, the benefits of shared sacrifice, the responsibilities that go with citizenship, the importance of a well-rounded education, and tolerance. —Bob Herbert*
We need—youngsters and adults alike—every possible tool to help make better sense of our kaleidoscopic world, especially of some hard truths facing us at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Four headline challenges in particular are likely to impact significantly on K–12 schooling, both indirectly, as through helping to shape the nation’s future, and directly, as in calling for age-appropriate attention in the curricula: 1. Since the Kyoto Treaty expires in 2012, we move rapidly toward a showdown of sorts in resolving how the world community intends to impose the right prices on carbon emissions, the right regulations to promote energy efficiency, and the right way to be fair to developing and advanced nations alike.1 2. One of the most costly domestic issues confronting Americans at the close of the first decade of the twenty-first century is our devastatingly weak employment environment: “Companies have always wanted to do more with less; today, it’s a positive obsession.”2 As I write (late October 2009), over 17 percent of the workforce is either unemployed or too discouraged to seek employment.3 Over the next decade, we will need 6,700,000 new jobs just to replace losses from the current 1
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recession and then an additional 10,000,000 to keep up with population growth.4 3. In ways not yet clear, an enormous sea change appears to have “reset” the global economy and capitalism. We are required to adjust our expectations, behavior, and priorities to a new postrecession world— and we feel a greater-than-ever need for forecast aids.5 4. Our confidence in achieving an end soon to the “war on terror” waivers as evidence mounts of the intransigence of the opposition and their relentless pursuit of black-market nukes: “The most serious threat out of South Asia is the Talibanization of nuclear-armed Pakistan. The people who are planning the next 9/11 are there.”6 Taken together, these pulse-racing challenges—accelerated climate change, labor market shortfall, confounding world economic turmoil, and the intransigence of fanatical jidhadists—help explain much of our plight, much of why Americans lack a safe environment in which they can lead their lives: “National productivity gains don’t seem to alleviate economic anxiety. Inequality strains national cohesion. In many communities, social norms do not encourage academic achievement, decent values, or family stability.”7 The situation would seem to assure ever-greater reliance on futuristics in general and it is hoped, where the well-being of our children is concerned, on the focus of this book—educational futuristics (EdF). Accordingly, chapter 1 drills in to explore a four-part sample of the response that teachers and students can derive from their use of EdF. Attention goes first to the ability of EdF to help educators tackle current school perplexities; second, to the ability of EdF to help educators respond to major reform possibilities, especially unusual ones with intriguing implications; third, to the ability of EdF to help educators help youngsters who, for whatever reason, elect not to press on after high school for more formal education; and, finally, to the ability of EdF to help youngsters remain hopeful and creative despite everything in opposition thereto. Coursing through all of this is a thought of a contributor to this book, Marsha Rhea: “The grand challenge for schools is to empower students to contribute actively to a preferred future.”8 If successful, the printed book you are now reading—perhaps even as an e-book (called by some a “transbook”) or, still more adventurously, as a “vook” (a new communication form that combines text, video, and Web features) or even on a computer screen—should encourage you to adapt some of its pragmatic, affordable, and even transformational ideas. Why EdF now? Because, in the sage words of Wendell Bell, a leading senior American futurist, “if we wish to prepare the next generation to deal with the future, if we wish to arm them with the intellectual tools to cre-
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ate desirable futures both for themselves and for their societies, then we ought to establish and expand the systematic study of the future in our schools.”9 As made clear by data in chapter 1 and elsewhere in the book, we do have a crisis in K–12 education—but not only that sort known to the mass media. Fortunately, we also have a related crisis of opportunity, one much of the media have yet to discover.
NOTES *Bob Herbert, “It’s Time to Get Help,” New York Times, September 8, 2009, A-4. 1. In this connection, see Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2008). See also Mark Landler, “Meeting Shows U.S.-India Split on Emissions,” New York Times, July 20, 2009, A-1, A-6. “Rather than projecting solidarity, the visit [to India of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton] ended up laying bare the deep divide between developed and developing countries on climate policy—a gulf the Obama administration will have to bridge as it tries to forge a new global agreement on climate change later this year” (A-1). 2. James Surowiecki, “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” The New Yorker, Match 12, 2009, 23. 3. Bob Herbert, “A Scary Reality,” New York Times, August 11, 2009, A-21. 4. Adrian Slywotzky, “How Science Can Create Millions of New Jobs,” BusinessWeek, September 7, 2009, 37. 5. On the “reset economy,” see Maria Bartiromo, “Inside a Company Resetting for Recovery,” BusinessWeek, July 13 and 20, 2009, 15–17. “This is a time when businesses shouldn’t be assuming that the future will be like the past. . . . There have been very, very big changes.” The speaker is chief executive officer of General Electric, Jeff Immelt, who coined the term “the reset economy.” 6. Matthew Kaminski, “Why the Fighting Continues,” Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2009, A-13. In this connection, see Andrew Krepinevich, Seven Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century (New York: Random House, 2009). 7. Herbert, “A Scary Reality,” A-21. 8. Marsha Lynne Rhea, Anticipate the World You Want: Learning for Alternative Futures (Lanham, MD: ScarecrowEducation 2005), 107. 9. Wendell Bell, “Foreword,” in Lessons for the Future: The Missing Dimension in Education, by David Hicks (New York: Routledge, 2002), xv–xvi.
1 Making a Case for Educational Futuristics
Awakening in young people a sense that the future can be shaped is one of the most constructive contributions any practicing futurist can make. —Raymond P. Ewing*
Arguably, young learners have as their “essential task the development of a sense of self sufficiently robust enough to [help them] weather the inevitable ups and downs of a lifetime.”1 Educational futuristics (EdF) can help us help them. We can meet our students where they live, so to speak, and bolster futures consciousness. We can help them upgrade their mental maps of past, present, and future. We can help them improve their use of forecasting in decision making throughout their lives. Why now? Because EdF can help us tackle current school perplexities. Consider just this one example of a pressing K–12 issue that did not exist at the start of the twenty-first century: “They do it late at night when their parents are asleep. They do it in restaurants and when crossing busy streets. They do it in the classroom with their hands behind their back. They do it so much their thumbs hurt.”2 According to the Nielsen Company, in 2008 teenagers in the United States sent or received on average as many as 80 messages a day using their cellular phones. They sent an average of 2,272 text messages a month (vs. 357 for the average user), a number more than double the number a year before.3 Forty-two percent could actually text accurately blindfolded, and almost half believed that their social lives would suffer or end without text messaging.4
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Little wonder that some social commentators judge text messaging the distraction of choice for teens (“I text; therefore, I am.”). Critics, however, slam it for involving increasingly inane information and urge users to try “less ingestion and more digestion; less information and more meditation, reflection, and contemplation.”5 Some schools actually ban texting on school grounds. Others designate space and time to accommodate the “addiction,” much as is done with adult smokers. A few are even permissive: Freedom Area High School in Pennsylvania, for example, allows students to use cell phones and iPods between classes and plays rock music in the halls during passing time.6 Many K–12 educators wonder what, if anything, to do about it right now: fight back, ignore it, or somehow adapt? Continuous texting’s impact and lasting significance (if any) remain presently unclear—and quite contentious. Some educators, physicians, and psychologists worry that it can lead to distraction in school, falling grades, information “obesity,” and repetitive stress injury, among other problems. A researcher warns pre–high school youngsters that “when you’re finally forced to confront intellectually demanding situations in high school or college, you may find that you’ve traded depth of knowledge for breadth and stunted your capacity for serious thought.”7 Three years of research with teenagers have Professor Sherry Turkle convinced that constant texting is causing anxiety and also sleep and relationship problems. Teenagers need time for stillness, peace, and quiet to become the persons they want to be. Turkle fears that Twitter and comparable “overgrown” communications technologies cloud a teenager’s recognition of his or her need for reflection, much to a youngster’s long-term detriment. Contrary to what young people actually need, the medium is used to avoid risks inherent in face-to-face relations, again.8 In turn, Michael Hausauer, a psychotherapist in Oakland, California, sees potential for both great benefit and also great harm: “It offers companionship and the promise of connectedness. At the same time, texting can make a youngster feel frightened and overly exposed.”9 Writer Mark Helprin is far more pessimistic and worries that the spirit of perpetual acceleration threatens to barbarize our language and deprive us of the kind of artistic greatness that isn’t available on Twitter feeds.10 As for the foreseeable future, Turkle recommends that parents, after respectfully exploring the matter with their offspring, set firm limits on texting and cell phone use. The use of these technologies, overt or covert, should be banned at family meals and in the evening in a youngster’s bedroom—along with school classrooms—though only in these times and sites. Schools, in turn, should take seriously their responsibility for mentoring youngsters in the “whys and wherefores” of staying on top of seductive
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“must-have” technologies—especially those closely aligned with preteen and teen stage-of-life concerns (e.g., making and holding on to friends, being in touch, counting for something, and so on). Drawing on EdF, parents (and school staffers) should acknowledge a deep-set generational divide in this matter. Many young people (“digital natives”) regard an “always-on” twenty-first-century world as both natural and manageable; it is a “stay-in-the-loop” future that they are choosing to make, and many like it.11 Older folks, however, are less certain about the merits of such a frenetic world and feel justified in defining “abuse,” setting limits on uses, and urging less contact and more contemplation.12 Aided by a healthy dose of mutual respect, the generations should be able to achieve a future-shaping reasonable compromise, especially as many teens know how much their folks enjoy using their iPhones and BlackBerries. Smart money is betting here that “young people will cope first as we all evolve to become more sophisticated, less anxious users of information.”13 Why use EdF now? Because it can help us tackle major reform possibilities, especially novel ones with far-reaching implications. Consider just one example, this one involving a feature increasingly part of a school’s landscape: a vegetable garden in an urban setting designed for instructional (and school cafeteria) use. Volunteers in a school’s learning community (staff, students, and their parents) could research gains and costs involved in encouraging households in the school’s catchments area to develop their own pragmatic vegetable gardens (much as was done during World War II—one of which I tended with pride for several years). Students could serve as a source of hands-on advice, getting credit for community service and gaining requisite social skills useful forever after. Why in this age of razzle-dazzle space-age technologies might we turn anew to something as quaint as household vegetable gardens? For one thing, research estimates put the average ratio of savings in grocery costs on the vegetables and herbs produced by a home garden at 25 to 1; an investment of $200 in seeds could yield a savings of $5,000. For another, gains are likely in physical health, psychological well-being, “the joy of truly fresh flavors, and amusements as colorful as Disney World.” Were today’s 40 million gardening households to expand to include 100 million households caring for an average 2,000-square-foot vegetable garden—about the same footprint as a small house or bungalow—they could save an average of $10,000 a year along with making invaluable gains in exercise and morale.14 Little wonder that at the height of the recession early in 2008, the National Gardening Association found that 19 percent more households were
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planning to grow gardens than in 2007.15 (In this connection, see the mention in chapter 8 of the Edible Schoolyard Project in an inner-city neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.) The idea, both intriguing and also a little bit zany, is the sort of browarching possibility that K–12 youngsters are likely to find fascinating. It is thereby a fine focus for multi- and interdisciplinary course work. It could be everyone’s central concern for an entire dedicated school year, an unforgettable positive experience as a future-shaping learning exercise. Why now? Because EdF can help us tackle the major schooling challenge in a degree-centric America: how to improve the life chances of teenagers with less than or only a high school diploma. Ironically, the near-term employment prospects of youngsters who do graduate from high school but do not go on to seek a college degree are better than are those of peers who do, though it is unlikely that many adults in K–12 education know this. Some 11 million of the 16 million new jobs expected between 2006 and 2016 will not require a college degree.16 Indeed, the second- and thirdranked job titles with the largest expected employment increases involve different types of home health aids, some of whom, though not all, may first have to get an associate degree. To be sure, five of the top 10 occupations expected to add the most jobs may pay little, up to a maximum of about $22,000 a year (in 2006 dollars). Another three are “low paying,” from roughly $22,000 to $31,000, and include customer service representatives, general office clerks, and nurses’ aides.17 This notwithstanding, employment at almost any wage level trumps joblessness, especially if it is a stepping-stone to better jobs. Moreover, if and when labor unions succeed once again in organizing hundreds of thousands of low-wage jobholders, as they have done recently with home health aides in certain western states, overdue wage gains and fringe benefits (along with a lift in workplace dignity and respect) might be rapidly won. Major demand is also expected for young people to fill higher-paying nondegree jobs, such as those going to car service mechanics, carpenters, computer repair technicians, electricians, machinists, plumbers, truck drivers, welders, and others whose jobs cannot be sent offshore or readily taken by robots. Job gains are expected here—perhaps as many as 5 million over the next 10 years—from emerging green-related efforts, as in developing a solar-aided America, weathering homes and businesses, capitalizing on wind power, and so on.18 EdF supporters can help publicize such emerging programs as the National Energy Education Development Project of the Department of Energy, a new effort to get high schools and colleges to cooperate in bringing along students for wind-technology careers (a free K–12 curriculum, “Wind for Schools,” is on the Web). Above all, EdF supporters can call attention
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to the little-known 2006–2016 federal forecast and also aid advocates of continuous upgrading in career and vocational education, once a devalued stepchild in K–12 schooling. High schoolers who prefer not to immediately pursue another educational degree need to learn more than ever before graduation, especially where information technology skills are concerned: “All the skilled trades and many installation and repair positions now require the use of advanced technologies [especially computer reliant] that continue to evolve at a rapid pace.”19 Non-college-going students need to ably communicate, be creative, work well with others, and merit unqualified trust. EdF can help make the case for beefing all this up in the high school curriculum. This is by no means to gainsay the related challenge of our having too few high school graduates go on to college. Enrollment continues to skid, and the United States, which pioneered mass higher education, now ranks only tenth among advanced industrial nations (members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) in proportion of college graduates ages 25 to 34 years old. Only 40 percent of young adults hold a two- or four-year college degree, and as many as a third of first-year college students may not graduate.20 Insufficient financial support for needy applicants hurts and helps explain why only 10 percent at the top universities come from the bottom 50 percent of the socioeconomic ladder—only 3 percent from the bottom 25 percent.21 As education, especially that gained beyond high school, is a powerful engine of growth, this failure of ours to maximize schooling gains from brainpower spells long-term trouble for business, culture, economy, politics, and our place in the world. (American males, for example, who obtain a college education earn about $367,000 more over a lifetime than those who do not.)22 EdF can bolster reform efforts here as well as those concerned with the well-being of post–high school employment seekers. Why now? Because EdF can help us tackle the major overlooked challenge in a stressed America: how to keep up morale and hope in these troubled times. Students today struggle to maintain a robust sense of self and hope for the future against a perplexing national and global background, one that includes accelerated climate change, confounding world economic turmoil, and the mortal threat posed by fanatical jidhadists. Especially where climate is concerned, certain close students of the subject, such as Professor Paul Krugman, are dire: “Every once in a while I feel despair over the fate of the planet. . . . The prognosis for the planet has gotten much, much worse in just the last few years . . . climate modelers have been reaching consensus on the view that the threat is worse than we realized.”23 Similarly, and closer to our present, in the late fall of 2009 (when I wrote these words), some 40 million Americans were struggling to get by living
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under the official poverty line ($22,205 for a family of four).24 This was the highest percentage of the population living in poverty since 1997.25 About 800,000 more children younger than 18 nationwide were living in poverty in 2008 than in 2007, when the poverty rate for children was already 18 percent (rising to 20 percent in 2009), for a total in 2008 of 14,100,000 youngsters.26 Median household income had experienced the steepest year-to-year drop between 2007 and 2008 since the government began tracking 40 years ago. Private-sector payrolls were lower than at the end of 1999. Adjusted for inflation, median income was lower in 2008 than every year since 1988. The index of total weekly pay for production workers, representing 80 percent of the workforce, had fallen for nine consecutive months, an unprecedented string over the 44 years the government calculated weekly pay.27 From 1960 to 2007, the cost of raising a child from birth to age 18 went up 16 percent and in 2007 reached $207,800.28 Since the 1970s, young white men saw a 40 percent decline in income relative to their fathers and young black men 60 percent.29 During the past 35 years, the real-dollar cost of college increased by 1,000 percent,30 and since 2000, full-time workers ages 25 to 34 with only a bachelor’s degree saw a sharp 11 percent decline in real earnings, this a bigger pay drop, on a percentage basis, than peers with only an associate degree.31 In the late fall of 2009, over 26 million ex-workers were either unemployed, no longer looking for work, or settling for benefitless part-time work. Nearly one in four families had suffered a job loss over the past year. The unemployment rate was the highest in more than a quarter of a century.32 The proportion of the unemployed who had been out of work for over 26 weeks was the highest since World War II. Job seekers outnumbered openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking open positions in 2000.33 Only 46 percent of those ages 16 to 24 had jobs in September 2009, the lowest level since the government began counting in 1948. In other words, almost the entire highly vaunted employment growth “miracle” of the 1980s and 1990s had been undone. Over the next decade, we will need about 10 million new jobs just to replace losses from the current recession and an additional 10,000,000 more new jobs to keep up with population growth, all this requiring a growth rate hard to imagine our soon achieving. One expert forecasts that in 2014, the unemployment rate will still average 7.6 percent, while a second believes that the United States will not get back to a manageable 5 percent unemployment rate until late 2017.34 What job growth there is may come largely in low-wage occupations. Some experts worry aloud that steady jobs with good benefits are going
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the way of Ozzie and Harriet. Since the downturn began in 2008, more and more employers have reduced pay levels, bypassed raises, increased workers’ share of health care costs, and reduced employer contributions to retirement plans. As if this last blow wasn’t bad enough, while in 1940 there were 160 workers paying the tab for each worker collecting Social Security, by 2016 there will be only 3.3 workers and by 2034 only 2.1 workers. In May 2009, the government reported that the Social Security fund would be exhausted in 2037, four years earlier than it had forecast in 2008.35 Confronting all this, young people run the risk of confusing uncertainty and heartache with the whole of reality, especially as the mass media never tire of sensationalizing policy dilemmas and bad news of every stripe. Confusion can lead them to exaggerate the downside of events and prospects and thereby risk unnecessary demoralization, melancholy, and a costly paralysis of will and action: “Depression is fundamentally a failure of future consciousness; it is a giving up on the future—on the belief there is anything one can do about it to make it positive.”36 Tsvi Bisk, in his guest essay in chapter 6 of this volume, contends that “K–12 must educate . . . for hopeful optimism without which life is not worth living.” EdF can help remedy this situation by artfully directing student attention to spirit-raising future-shaping news commonly underplayed by news sources (who thereby unwittingly undercut tomorrow). One type of story takes note of antisexism progress made quietly off to the side, as for example, concerning women astronauts. When a man first walked on the moon in 1969, women were still denied admission into NASA’s astronaut program. This did not get changed until 1978, and it was not until 1983 that the first woman soared into space. Since then, over three dozen women have flown on space shuttles, and 31 missions have had more than one woman—an impressive gain since the original gender-based denial. Little wonder some believe that “for women today, the sky is the limit.”37 Where saving lives is concerned, in 2009 the world achieved a significant milestone in the global effort to improve the chances of children surviving to their fifth birthdays. All sorts of combined efforts helped bring the number of deaths before age five to the lowest level (8.8 million) since records were first kept in 1960, or, 10,000 fewer children dying per day (400 children’s lives are saved every hour around the clock). Melinda Gates, a major benefactor, explains, “If we say as a world we care about saving children, and tackle the problem systematically, piece by piece, we can make progress, and it’s really important for people to know that.”38 In this same vein, EdF-guided students could usefully learn that synthetic biology, an astonishing cutting-edge effort to construct genes (and new forms of life from scratch) has now begun to alter for the better the world of medicine creation. It has already created a new treatment drug
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that reduces a $10 cost of treatment to less than one dollar for the world’s mostly poor 500 million malaria sufferers.39 Its understandably proud developer explains, “We have got to the point in human history where we simply do not have to accept what nature has given us.”40 Less dramatic but no less welcomed was the result of recent swine flu vaccine trials: “One shot and bingo, protection for a year.”41 While regrettable snafus in getting adequate supplies spread rapidly throughout the world warrant student analysis, so does the initial impressive development project. Likewise, overdue progress is being attained in one of science’s mostsought-after holy grails: making the world’s 160 million blind people see. Test subjects can have electrodes surgically planted in their eyes, a camera put on the bridge of the nose, and a video processor strapped to the waist. “Advances in technology, genetics, brain science, and biology are making a goal that seemed out of reach—restoring sight—more feasible.”42 EdF can highlight all such spirit-raising news and its links—sometimes less than obvious—to the K–12 world. For example, teachers could note that thanks to the accelerated achievement of lower-performing groups, the achievement gaps between more advantaged and disadvantaged students have narrowed in many instances in the past decade.43 Teachers could also salute bright new ways to learn “tough” subjects. In 2009, for example, 67 high schools nationwide that employed the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) had a 69 percent increase in advanced placement (AP) math, science, and English course enrollment. The number of passing scores increased by 51 percent, or nine times the average increase among schools without NMSI support. African American and Hispanic students passed 71 percent more AP exams, and girls passed 55 percent more than in matched non-NMSI schools. Since students who pass AP exams are three times more likely to earn a college degree, this is very good news indeed.44 Likewise, attention could go to an ongoing series of articles in the magazine Edutopia that focuses on high schools “whose successes offer new and multiple opportunities for breakthrough change in diverse districts throughout the nation.” In the December 2009 issue, the first article focused on YES Prep North Central, in Houston, Texas. Students “have committed themselves to achieving something few, if any, of their family members have dreamed of: They have pledged to graduate from this school, enroll in a four-year college, and earn a degree.” Their pledge is “changing the lives of families in Houston while slowly changing the future of public education in the nation’s fourth-largest city.”45 Now the challenge is to replicate such success nationally, and EdF-based publicity can help meet the challenge—even as it helps inspire hope in all students who hear or read this and comparable stories.
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SUMMARY In this unprecedented era of ours, one of a quantum sea change in reality, complete with jolting messy surprises ever more frequent and intense, EdF has a critical contribution to make. It can help school people trump some current school perplexities, help them employ novel future-shaping reform possibilities, help them bolster the life chances of non-college-attending youth, and help them lift the morale and hopes of young people. This last matter is far more important than it might at first appear, as we all think clearer and make better decisions when we are hopeful, when we believe that we can help make a finer future for ourselves and others: “Certain basic features of future consciousness—to have purpose in life and to experience one’s life as a growing transformation toward the positive—are correlated with human happiness . . . teaching optimism is teaching realism about the future.”46 EdF belongs center stage now—if, that is, we are serious about quickening the pace in developing K–12 schooling at once creative, effective, and empowering.
NOTES *Raymond P. Ewing, “The Future and You: An Address to High School Seniors,” World Future Society BULLETIN, May/June 1984, 29. 1. Madeline Levine, The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 224. 2. Katie Hafner, “Texting May Be Taking a Toll,” New York Times, May 26, 2009, 6. “The number of text messages transmitted in the United States grew by more than 80 percent over the 12 months ended in June, 2009.” Alex Mindlin, “Sending a Message, Again and Again,” New York Times, November 9, 2009, B-5. 3. Sherry Turkle, as heard on June 25, 2009, Here and Now radio show interview (http://www.hereandnow.org/2009/06/rundown625). 4. As cited anonymously in YES!, Spring 2009, 16. 5. Art Carey, “On Vacation, Rediscover the Bliss of Disconnecting,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 5, 2009, C-5. 6. Grace Rubenstein, “Laying New Track: Project Learning Speeds Reform in a Pennsylvania Railroad Town,” Edutopia, August 2009, 26. 7. Gordon L. Crovitz, “Information Overload? Relax,” Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2009, A-11. The writer quoted is Winifred Gallagher, and the words are from her book Rapt. 8. See also Sherry Turkle, Simulation and Its Discontents (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009). 9. As quoted in Hafner, “Texting May Be Taking a Toll,” 6.
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10. Ross Douthat, “Into the Fray: Mark Helprin Defends the Rights of Individual Creators against the Internet Culture,” New York Times Book Review, June 21, 2009, 13. 11. Miguel Helft, “We Rent Movies, so Why Not Textbooks?,” New York Times, July 5, 2009, BU-3. 12. Helpful here are closing recommendations in Bill Wasik, And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture (New York: Viking, 2009): “Most of what streams across Twitter is junk. One recent study concluded that 40 percent of the messages are ‘pointless babble.’” Daniel Lyons, “Don’t Tweet on Me,” Newsweek. com, September 28, 2009, 31. 13. Crovitz, “Information Overload?,” A-11. 14. George Ball, “A Garden in Every Backyard,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 3, 2009, A-19. Ball is the chairman of W. Atlee Burpees & Co., a seed supplier, and a past president of the American Horticultural Society (http://
[email protected]). See also http://www.nanofarming.wordpress.com. 15. Jack Healy, “Bought New Boxers Lately,” New York Times, September 27, 2009, WK-5. 16. Sarah Kershaw, “Deskbound: Romancing the Brick,” New York Times, August 27, 2009, E-1. 17. Editorial, “Where the Jobs Are,” New York Times, July 24, 2009, A-18. “A concerted effort must be made to improve the opportunities for workers in the type of low-wage jobs that are going to be the most plentiful for years to come.” 18. John A. Challenger, “Finding a Job in the 21st Century,” The Futurist, September– October 2009, 30. 19. Edward Gordon, “The Global Talent Crisis,” The Futurist, September-October 2009, 38. 20. Peter McPherson and David Shulenburger, “Yes, We Can Expand Access to Higher Education,” Wall Street Journal, June 20–21, 2009, A-11. 21. David L. Kirp, “College for the Few,” The American Prospect, December 2008, 41. This is a book review of Charles Murray, Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality (New York: Crown Forum, 2008). 22. Sean Cavanagh, “Schooling Pays Off, OECD Says,” Education Week, September 16, 2009, 5. “American students are asked to pay a greater amount—about $90,000, in direct costs and in indirect costs, such as lost earnings—than students in any other OECD country.” 23. Paul Krugman, “Cassandras of Climate,” New York Times, September 28, 2009, A-21. “Climate scientists have, en masse, become Cassandras—gifted with the ability to prophesy future disasters, but cursed with the inability to get anyone to believe them.” 24. Frank Rich, “Obama’s Squandered Summer,” New York Times, September 13, 2009, 14-WK. 25. Erik Robelen, “Early Education Returns to Policy Spotlight,” Education Week, September 23, 2009, 1. “The number of Americans who lived in households that lacked consistent access to adequate food soared last year to 49 million, the highest since the government began tracking what it calls ‘food insecurity’ 14 years ago.” Jason DeParle, “49 Million Americans Report a Lack of Food,” New York Times, November 17, 2009, A-14.
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26. Jonathan V. Last, “Duggar Economics: The Costs of 19 Kids,” Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2009, W-13. Nearly 35 percent of African American children were living in poverty in 2009: “The unemployment crisis is pushing us toward a point in the coming year where more than half of all black children will be poor.” Bob Herbert, “A Word, Mr. President,” New York Times, November 10, 2009, A-31. 27. Sudeep Reddy, “It Will Be Years before Lost Jobs Return—and Many Never Will,” Wall Street Journal, October 5, 2009, A-2. See also Editorial, “A Long Way Down,” New York Times, September 16, 2009, A-26. On weekly pay, see Louis Uchitelle, “Still on the Job, but Making Only Half as Much,” New York Times, October 14, 2009, A-20. 28. Last, “Duggar Economics,” W-13. 29. Demographer Phillip Longman, as cited in Last, “Duggar Economics,” W-13. 30. Michael Mandel, “College: Rising Costs, Diminishing Returns,” BusinessWeek, September 28, 2009, 20. 31. Adrian Slywotzky, “How Science Can Create Millions of New Jobs,” BusinessWeek, September 7, 2009, 37. See also Conor Dougherty, “The Long Slog: Out of Work, Out of Hope,” Wall Street Journal, September 25, 2009, A-1; Peter S. Goodman, “U.S. Job Seekers Exceed Openings by Record Ratio,” New York Times, September 27, 2009, 1, and Bob Herbert, “Does Obama Get It?,” New York Times, October 6, 2009, A-27. 32. Bob Herbert, “A Scary Reality,” New York Times, August 11, 2009, A-21. “Young workers, especially, are hurting, which diminishes the prospects for the American family.” 33. Bob Herbert, “A World of Hurt.” New York Times, September 15, 2009. A27. “Those are some of the official statistics. The reality is much worse.” On youth unemployment, see Peter Coy, “The Lost Generation,” BusinessWeek, October 19, 2009, 33. “The unemployment crises among the young is not as dramatic as the financial crisis of a year ago. But it may turn out to have longer-lasting effects.” 34. The first expert is the HIS Global Insight firm, as cited in Robert J. Samuelson, “The Great Jobs Question: What If They Don’t Come Back?,” Newsweek.com, September 4, 2009, 20. The second expert is Reddy, “It Will Be Years before Lost Jobs Return,” A-2. See also Phil Izzo, “Scarred Job Market in Slow Recovery,” Wall Street Journal, October 9, 2009, A-2. “On average, the economists don’t expect unemployment to fall below 6% until 2013.” 35. On cutback in work rewards, see Phred Dvorak and Scott Thurm, “Slum Prods Firms to Seek New Compact with Workers,” Wall Street Journal, October 19, 2009, A-1, A-19. The Social Security Administration, as cited in Herbert, “A World of Hurt,” A-27. See also Ellen E. Schultz, “Pay of Top Earners Erodes Social Security,” Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2009, C-4. 36. Tom Lombardo, “Understanding and Teaching Future Consciousness,” On the Horizon 17, no. 2 (2009): 88. For a scathing attack on the bogus optimism business, see Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009). 37. Beverly Wettenstein, “Letter to the Editor,” New York Times, July 21, 2009, D-4. An effort is under way to end the current ban on allowing women to serve on submarines. Anonymous, “A Call to Allow Women to Serve on Submarines,” New
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York Times, September 27, 2009, 19. “Women now account for about 15 percent of the more than 336,000 members of the Navy, and can serve on its surface ships.” 38. As quoted in Celia W. Dugger, “Global Number of Early Childhood Deaths Falls below 9 Million for First Time,” New York Times, September 10, 2009, A-6. See also Nicholas D. Kristof, “Would You Let This Girl Drown?,” New York Times, July 9, 2009, A-25. 39. Michael Specter, “A Life of Its Own,” The New Yorker, September 28, 2009, 58. 40. Jay Keasling, professor of biochemical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, as quoted in Specter, “A Life of Its Own,” 58. 41. Donald G. McNeil Jr., “If Aids Went the Way of Smallpox,” New York Times, September 27, 2009, WK-4. See also Gautam Naik, “Vaccine Shows Promise in Preventing HIV Infection,” Wall Street Journal, September 25, 2009, A-5. 42. Pam Belluck, “A Burst of Technology, Helping the Blind to See,” New York Times, September 27, 2009, 26. 43. Stephen Sawchuk, “Achievement Gaps Continue to Narrow, Report Says,” Education Week, October 7, 2009, 6. “A trend that appears to have been bolstered in the 1990s by the standards-based reform movement.” 44. Ad (donated by ExxonMobil to the National Math and Science Initiative), “Investing in Success: NMSI Delivers Results for American Students,” Wall Street Journal, September 10, 2009, A-29. 45. David Markus, “Up Front: Get on the Bus,” Edutopia, December 2009/January 2010, 5. See also Grace Rubenstein, “Whatever It Takes,” Edutopia, December 2009/January 2010, 20–29. 46. Lombardo, “Understanding and Teaching Future Consciousness,” 90–91.
Dynamic Encounter—2008–2020: The Venerable Classroom Meets Four Irresistible Forces of Change David Pearce Snyder
Those who despair over the failure of a quarter of a century of attempted education reform to produce any significant improvement in either school performance or student achievement should reflect on the current debate over national health insurance reform, which was originally proposed in 1934. Large systems are inherently stable; their momentum propels them into the future largely unaffected by all but the most powerful outside influences. The U.S. health care and education “industries” are clearly very large systems, representing, respectively, one-sixth and one-eighth of the American economy. National efforts to reform and improve public schools over the past 25 years, while noteworthy, were scarcely powerful enough to overcome education’s inertial disinclination to change.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FUTURE OF K–12 EDUCATION Since 1983, there have been five national initiatives intended to improve the performance of America’s schools. The Carnegie Endowment report A Nation at Risk (1983) warned that diminishing student test scores and degraded K–12 curricula presaged a nation drowning “in a sea of mediocrity.” The report urged educators to adopt and enforce higher standards, which provoked a wide array of innovations, ranging from the adoption of advanced placement courses to the pursuit of back-tobasics programs. This “scattergun” approach to educational reform produced 17
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only incremental improvements in student achievement and no significant changes to the K–12 curriculum content or the delivery of that content. The second national initiative to reform U.S. public schools came in 1991, with the U.S. Education Secretary’s Commission to Achieve Necessary Skills (SCANS). While the Carnegie report offered little in the way of detailed recommendations, SCANS included a list of 30,000 specific skills, thinking abilities, personal qualities, and workplace competencies. Thousands of employers endorsed the SCANS curriculum, and thousands of school districts adopted it in spite of the fact that it was patently unachievable. Ten years after that, the school reform pendulum had swung to the opposite extreme with a third national educational reform initiative, No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2001), which focused the entire public school enterprise on successfully teaching the early industrial basics: reading, writing, and math. Both the NCLB initiative and its resulting impact on school performance/ student achievement have been controversial from the outset and remain so today. There is, however, widespread agreement that the resulting establishment of a universal, digitized database for tracking and assessing student, teacher, and school outcomes is a potentially game-changing reality for the future of schools in America. Meanwhile, employers of high-skill workers—along with academia—became increasingly uneasy about the “low bar” that NCLB had set for the nation’s K–12 students. As America moved further into the information age—where high-tech employment is expected to abound in biomedicine, nanomanufacturing, robotics, and so on—it has increasingly been asserted that most good jobs in the future will require a postsecondary education. In consonance with those expectations, the U.S. Department of Education launched the fourth nationwide school reform initiative of the past five years: the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce (CSAW, 2006). The new commission’s vision for the future of U.S. education is ambitious. The initial CSAW report urged that two years of postsecondary schooling be added to the nation’s K–12 systems by incorporating local community colleges into a K–14 program. The long-term objective of the commission’s agenda is to provide all 19-year-olds with associate degrees within 10 years while preparing 60 percent of all graduates for baccalaureate programs. The CSAW report, published while the nation’s schools were still struggling to meet the stringent (if modest) short-term requirements of NCLB, has had little impact on the K–12 system or on the public’s expectations for the future of public education. In fact, given the dramatic disparity between the rudimentary goals of NCLB and the grandiose vision of CSAW, the verbalization of the commission’s acronym—“seesaw”—has given rise to some wry comments from the nation’s educators.
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While the higher-education establishment has, not surprisingly, embraced the CSAW vision of the future, the nation’s demographers have not. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that 10 years from now, only one-third of all jobs in America will require a postsecondary degree. On the other hand, workplace studies suggest that within 10 years, essentially all employees will need a new set of skills that are currently not covered by either K–12 or postsecondary curricula. These “higher-order cognitive skills” are the focus of the newest national school reform initiative, which is embodied in the “21st Century Skills Incentive Fund Act” (S. 1483), currently pending in Congress. Based on job content analyses conducted by a partnership of academics and high-tech employers, the new universal workplace skills set includes analytical thinking/problem solving, creativity, teamwork/collegiality, communications, self-directed learning, and cybernautics. The current legislation reflects an entirely new approach to educational reform. Rather than simply exhorting educators to do a better job of what they’re already doing, the new act will offer local school districts funding to invent ways to teach an entirely new set of skills. Moreover, many of these skills involve learning dynamic processes rather than memorizing rote content. But processes are best learned experientially—in context—rather than in the passive classroom setting that is the predominant instructional mode employed by contemporary K–12 education. In light of this misalignment between twenty-first-century skills and 20th twentieth-century instructional methods, it is not at all clear that public schools will be motivated to innovate by the financial “carrot” offered by the 21st Century Skills Incentive Fund.
THE CLASSROOM-BASED SCHOOL: AN IMMOVABLE OBJECT Teacher-mediated classroom instruction is a truly venerable social technology that was invented independently by both the Sumerians and the Chinese around 1500 BCE. While other modes of instruction—like tutelage and apprenticeship—were the most common means of formal learning for thousands of years, the need to provide entire populations with basic literacy and numeracy during the industrial age has led teacher-mediated classroom instruction to become the world’s dominant educational delivery system: from the one-room school to the 1,000-seat university lecture hall. Classroom-based educational systems have proven remarkably resistant to change. During the past half century, for example, scholarly research has produced considerable evidence showing that between one-third and one-half of the general population—including over half of all males—learn most efficiently through tactilekinesthetic experience rather than in a passive classroom setting.
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Unable to provide students with such alternative learning experiences, our classroom-based school systems have essentially ignored the research on learning styles. An even more striking example of the classroom as an immutable fixture of education has been the inability of schools to make productive use of our increasingly powerful information technologies (IT) in spite of billions of dollars spent on digital instructional systems. A decade before there was a U.S. Department of Education (1981), the federal government was spending hundreds of millions of dollars (big money in the 1970s) to develop and test electronic instructional technology. One of the world’s first computer learning systems, Plato, was funded by the National Science Foundation, which more famously underwrote the development of the Internet as a tool for higher education. When the first personal computers appeared in the consumer marketplace (also 1981), the media proclaimed that their first widespread use would be in education. In the 30 years that have followed, increasingly sophisticated IT has been applied to classroom-based schools like a veneer, or a layer of wallpaper. For a multitude of reasons—from a lack of funds to a lack of imagination—educators have been unable to use IT to increase overall school productivity or improve student achievement. In fairness to the nation’s educators, the private sector wasn’t able to get significantly improved productivity out of the billions of dollars they invested in IT until the mid-1990s, when broadband transmission first permitted the Internet to send color, graphics, sound, and data sets. By providing an infrastructure—or “info-structure”—for the efficient compilation and distribution of knowledge and information, the Web enabled the U.S. economy to more than double its average productivity improvement rate—from 1.4 percent per annum (1970–1995) to 3.1 percent per annum (1995–2005). Productivity improvement rates in the education sector, however, have not risen since the introduction of the Web in spite of mounting evidence of the instructional efficiencies of online learning. Major employers like Black & Decker, Home Depot, McDonald’s, and the U.S. Justice Department, for example, have reported that interactive online learning, supported by teachers or mentors, cuts average worker learning time and costs by 40 percent to 50 percent while increasing student retention of content by 30 percent. By augmenting classroom instruction with iPod homework assignments, English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students at a New Jersey middle school were able to mainstream into English-only classes in less than half the time typically required by ESL class work alone. In 2006, a study by the Federation of American Scientists found that “computer games teach the skills that employers want: analytical thinking, team-building, multi-tasking and problem solving under duress. Electronic games could re-define education.” Electronic games will have limited opportunity to “redefine education” in today’s public schools as long as students in 17 states and most large
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school districts are banned from carrying or using any personal electronic communications devices. The technology is being prohibited because of its “distractive and disruptive potential.” The irony of this new “digital divide” has not been lost on the educational press, including one high school newspaper in California that editorialized that “some towns banned cars when they were first introduced because they would scare the horses. Are schools today banning smartphones and Blackberries from campus because they might scare the teachers?” Of course, information technology will disrupt classroom routine. IT will disrupt everything. We’re living through a genuine technoeconomic revolution. This is the kind of event to which historians have typically devoted whole books. A quarter of a century from now, scholars will recount the developments of the coming decade and describe how well (or how badly) the world’s most advanced and prosperous industrial economy and its principal institutions adapted to the new realities of the postindustrial age. In retrospect, today’s technology bans will almost certainly be seen as a last-ditch attempt to “circle the wagons” and maintain the teacher-mediated classroom as the timeless “immovable object” at the heart of education. Of course, in light of the classroom’s remarkable historic durability, it would be unreasonable not to expect the institution to make a spirited attempt to forestall the tide of technology. But for the defenders of traditional schools, the revolution is at hand.
FOUR IRRESISTIBLE FORCES FOR CHANGE Certainly, a 3,500-year-old universal social technology represents a great deal of long-term inertia. And any enterprise that employs millions of people, interacts directly with most American families, and maintains a $1 trillion infrastructure clearly possesses considerable short-term inertia. Under ordinary circumstances, inertia alone might conceivably permit today’s educational institutions to survive the coming onslaught of technology substantially intact. But our current circumstances are anything but ordinary. In the language of cosmology, the “immovable object” of traditional classroom-based schooling is about to have a “dynamic encounter” with four “irresistible forces” of change that will lead to the transformation of U.S. public education in less than a decade. A Rendezvous with Austerity Median household income in America fell during the years that followed the 2001 recession. In spite of this, however, household consumption and retail sales soared, rising from 67 percent to 72 percent of gross domestic product. Americans were able to “live beyond our means” because of access
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to cheap credit and suppressed tax rates. Now that the credit bubble has burst and tax rates have begun to return to their long-term norms, it is clear that U.S. consumers will emerge from this recession with 10 percent to 15 percent less disposable income than they had in the preceding decade. Meanwhile, the boom in home building and housing speculation made possible by the credit bubble has also come to an abrupt halt, and there has been a sharp reversal in the 40-year rise of home values in America. The price of an average U.S. home has fallen 15 percent, and real estate experts believe that it will take at least 10 years to recover the lost value. The price of commercial property has also begun to fall dramatically. The easy credit retail boom led to the “overstoring” of America, and industry experts project that over 150,000 retail outlets, 3,000 shopping centers and 3,000 auto dealers will have closed by the end of 2010. The general revenue base—property, sales, and income taxes—for state and local governments, including public education, is shrinking rapidly. Even revenue from casinos has fallen and is likely to remain down for the foreseeable future. The current recession is not just another periodic rotation of the business cycle; Americans are “downshifting” the consumer engine that has driven the U.S. economy during the past 10 years. This doesn’t simply mean that state and local revenue will be curtailed for the foreseeable future; the collapse of the credit bubble has eliminated $50 to $60 trillion from the world supply of investment capital. From now on, credit will be more expensive and harder to get, as underwriting standards are tightened for everyone (including school bonds). At the beginning of the Great Depression of the 1930s, President Roosevelt famously told the nation that “this generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny!” Today’s generation of Americans has a rendezvous with austerity—and so do our public institutions. Retailers are already trying to put a positive spin on austerity, with advertising slogans like “Frugal is the new cool!” For public institutions—including schools—the watchword will be an old standard: “Do more with less!” Peak Oil “Peak oil” is a short phrase that represents an enormously important and complex reality for which there is insufficient information to make a precise calculation. (In this respect, “peak oil” is very much like “global warming,” “evolution,” and “the big bang.”) Peak oil refers to that point in the future when long-term growth in the worldwide demand for petroleum exceeds the projected growth of the proven petroleum supply. When peak oil occurs, economists and commodity traders expect the price of oil to hyperinflate, increasing by 100 percent or more. Government
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regulators estimate that peak oil will not occur until 2020 at the earliest, while industry experts believe that it will not happen until 2050 to 2070. The spike in oil prices in 2008, however, suggested that we may be much closer to a peak oil “tipping point.” In April 2009, the International Energy Agency announced that worldwide energy demand actually reached unsustainable levels in 2008 and that we will return to peak oil pricing as soon as the global recession ends. This means that we are likely to see $100-per-barrel oil by the close of 2010 and $200-per-barrel by 2012 (get ready for $5.00-per-gallon gasoline). “Demography Is Destiny!” Philosopher Auguste Comte’s 1852 insight directs our attention to the fact that America’s changing demographics will confront the nation’s schools with three inevitable forces for change in the decade ahead: • While the numbers of U.S. K–12 students are currently projected to rise by 10 percent over the next decade, at recent growth rates, the numbers of K–12 faculty are expected to increase by only 7.6 percent. • Over 30 percent of all current K–12 employees—baby-boomer faculty, support staff, administrators, and so on—can be expected to retire between now and 2018. • The entry-level recruitment pool—19- to 34-year-olds—will be drawn largely from the low-birthrate years between the end of the baby boom (1964) and the beginning of the baby-boom “echo” (1988); this agegroup will shrink by 15 percent by 2018. In spite of lingering unemployment over the next five years, as baby-boomer retirements outpace recruitments, there will be growing shortages of all skilled workers in the United States—from pediatricians to plumbers— including 1 million teachers. One out of three faculty positions will be unfillable. Even if schools were fully funded, they would be unable to recruit enough qualified faculty to staff their classrooms at traditional teacher-to-student ratios. The Technological Imperative By banning students’ personal communication devices and rationing student access to IT, schools control the instructional uses of computers and the Web. But outside the artificial digital divide, the great majority of urban and suburban K–12 students possess one or more heavily used e-com devices. Traffic volumes on MySpace and Facebook reflect the start and end of the school day.
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Not only are K–12 students heavy users of social networks, but they also make extensive use of online groupware—including peer-to-peer file sharing, instant messaging, Twitter, blogs, and wikis. Nearly 90 percent of teenagers report having made use of Web search engines, and over 90 percent of teens report having played a video or computer game, two-thirds of them online. Most of American’s young people are “digital natives” who have, literally, grown up with personal computing and the Web, and they have an easy familiarity with IT. Most school faculty and administrators, on the other hand, are “digital immigrants” who have learned to work with IT and the Internet as adults. (Most educators have a passable facility with IT, although many could benefit from a course in “computing as a second language.”) In a very real sense, the digital divide is also a cultural divide, and the defenders of the traditional culture of teacher-mediated classroom-based education, crouched behind that digital divide, have begun to see unmistakable signs that the end is near: • Large-scale evaluations of electronic textbooks as a cost-saving initiative have begun in California after earlier, small-scale trials have proven successful. • While the Core Knowledge Foundation and others are waging a spirited defense of traditional, classroom-based industrial-era curricula, the promoters of the 21st Century Skills Incentive Fund Act are gaining ground in Congress and at the state and local levels, with growing support from major employers. • Not only have a growing number of pilot projects demonstrated the capacity on online groupware to teach many of the twenty-first-century skills sets, but a 2007 survey of the ed-tech industry by the New Media Consortium has also identified six currently booming Internet innovations that have “transformational potential for K–12 education,” including user-created content, social networking, Web-enabled cell phones, virtual worlds and simulations, new forms of online scholarship, multiplayer online games, and publications. The educational press—especially online—is filled with reports of the successful instructional use of these applications. Taken together, the multiplying array of engaging new electronic learning tools and the growing legions of cyber-savvy students and teachers clearly constitute irresistible forces for change in education. The nation’s schools, however, are preoccupied with the immediate financial exigencies of the recession, and most school leaders are inclined to argue for the need to postpone investments in new technology until the fiscal crisis has passed.
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America’s schools stand frozen like deer in the road of progress, immovable objects transfixed by the glare from the headlights of onrushing forces of change. And because those forces—austerity, demography, and technology—are as inevitable as they are irresistible, it is the immovable object—the teacher-mediated classroom—that will be forced to change, as the scenario in table 1.1 describes. Table 1.1. The Dynamic Encounter! An Instant PrePlay© of the Information Revolution in America’s Schools 2008 benchmark: 1 million K–12 students are enrolled in at least one online course. Irresistible External Forces
Consequences for K–12 Schools
2008—Peak oil fuel prices triple.
Schools cut/consolidate bus routes; 7% to 8% of school districts adopt four-day week.
2008–2009—Consumer credit bubble collapses, eliminating over $50 trillion from world capital markets.
Underwriting standards for lending tighten; cost of long-term government borrowing rises 1% to 2%, including school bonds.
2008–2009—Housing bubble collapses; local housing prices fall 15% to 35%.
Residential home values fall nationwide by an average of 20%, eroding local school tax bases.
2008/2009—Recession (part 1) cuts U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) and personal income by 10% and produces double-digit unemployment.
Schools in 37 states experience budget and/or staff cuts.
2009/2010—Commercial credit bubble collapses, eliminating another $10 trillion to $15 trillion from global capital supply.
Cost of long-term government borrowing rises an additional 1%.
2009/2010—Commercial real estate bubble collapses, 3,000 shopping centers and 3,000 auto dealers close; hundreds of local banks fail.
Commercial property values fall by 20% to 30%, further reducing local tax bases; 15% of schools adopt four-day week.
2010–2011—To curb spread of swine flu, the Centers for Disease Control recommend adoption of telecommuting and distance learning.
Schools drop student personal technology bans and begin to augment classroom learning with iPod-based homework.
2010/2011—Recession (part 2) further cuts GDP and personal income by
As 2009 stimulus spending expires, all school districts experience funding and
Table 1.1. (continued ) 2008 benchmark: 1 million K–12 students are enrolled in at least one online course. 5%; double-digit employment continues.
staff cuts; 20% of schools adopt fourday week.
2010/2011—Displaced white-collar workers flood labor markets and seek career retraining.
A growing share of new teachers are Web-savvy mature adults, reskilled from previous careers.
2010/2011—Information technology (IT) manufacturers migrate their desktop and laptop applications to netbooks, smartphones, and PDAs.
To cut costs, schools accelerate adoption of online textbooks, and begin to equip students with iPods and netbooks.
2011—Congress passes 21st Century Skills Incentive Act to promote teaching of higher-order cognitive skills.
Schools make growing use of projectbased learning to teach higher-order cognitive skills, using uncertified instructors, teacher aides, and employer-supplied mentors.
2012—Peak oil returns permanently; gas and diesel cost over $4.00 per gallon.
Over 25% of schools adopt four-day weeks; growing numbers of students take remedial, advanced placement, and locally unavailable courses online.
2012 benchmark: 8 million K–12 students are enrolled in at least one online course. 2013—Conversational computers make mass-market debut in children’s toys.
Preschoolers begin to learn grammar, spelling and arithmetic from their “smart” toys.
2013—Lingering structural unemployment and depressed property values continue to constrain state and local revenues in spite of growing demands for public services.
Enrollment grows twice as fast as school budgets; middle and high school students assigned more online learning activities, especially group projects, simulations, and blogs. Some schools begin to experiment with three-day weeks for grades 6 to 12.
2014—Federally subsidized broadband access program is complete; 100% of U.S. schools and 97% of all students’ homes have low-cost access to highspeed Internet services.
Universal Web access eliminates final administrative constraint on integrating general class work with online learning; IT firms help cash-strapped schools underwrite massive purchase of personal “smartpads” for all students.
Table 1.1. (continued ) 2012 benchmark: 8 million K–12 students are enrolled in at least one online course. 2015—Worldwide economic recovery gains traction; price of fuel doubles to over $8.00 per gallon.
Over one-third of schools adopt fourday week; students are increasingly assigned online learning activities during non–school days.
2015—Older “boomers” (60 to 70 years old) begin to retire in large numbers.
Nearly 20% of faculty are “digital natives” who freely employ online content as a core teaching resource, and use online processes as their primary instructional tools.
2015—All U.S. K–12 students are assigned a personal, password-protected school Web page, funded by the U.S. Department of Education.
Students begin to receive continuous diagnostic feedback regarding their academic progress, plus remedial assignments—tutoring, alternative curricula and teaching modes, and so on.
2015—Publishing companies cease printing hard-copy textbooks.
Vendors offer a cornucopia of new edtech products and services; student performance measurement systems created for the No Child Left Behind Act permit schools to quickly identify most effective innovations.
2015–2017—Conversational computing gets serious; growing variety of chatty “cybertutors” marketed as personal student study aids.
Cybertutors, first used by elementary students, quickly gain popularity with middle and high school students as remedial instructors and guides to online learning.
2016 benchmark: 25 million K–12 students are enrolled in at least one online course. 2016—Global consortium of universities create system (EcoCollect.net) to gather real-time data on local ecological phenomena via smart phones.
Middle and high school students are recruited as citizen scientists to report on local developments regarding flora, fauna, weather, and the physical environment.
2016—U.S. economic growth revives as several high-tech industries reach marketplace maturity, fueling increased employment.
Schools face increased competition for qualified recruits to replace retiring boomers, especially in science, technology, and math.
Table 1.1. (continued ) 2016 benchmark: 25 million K–12 students are enrolled in at least one online course. 2017—Personal cyberassistants with in-depth subject matter expertise introduced; conversational cyberassistants first marketed to professional practitioners: doctors and nurses, scientists, engineers, lawyers, architects, and accountants.
Professional cyberassistants quickly migrate from the workplace to postsecondary education, where they are used by students and faculty. Success of these expert cybertutors helps authoritative education regain some of the stature lost to online sources— especially user-created content and peer social networks.
2018—To increase the supply of qualified entry-level workers, growing numbers of employers collaborate with local schools to use internships and simulated online experiences to promote the learning of twenty-first-century skills.
Student performance data demonstrates the superior capacity of experiential learning—both real and virtual—to teach students both basic cognitive skills and higher-order twenty-firstcentury skills. Already in growing use throughout K–12, online projects, virtual worlds, and multiplayer games rapidly become a primary source of student learning in middle and high school.
2019—Falling IT costs allow vendors to endow cyberassistants and cybertutors with personalities. Users can choose from a variety of these “personologies,” including avatars of famous people: movie and TV stars, historic figures, and cartoon characters.
As online experiential learning supplants textbooks, cybertutors begin to supplant teachers as the principal mediators of learning. Collective classroom activities make up less than half of middle and high school learning hours, even for students who still attend school five days a week.
2020—The baby-boom echo pours into the workplace, rapidly expanding the supply of digital natives who have grown up in cyberspace—where networking and game playing are the norm and chatty, intelligent personologies are a familiar presence.
Over half of all K–12 faculty are now digital natives who are comfortable teaching via the Internet; they now dominate public school culture, along with the digital immigrants who have embraced the new tools and new curriculum. Basic cognitive skills are no longer taught in separate courses but are mastered by most students as a side benefit of the experiential online learning of higher-order skills. Faculty do little traditional classroom teaching, spending most of their time designing lesson plans, overseeing student progress based on continuous performance data, and offering students individually tailored guidance.
2020 benchmark: Over 45 million K–12 students are enrolled in at least one online course
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America’s schools are about to make a historic transition from teachermediated classroom instruction to teacher-orchestrated online learning. In its realization, this revolutionary transformation will be marked by audacious acts of local leadership—by teachers, administrators, and school boards—who see the inevitable future in the changing world around them. Through the coming years of austerity, rising fixed costs, and a shrinking supply of traditionally skilled teachers, these local leaders will realize that the only way for their classes, their schools, or their districts to move forward will be to make a dramatic break with the past. The irresistible forces described here will occur. Most of the projected consequences for schools are equally likely to take place. In the coming transformation of K–12 education, the ultimate outcome of the struggle between immovable tradition and purposeful innovation is not in doubt. We know who will “win the war.” But we do not yet know when and where the important battles will be fought. We do not know who the individual heroes will be—those who will have the audacity to pursue great change in a time of great adversity. By 2020, their names will be known, and they will be celebrated as the leaders of the information revolution in America’s schools.
Part II IMPLEMENTING EDUCATIONAL FUTURISTICS
The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen. —Frank Lloyd Wright*
Three chapters in this part explore action steps for developing a school’s educational futuristics (EdF) program. Chapter 2, “Can-Do Tools,” explores five “setup” tools: 1) a framework (a five-year plan), 2) an operating mechanism (a Futures Club or Futures Committee), 3) a search device (Appreciative Inquiry), 4) an enrolling/empowering device (storytelling), and 5) a framing device (paradigm-shift terminology). Together, they may help you bring your class, school, or district into an EdF-aided educational culture of reward. Chapter 3, “Getting Educational Futuristics Started,” offers 12 introductory projects easily customized for different grade levels (many others can be found in my 2008 volume and more demanding ones in the chapter that follows this one). The first three projects have students learn the difference between scams and worthwhile forecasting efforts, the value of future-shaping lives as role models, and the sorts of significant future-shaping changes that began the year of their birth. The next nine projects involve a wide array of forecast methods (solid, pop culture, film, bodybuilding, simulation, social, green, information technology, and “way out”). Chapter 4, “Moving Educational Futuristics Along,” explores 12 classroom projects a bit more challenging than those in chapter 3. It begins by 31
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assessing forecast impacts and moves next to strengths and also limitations. The chapter closes by explaining nine varieties of long-range forecasting— company, textbook, place based, seer, overseas, “what-if,” dire, disarmament, and singularity—each worth attention in an EdF-guided curriculum. Taken in combination with additional process advice in chapter 8 and in guest essays throughout, an empowering formula can be found here for making overdue progress in providing every child with the schooling we want for our own.
NOTE *John Cook, ed., The Book of Positive Quotations (New York: Gramercy, 1993), 260.
2 Can-Do Tools
It is possible to do good. . . . Doing good isn’t very hard. It’s just doing a lot of good that is very hard. —Irving Kristol*
Changes of substantial magnitude have always occurred in K–12 schooling, rumor to the contrary and not withstanding. Schooling in our young, brash, and vibrant country has always been a work in process and should remain so indefinitely, the better to have it both an anticipatory as well as a reactive institution. In the early 1900s, for example, nearly half of all children in the United States attended one of over 200,000 single-teacher one-room schoolhouses. Rural admirers valued their local autonomy, group learning, peer tutoring, and “open” classrooms. By 1960, however, only 1 percent of youngsters went to “little red schoolhouses.” Urban power holders favored consolidation, the professionalization of teaching, and the (alleged) cost savings possible from large-sized centralized and bureaucratized facilities.1 Large-scale change in K–12 schooling is a proud part of the record. Accordingly, we can consider using five tools to promote the introduction and spread of educational futuristics (EdF): 1) a framework (a five-year plan), 2) an operating mechanism (a Futures Club or Futures Committee), 3) a research method (Appreciative Inquiry), 4) an enrolling/empowering device (storytelling), and 5) a framing device (paradigm-shift terminology). Together, these tools may help us get there from here—that is, from K–12 schools that now pay negligible attention to the future to successors 33
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that gain significantly from EdF strengths. As before what follows below is not a “one-size-fits-all” matter; rather, as in the case of every project in this book, the “blueprint” warrants creative and diplomatic adaptation to circumstances.
FIVE-YEAR PLAN Drawing up a provisional five-year plan involves both “imaging” desired developments and also lending useful detail. It can help guide choices and be there to fall back on when confusion arises, as is common in the maiden years of a long-term venture. New members of an EdF-promotion cadre will find it helpful, as it enables them to vicariously experience what the pioneers envisioned next and prepare to make their own contribution. First Year In the first year of the plan, a charismatic forward-looking natural leader could pull together a small informal cadre from among school administrators, teachers, office workers, support personnel, students, parents, and board members. They could opt to form a Futures Club, much like others already part of the school scene, or create a Futures Committee embedded from the start in the administrative framework of the school, Either form (club or committee) should take full advantage of having a very attractive website and instant-messaging options, leaving to small subcommittees the holding of infrequent in-person meetings. Alert to adapt “best practices” from elsewhere (e.g., as highlighted in every issue of the magazine Edutopia), the organization should produce rewarding initiatives and gain renown for fast-track achievements. Late in its first year, the organization might sponsor lunch-hour discussions and occasional evening forums about EdF. Guests could help explain gains possible from EdF applications across the board—gains for every constituency and especially gains in subject matter that show up later in improved test scores. A monthly column about the campaign could be offered to the student newspaper and/or school website. A representation could be made to student government and the local school board to earn early “buy-in.” Second Year The Futures Club or Futures Committee could enlist a school’s art resources (teachers, students, extracurricula clubs, community artists, and
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so on) and others to help create and endlessly update a future-oriented ambiance. The school grounds, for example, could feature a miniature wind turbine, vegetable gardens, and native plants, and school building rooftops could have a shiny plasticized heat-rejecting white covering and/or solar panels. Likewise, futuristic artwork could go into the school entrance foyer (which gives visitors a first and lasting impression), the auditorium, cafeteria, gym, and hallways, to say nothing of K–12 homerooms (the future themes of which each new class could alter). As the year progressed, a wide variety of student clubs could be developed, each with a pronounced futures emphasis. The 2008 volume, for example, details plans for special-interest clubs devoted to tomorrow’s arts, cars, computers, dance, environment, film, investments, nanotechnology, robotics, science, science fiction, sports, and video games—a list limited only by the interests of the student body (as usefully enriched by EdF enthusiasts). A Future Arts Club, for example, could highlight art formed by applying the tools of nanotechnology to control matter at a molecular level. This enables over 25 scientists-turned-artists to create nanosculptures, as showcased at the Web-based Nanotechnology Art Gallery and viewable only through microscopes.2 A Video Games Club could help students learn economics through use of “Dawn of Discovery,” a highly praised 2009 real-time strategy game. It has a player manage an empire’s growing commercial power and appetite even while defeating an array of bad guys. A Science-Fiction Club could promote imaginative writing, for, as Gupta’s essay in chapter 8 explains, young wannabe writers welcome writing outlets. It could also review stories told in the new format—“vooks”—a combination of text, videos, and Web features. A Futures Film Club could feature panelists (students, teachers, and area film buffs) discussing relevant documentaries, as on space travel, and fictional works (28 of which are cited on page 87 in the 2008 volume, a list that should now also include Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Moon, Wall-E, and Surrogates). And a New Tech Club could help field-test intriguing new gadgets seeking large-scale school utilization, such as the tablet expected in 2010 that will combine elements of the iPhone, an e-book, and laptops. Third Year The entire school could vote to focus on a single futures topic for an entire school year, the better to enjoy synergies possible from such collaboration. The Futures Club or Futures Committee could use surveys and
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interviews to continuously assess its efforts, monitor changing school realities, and help ensure steady advances of the infusion process. Youngsters of all ages in a single school building could be drawn into a schoolwide, yearlong collaborative focus on one overarching future-focused topic (and its past and present). Candidate topics could include climate change, environmental gains, healthier foods, globalism (pro and con), innovation aids, space adventures, sustainability gains, wellness, and so on. Every school major and homeroom would be expected to make a contribution to the focused learning of all, as would the different grade levels; General assemblies might be the forum for sharing lessons. A variation here could have a school focus on a different nation each year, especially any of those prominent in the news of the summer before the school year begins or well represented in the student body or school locale. Any resulting end-of-project displays in school buildings and community sites, along with media coverage, related field trips of participants, and the colorful like, should promote significant gains in everyone’s “futures I.Q.” Also in the third year, the Futures Club or Futures Committee could boldly tackle its own greatest vulnerability—namely, preserving its future. Inside reform efforts in K–12 settings are undermined by the sharp break of summer recess and high turnover in the ranks as newbies and older students go elsewhere. In addition, they are subject to vagaries of support from new principals, superintendents, school board leaders, and so on. Over time, enthusiasts run a high risk of burnout and “reform fatigue.” Forewarned, a Futures Club or Futures Committee can mentor prospective officers and endlessly recruit new members, modeling thereby another strength of applied forecasting. Fourth Year Once every three years, the school could sponsor a weekend-long Futures Fair, modeled on standard science fairs but a lot less formal and a lot more fun. Complete with colorful, interactive, and educational booths operated by all grade levels and every academic major, along with area businesses, nongovernmental organizations, and others, the fair would diplomatically demonstrate the immediate and long-term value of EdF. Designed in large part to express and share appreciation for EdF-guided lessons learned in school, a Futures Fair should boost the vision that attendees take away of reform possibilities as well as a sobering understanding of preventable threats to tomorrow. Held over a three-day weekend, it could attract admiring area residents, families of students, and (envious) delegations from nearby schools. This wide-ranging effort to help brand
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the premises as decidedly profuture has value far beyond its immediate occurrence. Also in the fourth year, a diplomatic effort could be made to get teachers to tweak courses available for EdF ideas. Typical is one often called “Financial Literacy,” a popular way to provide exposure to practical economic matters (choosing the best credit card, creating a budget and keeping to it, reading a lease, and so on). EdF would also call attention to future-shaping options like membership in consumer advocate groups, participation in consumer cooperatives, employment in firms run as employee stock ownership plans, membership in progressive labor unions or professional associations, and entrepreneurship as a career choice. In this way, a course whose fundamentals accommodate the status quo would be enriched by inclusion of creative possibilities for dramatically improving reality. Fifth Year The Futures Club or Futures Committee could help design a reward framework by which teachers who add EdF efforts to an already heavy workload get something in return of real value to themselves. Not to be crass about it, this could otherwise prove the Achilles’ heel of EdF campaigns. It is natural and reasonable to expect personal gain—beyond that of a psychic variety—for undertaking new challenges, as in infusing one’s teaching with futuristic ideas. The Futures Club or Futures Committee could explore with school administrators the creation of such rewards as small financial grants for course EdF upgrades, reduced course loads for making such effort, or special commendation for one’s personnel file. Unless and until the power of material rewards is honestly addressed, a pro-EdF campaign is weaker than desirable. A comparably sticky matter, as it also involves substantial cash expenses, is that of EdF-guided field trips. Locations are identified in the 2008 volume (seven in the United States on page 104 and 18 overseas on page 105), with more coming to light all the time. Typical of those that beckon in the United States is Arcosanti, a futuristic city long under construction near Phoenix, Arizona. Students could also learn much at the most visited of all the buildings on the Mall in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. In addition, every two years the Department of Energy sponsors a Solar Decathlon on the Mall. Between October 9 and 18, 2009, teams from 20 colleges and universities around the world built and showcased their Zero Energy House, a livable habitat that produced as much energy from solar and wind as its human dwellers consumed. As college student builders serve as guides, this would seem an especially apt site for an EdF-sponsored field trip (see http://www.solardecathlon.org/for_teachers.cfm).
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Overseas sites that could be visited virtually via the Web include the European Union Headquarters in Brussels; Hydropolis, the world’s first underwater hotel (Dubai, United Arab Emirates); Icelandic thermal heat plants; the Museum of Terror (Budapest, Hungary), the Science Center (Osaka, Japan); the Museum of Human Rights (Osaka); the Museum of Emerging Technology (Tokyo, Japan); the Hiroshima Peace Museum (Hiroshima, Japan); and many others. Finally, once part of the scene, EdF can be carefully and sensitively drawn on to help with the wide range of challenges noted in the guest essay by Joseph Coates in chapter 7—underutilization of the multiple intelligence insights coming out of Howard Gardner’s work, neglect of youngsters with IQs of 140 and higher, underutilization of vocational education possibilities, neglect of straightforward sexual education, and so on—all such matters being “well beyond the trivial fix.”
FUTURES CLUB OR FUTURES COMMITTEE Naturally, there is much more to the idea of a Futures Club or Futures Committee, and an entire chapter in the 2008 volume is devoted to detailing organization realities. A case is made there for employing 12 guidelines: 1. Promote the widest possible diversity in membership, including members of every significant subculture in the school. 2. Invite student membership from the start. 3. For leaders, share power and responsibilities as a genuinely collaborative effort. 4. Meet whenever possible in cyberspace. 5. Survey the diverse uses being made of futuristics (by whatever name) in the target area and keep the survey current. 6. Using Appreciative Inquiry, clarify the group’s vision. 7. Prepare to fight for and also defend principle. 8. Prepare to provide a wide range of future-focused forums strengthened by fresh information, fair-mindedness, and ethical rigor. 9. Prepare to recommend products and services that advance your vision of a preferred future. 10. Avoid offering forecasts, as this is best left to professionals. 11. Prepare to mentor colleagues in futuristics. 12. Prepare to extend services far beyond original offerings. This list is by no means complete, but it can serve as a constructive set of parameters. It points up possibilities, notes some points of caution, and should keep the organization from being blindsided.
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APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY As for assuring a sound “takeoff” foundation in knowledge of the scene, a valuable research tool gaining more such use all the time is known as Appreciative Inquiry. Explained in useful detail on websites of that same name, it will enable promoters of either a Futures Club or a Futures Committee to focus their cadre of supporters on the best in people, in their new organization, and in the world around them (K–12 and more). Users employ a field-proven questioning technique that asks everyone what they regard as the strengths of the venture, especially what they envision as possible futures for the venture. Answers are used to strengthen the venture’s capability to apprehend, anticipate, and improve its potential. This tool, in short, focuses users on the bright side of matters. It rejects the traditional “problem-focused” approach in favor of identifying what is likely to work well for the new organization. Appreciative Inquiry emphasizes discovery, dream, and design rather than negation, criticism, and spiraling, paralyzing diagnosis.3
STORYTELLING Likewise, promoters of either a Futures Club or a Futures Committee may want to employ storytelling, a vastly undervalued yet extraordinarily powerful tool. Well suited for catalyzing action and change, it can help in the effort to “build a lively, energetic coalition of forces that sees and creates the future . . . [people] who see themselves as creating that vision.”4 However, it can do so only if it is taken seriously, as it has its own proven methods and guidelines; for example, a story must epitomize or embody the change idea, almost like a premonition of what the future will be like. Employed artfully, storytelling can enable founding members of a Futures Club or Futures Committee to “surmount a humdrum world where everything makes sense and is logical, and get to that realm where deeper meaning is revealed.”5 Empowered by this emotional and cognitive passage, founders should be able to more readily draw others to the banner.
CAUTIONARY NOTE Getting EdF into school systems and school buildings is challenging, as much combines to protect the status quo, discourage would-be change agents, and block many pro-change steps. EdF is accurately recognized from
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the outset as a “disturbing social technology,” one whose modus operandi would question everything in the service of helping youngsters secure a new futures-oriented education. EdF detractors, mired as they are in “presentism,” ought not be underestimated, but neither should they be acceded to, as they are profoundly misguided in their negative assessment of EdF and cannot be ceded the field. Formidable opposition, especially as it can be anticipated, can probably be thwarted, provided, that is, that nothing is attempted that is patently unachievable or suggests too grandiose a vision. Employ of EdF draws users away from confrontation in favor of collaboration. It downplays blame placing in favor of alliance building. Activist and former White House “green” adviser Van Jones notes that yesteryear’s preoccupation with resentment and rage is not something “that has worked out well in terms of getting us the power we need to fix things.”6 Advocates, even though privately enthusiastic, must not appear irrationally exuberant or, worse yet, obstinately out to lunch. Instead, they should be tactful, patient, and keenly aware that EdF does best when perceived as a reasonable next stage than as a combative interloper: “The history of ideas is usually better understood as a process of incorporation and transformation rather than as a series of successive movements discrete and distinct from one another.”7
SUMMARY Creating a responsible operating unit—a Futures Club or Futures Committee—and charging it with implementing its own (endlessly reassessed) five-year plan—is one way to get started (others are limited only by your imagination). Employing tools like Appreciative Inquiry and (formal) storytelling can help, provided that users are bound together by a sense of mission, high mutual regard, and an energizing can-do spirit. Above all, since EdF cannot be advanced by rote or formula, zesty creativity is a top priority. Pioneers should never forget that there is much satisfaction and fun possible in the endeavor, and many are likely forever after to recall the distinct pleasure that comes from being among the first in a school to make a valued future-building difference.
NOTES *As quoted in William A. Schambra, “Charity Aimed at Change,” Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2009, A-15.
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1. Jonathan Zimmerman, Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). See also Bill Kauffman, “In One Room, Many Advantages,” Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2009, A-13: “The oneroom school shines in comparison with the over-large and remotely controlled warehouses in which too many children are educated today. Reading ‘Small Wonder,’ one wonders if Americans will ever tire of chasing after the gods of Progress and Bigness and rediscover the little things, red schoolhouses among them, that once gave us our souls.” 2. Gautam Naik, “Major Miniaturist Makes Art That Comes with Its Own Microscope,” Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2009, A-20. 3. David L. Cooperrider and Diana Whitney, A Positive Revolution in Change: Appreciative Inquiry (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2005), 245–63. 4. Stephen Denning, The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in KnowledgeEra Organizations (Boston: Butterworth/Heinemann, 2001), 191. 5. Denning, The Springboard, 198. 6. As quoted in Noelle Robbins, “Spinning Green Collar Gold,” Oakland Magazine, March/April 2009, 32. “If we come up with legislation that says everything needs to be green from top to bottom, it’s never going to pass.” 7. Andrew Delbanco, The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 112.
Scenario Planning: A Remarkable Tool for Transforming Our Worst Fears into Empowering Hopes for the Future Laura Lefkowits
The narratives of the world are without number . . . the narrative is present at all times, in all places, in all societies; the history of narrative begins with the history of mankind; there does not exist, and never has existed, a people without narratives. —Roland Barthes*
Stories shape us both personally and collectively. The way we describe events from the past, either in written form or orally, creates shared meaning among individuals and societies that strengthen our understanding of who we are, where we have come from, and why the world is as it is. In classrooms all across the world, stories are the fundamental building blocks of literacy, used by students every day as they learn to decode phonemes and to comprehend knowledge. As we prepare to survive and thrive in the future, stories have an important role to play as well. Stories of the future, or scenarios, are an innovative tool in helping educators and their students imagine and create the future world of teaching and learning that is most responsive to the challenges posed by today’s changing world.
ABOUT SCENARIO PLANNING A scenario is a story about the future that is based on data and trends and accounts for specific factors that influence the speed and direction of 43
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change. A scenario is not a prediction; it is a plausible future reality that has meaning for you and your future. Scenario-based planning is the process of creating stories about possible futures in order to anticipate and prepare for changes beyond your control. Scenario planning explores combinations of uncertainties about the future and their impacts on our lives, such as technology, global markets, and politics, and challenges our current mode of thinking, bringing new insights. It is collaborative, emphasizing teamwork and developing a unique way of thinking and problem solving that can have a truly transformative impact on individual participants and the organization as a whole. Think for a minute about the year 2025. How old will you be, where will you be working, and what will your world look like? As you think about these things, you may realize that you do not often think about your life a decade or more from now. In fact, most of us rarely think this far ahead. Instead, we go about our daily lives with an “official future” in our minds. This future is usually one that reassures us that very little is going to change—that things in the future will be more or less as they are today. But, as recent financial events have demonstrated, this comfortable “official future” can change “on a dime” and leave the unprepared scrambling to come to grips with the new reality. Scenario planning helps us confront our official futures before the shake-up occurs. And by doing so, we can anticipate multiple likely futures, prepare for those futures, and build a future we may not have imagined before.
SCENARIC THINKING Peter Schwartz, in his seminal work on scenario planning, The Art of the Long View,1 refers to scenarios as an imaginative leap into the future. Strategic planners sometimes reject scenarios because they deem them to be too qualitative to be used as serious planning tools. In this, Schwartz (and anyone who has spent time engaged in the art and science of scenario planning) would strongly disagree. In fact, scenarios are carefully researched stories, full of detail about current and emerging trends that add credibility and bring forth new understandings that would not be possible using quantitative methodologies alone. In fact, scenario planning helps develop a new skill that is uniquely suited to the tumultuous times in which we live. This skill, which could be called scenaric thinking, is important not just for strategic planners but also for anyone dealing with great uncertainty. And, these days, it seems, that is just about every single one of us.
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What are the characteristics of scenaric thinkers? First, scenaric thinkers assume that they live with great uncertainty. They are not deterministic. They do not see the world in black and white, nor do they make statements such as “the Cold War will never end,” “China could never threaten the economic position of the United States in the world,” or “Americans will never elect a black man as president.” Second, scenaric thinkers “reperceive” reality; this involves questioning their assumptions about the way the world works so that, in the end, they see reality more clearly. Scenarios, literally, help change one’s view of reality so that it matches up more closely with what reality actually is and may be. Finally, scenaric thinkers are good conversationalists. Scenarios are not stand-alone documents. They are intended to be used as strategic conversation starters—not to answer questions but, rather, to raise questions. Good scenaric thinkers understand this, and they weave stories in such a way as to provoke discussion rather than end it. These characteristics require exceptional literacy, numeracy, and understanding of data as well as a broad and compassionate comprehension of the world—past, present, and future. Developing scenaric thinkers among our students is a path toward developing successful twenty-first-century global citizens. Although scenario planning is most often used as an organizational strategic planning tool, there are many benefits to incorporating it into the curriculum as a tool for building scenaric thinking skills and engaging students in envisioning their own future. What follows is one example of a project that could be an innovative and exciting step into the future for middle or high school students and teachers.
A SAMPLE SCENARIO PROJECT 2 Every scenario project begins with a specific strategic question or “focal issue.” Asking “What will the future look like?” is simply too big a topic for most groups to tackle. When posed in such a way, many people’s eyes glaze over, and fear of the future sets in. But when a specific question with relevance to the participants is posed, they become acutely engaged in the process and feel as though they can construct the future rather than be its victims. Although you will want to work with your students to develop a focal issue that has specific meaning for them, for the purpose of this example, consider the following strategic question: What should education look like in 2025 in order to engage, motivate, and prepare students for success in the twentyfirst century?
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Once the focal issue is identified, your students need to explore trends in domains such as economics, technology, globalization, politics, and demographics, to name a few, in order to understand how they impact education in general and the focal issue in particular. This is a critical feature of the scenario planning process and one very relevant for incorporation into the middle or high school curriculum. (Resources on trend information can be found at http://www.mcrel.org/future.) Next, you need to identify, from all the uncertainties you have discussed during your exploration process, those that are most important for the project. This is the “hard work” of the process, and you should plan on giving this phase a significant amount of time. The success of the rest of the process relies on getting this step right. Don’t take shortcuts here. To begin this step, you might want to do a brainstorming activity in which you ask your students simply to think of all the factors, or “drivers of change,” that could impact the focal issue. In other words, considering everything they have learned by exploring trends, what are all the things that might have an impact on creating an education environment in 2025 that “engages, motivates, and prepares students for success in the twentyfirst century?” Groups from 10 to 15 students will work best for this exercise, each with a recorder, who writes on chart paper whatever individuals call out. Possible ideas might include school funding, the aging population, technology, customization, terrorism, standards, or family breakdown. In a good 20-minute brainstorming session, a group of 10 people may generate more than 50 ideas. Following the brainstorm, give every individual six sticky dots. Ask them, as individuals, to prioritize the list of ideas by placing their dots next to the “drivers of change” on the list that they think are most “critical” (e.g., this really matters to our focal issue and to our future) and most “uncertain” (e.g., we know that something will be different but not exactly what or how) when it comes to addressing the focal issue. Students can place all their dots on one driver, they can put one dot on each of six drivers, or they can scatter them across the drivers any other way to indicate the value they place on the drivers. At the end of the exercise, tabulate the drivers with the most dots to see which drivers of change are most important to the group as a whole. It is these drivers that are most likely to eventually form your scenario framework. However, your work is not yet done. You will need now to clarify the meaning of these to the group and choose from among the favorites only two to form your scenario framework. To continue the example, after considerable discussion, the choices are narrowed down to the two factors the students believe qualify for the framework by being most uncertain and most critical as follows:
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1. “Where Learning Takes Place”: In the future, will learning continue to take place inside the school building, as it does today, or will most learning take place in other environments, perhaps any time and any place, such as through online learning? 2. “What I Need to Learn”: In the future, will all students be required to demonstrate proficiency on a standard set of content knowledge, such as required under the No Child Left Behind Act, or will there be a more differentiated approach to outcomes in which students have individualized learning plans based on their own talents, inclinations, or interests? For both of these uncertainties, the students must show evidence from the trend data that either hypothesized outcome for the uncertainty is possible. Having done so, a scenario framework in which each uncertainty becomes the x- and y-axes of a Cartesian plane, with the resulting four quadrants of the graph representing four possible scenarios for the future is developed. The end points of each axis describe the different ways each uncertainty might be resolved in the future (see figure 2.1).
Figure 2.1. Sample Scenario Framework
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Once the scenario framework is created, the group develops a different story for each by considering, for example, what the world of scenario A, in which learning takes place “any time/any place” and what I need to learn is “standardized,” would look like. How would that world come about? What would have to happen between now and 2025 for such an educational environment to be realized? What economic, technological, and policy changes might we see in the world that would nudge the future in that direction? What about the quadrant diagonally opposite to that one, scenario D, in which learning takes place “in schools” and what I need to learn is “differentiated” for every student? What would that world look like, and what events would have taken place between now and 2025 to cause that world to emerge? After ensuring that the framework is plausible, logical, and challenging to the group’s “official future,” it is time to start the creative writing process. This can be done using any method that suits your other curricular goals. You might begin with a “headline” exercise in which students create headlines for each year of the time period from today through 2025, imagining how an online newspaper would report the key events of the scenario’s “history.” From this story line, students can create characters and a plot for their story. Although they should incorporate evidence of emerging trends to provide plausibility for their scenario, they should be as creative as possible, letting their imaginations go as long as they stick to the logic of the scenario framework. Once the scenarios are written (be sure to give each a snappy and meaningful title), lead your students in a discussion of the implications of each scenario and options for actions given what they’ve learned about the future. You could ask them to imagine being a student in each world and discuss what success looks like. Or you could ask them to play the role of teacher, principal, or policymaker in each world and discuss how they would ensure that students are “engaged” and “motivated” in each quadrant of the framework. You might consider asking them to develop recommendations to your school’s leadership about policies and practices that could be implemented today to prepare for the worlds of tomorrow that they have envisioned. Finally, share the scenarios with others in your school community and launch broader conversations about the future.
SCENARIC THINKING AS A CATALYST FOR CHANGE Scenarios are not predictions of the future. They provide a foundation for anticipating the future, spur conversations about the future, and, ultimately, may catalyze change. The scenaric thinking skills that are developed
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through the process can be brought to bear again and again on a host of futuristic dilemmas facing educators. Is it difficult to become a scenaric thinker? Not at all. As humans, we are hardwired to plan ahead. You’re probably familiar with the famous story about Canadian hockey player Wayne Gretzky, who remarked that when on the ice, his eyes didn’t follow the puck’s path but rather looked to where the puck was going to end up. This neurological ability to look ahead, spontaneous and intuitive on Gretzky’s part, is closely tied to our innate capacity for imagination and foresight. As the skates are to the ice, so is the pen to the paper, as a scenario creates a slick description of the space between where the puck is today and where it will land some place in the uncertain future. While creating these descriptions, scenaric thinkers are constantly asking, what if? What if the future is not the same as the past? What if the way we have always imagined things to be is not the way they will be? What then? By asking and answering these questions, we can be ready for whatever awaits us as we work together to create the future of learning.
NOTES *Roland Barthes, “Introduction of Structural Analysis of the Narrative,” Occasional Paper, no. 6 (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, Centre for Contemporary Culture Studies, 1966). 1. Peter Schwartz, The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World (New York: Doubleday, 1991). 2. The scenario planning process described here has been adapted by Midcontinent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) from one developed by the Global Business Network (http://www.gbn.com) and is used by McREL for internal strategic planning. The process is also taught by McREL to school districts and other educational organizations across the country. For more information, contact info@ mcrel.org.
3 Getting Educational Futuristics Started
Fortunately for children, the uncertainties of the present always give way to the enchanted possibilities of the future. —Getsey Kirkland*
Using educational futuristics (EdF) is far easier than the little-known term itself might imply. Following are 12 introductory projects that can be readily adjusted for different grade levels (many others can be found in my 2008 volume and more demanding ones in the chapter that follows). The first three suggest attention be initially paid to false claimants, to future-shaping role models, and to future-shaping events in the year of one’s own birth. The next nine projects involve a wide array of forecasts that students should profit from exploring (solid, pop culture, film, bodybuilding, simulation, social, green, information technology [IT], and “way out”). Best when custom-tailored to the unique “chemistry” of a class, school, or district, the 12 projects can help everyone (youngsters and adults alike) begin one of the most engaging and rewarding of all learning adventures: tracing and assessing links between past, present, and future, the better to help us make progressive choices among consequential alternatives.
PRETENDERS EdF can be introduced into a school’s culture by helping students differentiate between serious forecasting and the smarmy stuff they too often 51
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confuse it with. Unscientific hoaxes here include astrology, card reading, clairvoyants, Edgar Cayce forecasts, Jeanie Dixon forecasts, the I Ch’ing, Ouija boards, palm reading, Nostradamus forecasts, tarot cards, and other shams shamelessly promoted to the gullible in supermarket tabloids and through cable TV stations. Youngsters are especially vulnerable to “truth claims” of seductive TV shows like FastForward, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, That’s Incredible, The Sixth Sense, Poltergeist, V, and Zeitgeist the Movie—all of them artful exercises in mind-bruising nonsense. FastForward, for example, asks, “Are our life paths written for us when we come out of the womb, or do we have a choice?”1 One gets “an obfuscating amalgam of theory and conjecture, reality and fantasy, nonfiction and science fiction” best shielded against 24/7.2 EdF-guided students could politely take a skeptic’s stance, and ask, for example, if users of a Ouija board have ever spelled forecasting words when securely blindfolded or if a Nostradamus forecast quatrain has ever unambiguously predicted anything before the fact. The principle of positive evidence should be applied to all such forecast claims, and appreciation of this should help K–12 students protect themselves against false seers.
ROLE MODELS Having begun by helping young learners differentiate between serious forecasting and unworthy nonsense, it might be wise to move next (or simultaneously) to highlight the ability of outstanding individuals to help make a finer future—people like Nobel Peace Prize winners Aung San Suu Kyi, Bishop Tutu, Mikhail Gorbachev, Andrei Sakharov, Vaclav Havel, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, and many others. Contemporary future-shaping change agents like Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe’s heroic opposition leader; Thich Quang Do, the Buddhist monk and critic of Vietnam’s authoritarian regime; or Rebiva Kadeer, exiled from China for her labors on behalf of the oppressed Uighur minority, warrant particular attention. Greg Mortenson, the famed author of Three Cups of Tea, has the Taliban as his archenemies. They want children educated only in their tightly controlled mosques—untouched by modernity and isolated from other faiths so as to ingrain fundamental zealotry, recruit militants, and disempower females. He fights back by opening one-story rural schools for girls in remote regions of Afghanistan (48 through 2009) and Pakistan (131) “that will bring along a new generation of kids who will have a broader view of the world.”3 His allies in native tribes “want to embrace modernity, open Islam to new ideas and empower Muslim women as much as men.”4
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Likewise, classroom attention could go to two future-shaping Americans who passed away in 2009—Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Norman Borlaug— as the accomplishments of both provide constructive role models. Shriver is owed credit for helping to change how we relate to children with intellectual disabilities. Her work on behalf of the developmentally challenged included the founding of the first Special Olympics in 1968, an annual worldwide contest that now involves almost 3,000,000 athletes in over 180 countries. The Special Olympics made clear that through sports, children with mental retardation could realize their potential for growth, and their lives (and ours) have been better ever since. On her death, her family’s statement read in part, “She set out to change the world and to change us, and she did that and more.”5 Norman E. Borlaug, in turn, is “arguably the greatest American of the 20th century,” as, thanks to his Green Revolution agriculture techniques, “he saved more lives [perhaps a billion] than anyone who has ever lived.”6 The high-yielding low-pesticide “semidwarf” wheat and rice varieties that Borlaug created in the mid-1960s raised yields as much as sixfold. This starved off famine in many developing countries, slowed deforestation, and led to slower population growth as education became more important to family success than muscle power. Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, Borlaug defended the use of synthetic pesticides, inorganic fertilizers, and genetically modified foods as indispensable if millions were not to starve to death. Very much in tune with futuristics, he warned shortly before his death that “the civilization that our children, grandchildren, and future generations come to know will not evolve without accelerating the pace of investment and innovation in agriculture production.”7 Little wonder that a journalist wrote on his death, “Often it is said America lacks heroes who can provide constructive examples to the young. Here was such a hero.”8
BIRTH-YEAR MARKERS One can “pick a year, any year, in the last, say, 250 years, and you will find it pregnant with consequential births and battles, inventions and publications that made modernity.”9 Youngsters can be asked to study the year of their birth and identify in it some of the major events that seem to have had the greatest impact to date on their own lives and on those of over 300 million Americans and over 6 billion other people alive today. For example, in 1937, the year of my birth, General Motors introduced the automatic transmission option, a game changer that enabled millions to drive for the first time. DuPont patented a new plastic called nylon and changed fabrics for all time. The first Dr. Seuss children’s book
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was published, and that genre forever after glowed with covert lessons in morality. The first McDonald’s restaurant opened, leading far too many to indulge in “fast-food” overeating excesses that we are only now seeking to rectify. President Franklin Roosevelt “gave in to the deficit and inflation hawks, with disastrous consequences both for the economy and for his political agenda.”10 Were I still a student in a K–12 sequence, I would profit as a young learner from having to explore and later explain to my peers the lasting significance of one or more of these 1937 benchmarks. Care, of course, should be taken here to note the benefit of hindsight, the extraordinary variety of elements in how things unfold, and the idea that the future is almost never a linear extension of the past or present; for example, “Gutenberg thought he’d print a few Bibles, and that’d be that; in the 1940s the head of IBM said America would need about half a dozen computers; and Alexander Graham Bell believed the telephone would be used only to tell people to expect delivery of a telegram.”11 When youngsters have enjoyed learning about the year of their birth, they can try their hand at “connecting the dots” between events back then and current matters. In this way, they can learn to appreciate the ability of select events to cast a long though not a linear shadow. In addition, they can learn that an understanding of where major policy arguments seem to be heading requires first knowing the background of the issue.12
SOLID FORECASTS Youngsters will appreciate learning how some aspects of tomorrow can be forecast with useful accuracy and reliability. For example, an EdF-oriented teacher could explain the development of weather forecasts, a very familiar and widely accepted aid: “Americans are weather junkies. . . . An intelligent forecast enables them to plan their lives a little, instead of passively awaiting the atmosphere’s surprises. Foreknowledge mitigates the tyranny of nature . . . if you know what the weather (a prime force in the world) is up to, you are somehow, obscurely, but actually, in control of it.”13 Class members could be asked to uncover a like example of a forecasting tool worth knowing about, that is, one that is comprehensible, cogent, and significant. In 2009, for example, we learned for the first time how to accurately forecast which side would win a case in the Supreme Court. Research into some 2,000 arguments and more than 200,000 questions from the justices confirmed that the relative number of questions asked was a powerful predictor of outcome: “The more attention justices pay to a side, the more likely that side is to lose.” Lawyers appearing before the Court are well advised to avoid being questioned—a lesson that youngsters might recognize from their own tense interactions with their parents.14
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POP CULTURE FORECASTS Youngsters can be invited to analyze the lyrics of music groups and solo performers (long past and current alike) to uncover what, if anything, is said about tomorrow. An EdF-oriented teacher could guide discussion of the findings and ask class members what they might urge performers to say about the future. EdF students could pay special attention to the remarkable 20-year-old pop culture phenomena known as the Oprah franchise, an operation with a distinct future-making orientation (albeit the show itself will end in 2011). Forty million people—undoubtedly including some in a student’s extended family or his or her neighbors—watch Oprah Winfrey’s TV show each week, and 2 million copies of her O magazine sell each month. Forecasts of a sort by guests are a mainstay, as her show is “all about second and third chances to fix your life, and the promise that the next big thing to come along will be the one that finally works.”15 Critics, however, warn that many guests pitch wonder cures and miracle treatments that “are questionable or flat-out wrong, and sometimes dangerous.”16 EdF-guided students could assess the quality of certain claims and counterclaims made concerning future-shaping items (products and behaviors, like diets and dieting), noting carefully the reliance that Oprah puts on viewers and readers to take responsibility for shaping their own finer future. In addition, they could discuss the part that such mass media shows play in shaping the general public’s understanding of our responsibility for the quality of the personal and public tomorrow that we pass along.
FILM FORECASTS Students could do a content analysis of films like A.I., E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Planet 51, Wall-E, and other Hollywood explorations of tomorrow (including far darker postcatastrophic films like Avatar, Children of Men, Cloverfield, 2012, I Am Legend, and The Road). They might discuss aloud chilling future-set films that would scare them with implacable interstellar menaces intent on ending human survival or with mad scientists intent on weaponizing weather to create droughts in the Southwest or sandstorms in Saudi Arabia.17 They might explore their feelings after watching Defying Gravity, a weekly TV sci-fi series whose star, a flight engineer, is “tormented by memories of a previous mission when he had to abandon two fellow astronauts on Mars.”18 The Star Trek phenomena, a collection of 11 feature films, six TV series, and the promise of still more to come, offers rich EdF-related material. It began in 1969, “quick and wry, injecting the frontier spirit into the galactic void.”19
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Lessons can be drawn in matters of American exceptionalism, conflict resolution, cultural diversity, cultural relativism, ethics, exobiology, human relations, immigrant individuality, interspecies relations, space settlement, tolerant exploration, utopian thought, and war and peace, among scores of topics relevant to K–12. In addition, students can wrestle here with the dark side: “There are cultures that seek the destruction of others, desires that disrupt harmonious ambitions, powers that render virtue powerless. . . . Kirk, after all, is an iconoclastic military leader, the Enterprise is often in combat, and best intentions are often stymied by the need to fight.”20 To top it off, students can assess many science falsehoods scattered across the series, such as the seeming ability of mankind to outfly the speed of light, and discuss the ethics of putting miseducation in front of mass audiences (as Scotty often said, “Ya canna change the lays of physics, Cap’n”).21
BODYBUILDING FORECASTS Youngsters could be given an opportunity to “engineer” a better human out about 25 years from now—a time when many may be at a peak in their own personal development, their earning power, and so on. This project requires uncovering assumptions about everything. For example, what do they imagine the climate might be like a quarter of a century from now, and why? Which of the human senses might one want to augment, and why? And what contribution would they hope to get from incredibly small, powerful, and “smart” computer chips—possibly as embedded body parts—and from advances in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, genetics, nanotechnology, and so on? Classroom discussion should explore the answers; care being taken to underline the legitimacy of wide variance and the utility of alternative perspectives. Then the fun can really begin, as each team is set loose with art supplies or model-building balsa wood to create the most desirable human body a quarter of a century from now—perhaps a hybrid of natural and inanimate parts as glimpsed today only in science fiction. On completion of their Frankenstein-like, Terminator-like creation, a team could explain and defend its choices in a wrap-up class likely to prove one of those talked favorably about long after.22
SIMULATION FORECASTS Over 40 million copies of Sims games and their various expansions have been sold since 2000, in large part because youngsters appreciate how they
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differ from standard escapist video games in their “exuberant, big-hearted, unabashedly joyful embrace of the minutiae of daily middle-class life.”23 Students in an EdF-guided curriculum may learn much of value from the newest Sims release, “The Sims 3,” as it offers a rare opportunity to explore the consequences of future-shaping choices made across a lifetime for the player and his or her significant others. The player begins by “making” a person and defining its personality. He or she autonomously ages, makes friends (or not), falls in love (or not), gets married (or not), has children (or not), advances in a career (or not), and eventually dies. Across a “life,” the player creates a future with many coworkers, neighbors, and others according to the personalities and schedules of them all. While immersed in a virtual world of remarkable similitude, EdF-guided K–12 players should find themselves challenged by maturing questions such as these: What kind of person am I and would I like to be? How do I treat others? What is really important to me? What are my core values? Above all, what sort of future do I want to help shape, and how can I go about it? An admiring critic has written of the game-playing experience, “Most video games exist to allow the player to forget completely about the real world. The Sims accomplishes the rare feat of entertaining while also provoking intellectual and emotional engagement with some of life’s fundamental questions.”24
SOCIAL FORECASTS Special attention could be paid to nonmaterial innovations of direct relevance to K–12 students; for example, the Free-Range movement is a new effort to give youngsters a different kind of childhood, one far freer and more trusting of children than the parent-centered model taken for granted by many. Among other things, this social movement exposes how low are many scary future risks—such as that of child abduction—exaggerated by the media and therefore irrationally feared by unnerved parents: “We have it all wrong. Our kids are more competent than we believe, and they’re a whole lot safer, too.”25 Young learners could study the movement’s upbeat origins, its rapid spread from coast to coast, and the implications of its 14 Free-Range Commandments (avoid experts, be worldly, get braver, listen to your kids, and so on) for the style of child rearing they themselves might choose later in life (to say nothing of an effort some might then make to get their folks to adopt a free-range style). Likewise, students could study and assess the ongoing social movement that targets certain behaviors of young people and seeks to redirect them.
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For example, schools around the country are under increasing pressure to eliminate unhealthy foods, and they have begun to upgrade cafeteria offerings and put a limit on the sugar and fat content of vended goodies. Momentum now grows to tax sugar-sweetened beverages that appeal to young people. This would allegedly help curb that desire, reduce obesity, reduce related health care costs, and help pay to reform heath care. Obesity is the core issue, as, along with diabetes, it is the only major health problem getting worse in the United States. Some 19 percent of youngsters are obese.26 The proportion of overweight children, ages 6 to 11, has more than doubled since 1999, while the proportion of overweight adolescents, ages 12 to 13, has more than tripled.27 Teachers consistently hold lower expectations of overweight children, and three out of five of the heaviest youngsters have been cruelly teased at school.28 Today, artificially sweetened soft drinks, which alone account for about 6 percent of all the calories consumed in the United States, are “the number one food consumed in the American diet.”29 Prohibiting soda and candy machines in schools is being tried across the country, even as the soft drink industry caps calories and reduces portion sizes (the industry claims that since 2006, total beverage calories in school drinks have been reduced by more than 58 percent).30 Supporters of bans liken them to the crackdown on smoking by youngsters, especially the September 2009 ban on the sale of flavored cigarettes (chocolate, strawberry, and so on) that allegedly lure children and teenagers into smoking.31 A federal government specialist in school nutrition policies that affect nearly 30 million student users of school cafeterias maintains that “schools are supposed to be a place where we establish a model environment, and the last thing kids need is an extra source of pointless calories.”32 A practitioner who heads the Baltimore Schools Food Program calls in turn for focused efforts to “transform school food service into a more sustainable, healthy, and educational enterprise. And to change it fast.”33 Opponents of bans on sweet drinks think that any such restriction of choice—and a related call for a penny-per-ounce “fat” tax on sugary drinks—is a sure cause of unreasonable price increases and an “unnecessarily punitive and stunning example of the government acting in loco parentis.”34 They would prefer the government join the industry in encouraging greater physical activity and sensible dieting. Tax backers, in turn, forecast that it will help promote healthier choices, lead to at least a 10 percent reduction in the consumption of sweetened drinks, and generate revenues to fund health programs.35 EdF-guided students could weigh the merits of school bans on soda sales on the premises versus reliance on consumer education and free choice, the preference of the soda pop industry association—as the dispute links to a
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major future-shaping matter, namely, the question of whether the market or the government should decide such personal matters as what we eat or drink. Likewise, they should assess calls for “meatless Mondays,” reliance on local farmers rather than distant sources, replacing polystyrene trays with usable paper ones, using nonbleached napkins made from 80 percent postconsumer waste, and so on. In their turn, college-bound high school seniors could learn that for the first time they can now rent rather than buy their textbooks. As this is the largest expense (after tuition, room, and board) and the cost of books has kept soaring, this would seem a useful bit of future-aiding information. Students could assess its value, the origins of the idea, the ways in which the idea might be replicated, and other such spin-offs.36 Attention could also go to ways of assessing future-shaping and agerelevant innovations that presently elude trustworthy assessment. High school seniors, for example, could learn that while online dating services may have changed romance for millions, experts agree it is presently much too difficult to reliably forecast where such dating relationships wind up. After a decade in which “electronic winks and flirts may have proven more fruitful than bar pickup lines,” academic researchers can still not find reliable ways of counting online-originating marriages: “Claims that such dating leads to hordes of newly wedded couples may be fairy tales.”37 Students could analyze barriers here to research and gain a healthy skepticism where similar situations have venders plying insupportable forecasts of product prowess.
GREEN FORECASTS Given our increasing desire to mitigate the worst effects of global warming, students could pay special attention to marketplace offerings of untried variety. For example, vendors are forecasting impressive gains if households (and school buildings) switch to white or “cool-color roofs” or the use of a shiny plasticized white, brown, green covering: “Turning all of the world’s roof ‘light’ over the next 20 years could save the equivalent of 24 billion metric tons in carbon dioxide emissions.” As this is what the whole world emitted in 2008, it would be the equivalent of turning the world off for a year—a far-reaching claim likely to captivate youngsters.38 EdF-oriented attention here might begin by noting that the idea has a “long and humble history. Houses in hot climates have been whitewashed for centuries.” In addition, students could usefully ponder the forecast that a conversion to white flat roofs and cool-color sloped roofs as far north as Chicago and as far south as Buenos Aires would reduce carbon emissions
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by an amount greater than taking over half the world’s passenger cars off the roads.39 Impressed by such arguments, California, the point state in many such green matters, began in 2009 to require all newly constructed commercial buildings with flat roofs to use white roofing. In 2010, it will require new home and remodeling projects in the five hottest regions of the state to use cool-color roofing.40 Young learners could discuss how the pace might be quickened, as by tax lures, and whether this option should be pursued.41 Less conspicuous but no less significant are new-to-the-market biopesticide pest control products, such as botanical oils and boric acid bait. Promoted as far less toxic than conventional synthetic-chemical pesticides, they harm primarily only target pests, the loss of which can help beneficial bugs and other animals. Students could study this new frontier in the age-old war between humans and insects, fungi, and weeds. Especially as global warming makes likely the arrival of new pests in places in the United States unaccustomed to them, this a vexing forecast well worth student attention.42 EdF-guided students should study green reform ideas too readily dismissed as improbable. A radical plan, for example, calls for moving farms into the city and growing crops in urban high-rise buildings, either specially constructed or renovated ones. Use would be made of soilless hydroponic and aeroponic technologies, both of which require less water than conventional agriculture. The vertical farms could produce organic crops yearround, free of risk of drought or flood damage. In this way, jobs would be opened up for city dwellers, tourists would be attracted to the sites, the crops would not have to be trucked great distances to reach consumers, and farmland could be returned to its original ecological state. Best of all, this system could be installed in schools (and other buildings), thereby bringing agriculture directly to K–12 urban youngsters for the first time, an obviously rich source of learning.43
IT FORECASTS Students could assess the varied implications of cutting-edge IT products, especially those of particular interest to young people. Typical is Auto-Tune, a brand of pitch-correcting software invented in 1997 to make sure that singers hit the right notes in the recording studio. It has been repurposed to allow performers to transform their voices into a robotic warble (or pixilated croak), a sound that no human can sing in tune. Critics condemn it as a symbol of all things artificial, unnatural, and dehumanizing: they insist that natural flaws have contributed to the power of some of music’s most acclaimed voices. Students, especially the music
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fans among them, could join an already heated debate, as the issue goes far beyond the Auto-Tune in particular and touches on the nature of desired reality in a preferred future.44 Apropos schooling per se, attention could go to cyber charter schools that make creative use of online learning. Whereas only 13 states had 57 such schools in 2002–2003, some 25 states had 190 schools in 2009–2010.45 Roughly 100,000 of 12 million high school–age students attended 438 online schools full-time in 2009, many while still matriculating in regular schools, up from about 30,000 five years earlier (in addition, many among the nation’s 1,500,000 home-schooled youngsters take classes online). Taxpayers in particular appreciate a sizable reduction in the size of related teaching staff, even as students appreciate the wide diversity of courses.46 Critics warn darkly that online learning risks neglect of interpersonal skills, as these are thought best nurtured in actual human contact. They also worry about an absence of non-computer-based activities, like community service projects, physical education, field trips, shop work, and so on. Some freely admit to being nostalgic for yesteryear’s brick-and-mortar model. Proponents, in turn, counter that a mix of real and virtual schooling (say, 35/65) can adequately address the matter (as by having students come into a hybrid school once every two weeks for lesson-based dialogues and socializing in clubs, sports activities, and the arts). They cheer the unique availability of asynchronous instruction by outstanding teachers offering a limitless range of subjects otherwise too costly to offer in actual school buildings. For example, the superintendent of a 500,000-student county in California explains, “We’re still in a brick-and-mortar 30-students-to-1-teacher paradigm. But we have to get out of that framework to having 200 to 300 kids taking courses online, at night, 24/7, whenever they want.”47 Likewise, at New York City’s iSchool, Nobel laureates and NASA scientists deliver lectures and answer questions remotely. Its renown is such that the city’s Department of Education is trying to replicate the school’s success in “incorporating technology into everyday learning.”48 The Florida Virtual School has a model United Nations, an online Latin club, and a science Olympiad team that practices online and meets in person only before big tournaments. An online K–12 school in Michigan offers math and science summer camps.49 Students could join the debate here, especially as some might then become future-shaping advocates, one way or the other. Given the momentum that the cyber school movement demonstrates, questions about its future would seem to merit searching attention throughout the K–12 world. Likewise, e-readers warrant attention by EdF-influenced students curious about possible, preferable, and preventable IT impacts on education. In 2009, Amazon’s Kindle DX model stored 1,500 books and offered another
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300,000 for low-price sale (including magazines and newspapers). Better yet, it provided a text-to-speech option that had the machine read the material on the screen out loud. A rival product, the Sony Reader, while storing only 1,000 books, and offering only 150,000 for low-price sale, could hold more if you added extra memory cards. In addition, it provided access to 1 million free books via Google and had a touch-sensitive screen. Raising the bar still higher, Apple was expected to offer early in 2010 an e-reader that tops the features of preceding machines and that can receive movies—this a very likely hit with many young people.50 Other start-up companies loom on the horizon, and exciting innovations are widely expected. Students can join the dialogue that has some commentators worried about the future of print books, even while others forecast a welcomed rise in lifelong eagerness to read that is attributable to the fun associated with e-readers. Related here is an ongoing shift away from print textbooks to digital versions or lessons assembled from the wealth of free courseware, educational games, videos, and projects on the Web: “Teachers need digital resources to find those documents, those blogs, those wikis that get them beyond the plain vanilla curriculum in the textbooks.”51 In this age of constant connectivity and astonishing potential, students in an EdF course will readily appreciate that we are only “at the beginning of what we can do with this knowledge-at-a-touch.”52 Their cell phones, for example, may, as soon as 2012, take the form of a device “with an 8-inch fold-out screen, a big virtual keyboard for easy text input, numerous sensors to detect your surroundings, and software smart enough to anticipate your needs and sharp enough to respond to conversational commands.”53 Likewise, students might explore what IT industry insiders hailed in 2009 as two killer applications, namely, educational video games and also the emerging social Web (e.g., Bebo, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, MySpace, Unionbook, and YouTube). Enthusiasts for educational video games hailed their newfound ability to enable users to enter a virtual world, try on a character, and attempt to solve problems that can relate to the real world. Newer games artfully and discretely work concepts of math, science, or language into the actual game mechanics. One such game asks players to solve a set of educational puzzles that enable them to win enough power to design and create their own video games. Other games are explicitly integrated with the school curriculum and thereby “put the passion children have for the genre to good use.”54 Enthusiasts for the social Web forecast that it would help users create distinctive high-tech electronic (virtual) “communities” that could bolster high-touch solidarity among real folk.55 Networked members would mingle, “trading information, creating alliances, doing favors.”56 Such claims are
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likely to intrigue young K–12 learners, so eager are many to find easily accessed social settings, even if only virtual in character, in which they might feel newly valued and at home.
“WAY-OUT” FORECASTS Even as “a man is not free to do that which he cannot imagine doing,” so also are youngsters unable to imagine possibilities way outside their present awareness.57 This can be remedied by a deliberately “silly”-seeming assignment, namely, the task of bringing in for class discussion a “way out” idea for helping to achieve a pro-future gain. For example, a class might consider society requiring high school seniors to serve immediately on graduation a two-year term in the military, the Job Corps, Vista, or any of many eligible nongovernmental organizations; require the owners of vacant lots in cities to lease them at no cost to community vegetable gardeners; or provide day furloughs for carefully screened prisoners who volunteer to tutor K–12 youngsters in school. The goal here is to stretch the minds of K–12 youngsters and whet their appetites across life to consider high-quality offbeat notions worth a second thought. In this same vein but to turn to the natural sciences, a class could study the development process entailed in bringing way-out future-shaping matters along; for example, getting algae fuel from the lab to the local gas station “will be a tremendous undertaking—one that could require decades of work by experts in engineering, chemistry, biology, and an array of other scientific field. . . . If efforts to turn these single cells into ‘oil wells’ are successful, algae-based fuels could help meet the world’s growing energy demand and help reduce emissions.”58 Still more exotic and likely of keen interest to certain students is the wayout possibility of our soon discovering that we are not alone—thanks to the 2009 launch of the Kepler space telescope, the mission of which is to find planets outside our solar system that might be hospitable to life. Earth-like planets are common and may occur in 10 to 20 percent of the stars, with about 330 already of interest. Kepler is “likely to send us evidence of hundreds of Earth-like planets revolving around hundreds of Sun-like stars.”59 Experts in the matter are not Earth chauvinists, and they trust in the laws of physics working the same everywhere and producing the same conditions: “If you have that many earths and you have some prebiotic soup, comets that bring in the organic chemicals that you need to have life, something is going to grow. You might not always end up with dinosaurs and cavemen, but there are going to be planets out there that will have primitive life. Life on Earth is so vigorous and so able to thrive and fill every niche, how could it not be elsewhere?”60
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SUMMARY Use of the 12 introductory EdF projects described here should mix fun with effort, enjoyment with revelation, and peak “aha!” moments with regret that the project is over. Similar projects are readily imagined, as in inviting youngsters to “invent” holidays worth marking in the future, such as an annual celebration on July 20, as on that date in 1969, a person from Earth first set foot on the Moon; November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, a high-water mark in the march of human freedom; or December 10, 1948, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted and proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations. EdF learning experiences should combine a modicum of age-adjusted research with much freewheeling creativity. They should help bring awareness of otherwise embedded value judgments about the past and present and especially about the future. Grounded in cautious optimism, they should encourage refection about responsible reform actions. Youngsters should take away from the experience a commitment to make as much of our future as our human limitations would seem to allow—and then some.
NOTES *John Cook, ed., The Book of Positive Quotations (New York: Gramercy, 1993), 249. 1. As cited in Brian Stelter, “In ABC’s Latest Drama, Making a Date with Destiny,” New York Times, September 26, 2009, C-1. In the novel by Robert J. Sawyer, people see their lives 21 years hence. 2. Michael Shermer, “I Want to Believe.” Scientific American, July 2009, 33. 3. As quoted in Thomas L. Friedman, “Teacher, Can We Leave Now? No.” New York Times, July 19, 2009, 10-WK. 4. Friedman, “Teacher, Can We Leave Now?” 10-WK. “Mortenson’s efforts remind us what the essence of the ‘war on terrorism’ is about. It’s about the war of ideas within Islam.” 5. Carla Baranauckas, “Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Influential Founder of Special Olympics, Dies at 88,” New York Times, August 12, 2009, A-23. 6. Gregg Easterbrook, “The Man Who Defused the ‘Population Bomb,’” Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2009, A-27. 7. Norman E. Borlaug, “Farmers Can Feed the World,” Wall Street Journal, July 31, 2009, A-16. 8. Easterbrook, “The Man Who Defused the ‘Population Bomb,’” A-27. 9. George Will, “A Year That Changed Much, from Births, Battles, and Inventions,” Contra Costa Times, July 20, 2009, A-14. 10. Paul Krugman, “That ’30s Show,” New York Times, July 3, 2009, A-21.
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11. James Burke, Circles: 50 Round Trips through History, Technology, Science, Culture (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 15; Janet Maslin, “When Poets Were Scientists and Nature Their Mysterious Muse,” New York Times, July 9, 2009, C-1. 12. “In spite of the tendency in schools to segment the past into subject areas (history of chemistry, art, music, transportation, and so on) in which advances and discoveries developed the discipline into its modern form, such an approach to teaching very rarely reflects what actually happened.” Burke, Circles, 15. 13. Lance Morrow, Fishing in the Tiber (New York: Henry Holt, 1988), 183, 185. “The weather is always among the surest draws on local TV and radio news” (184). 14. Professor Timothy R. Johnson, as quoted in Adam Liptak, “A System Predicts Outcome in Court,” New York Times, May 26, 2009, A-10. 15. Weston Kosova and Pat Wingert, “Crazy Talk,” Newsweek.com, June 8, 2009, 56. 16. Kosova and Wingert, “Crazy Talk,” 61. “At some point, it would seem, people will stop looking to Oprah for this kind of guidance. This will never happen.” 17. “Doomsday will be the subject of no less than four films in the next few months. . . . The cinematic end of the world has been, and still is, entertaining.” Brian Stelter, “It’s Doomsday Once Again: Are We Having Fun Yet?,” New York Times, July 21, 2009, C-1. 18. Amy Chozick, “Desperate Astronauts,” Wall Street Journal, July 24, 2009, W-2. 19. Anthony Lane, “Highly Illogical,” The New Yorker, May 18, 2009, 80. 20. Edward Rothstein, “U.S.S. Enterprise Landing in Strange World,” New York Times, May 30, 2009, C-9. 21. As cited in Rothstein, “U.S.S. Enterprise Landing in Strange World.” See also Lawrence M. Krauss, The Physics of Star Trek (New York: Basic Books, 1995). 22. An elementary school teacher, Patricia Burke, devised this project in the late 1960s and used pieces of felt as the basic “building” material. I adapted the exercise from an account of it by futurist Billy Rojas in his essay “Problems and Prospects for Educational Futuristics” in Michael Marien and Warren L. Ziegler, eds., The Potential of Educational Futures (Worthington, OH: Charles A. Jones, 1972), 105–6. 23. Seth Schiesel, “Finding Escapism in the Minutiae of Daily Life,” New York Times, June 2, 2009, C-1. 24. Schiesel, “Finding Escapism in the Minutiae of Daily Life,” C-4. “I love aliens and zombies, but a little reality in my gaming once in a while is not a horrible thing. It may even be healthy.” 25. Lenore Skenazy, Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had without Going Nuts with Worry (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009), 7. 26. Editorial, “The Fat of the Land,” Wall Street Journal, August 1–2, 2009, A-10. “In sheer body mass the entire population is heavier than it used to be, and the heaviest are much heavier . . . obesity now accounts for 9.1 percent of all medical spending . . . [even though] we are spending more than $50 billion a year dieting. If America is at war with obesity, then obesity is winning.” See also Daniel Oliver, “Fighting Obesity Is Best Left to the Individual,” Washington Examiner, August 17, 2009, 18, and Muhtar Kent, “Coke Didn’t Make America Fat,” Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2009, A-17. “While it is true that since the 1970s Americans have increased their caloric intake by 12 percent, they also have become more sedentary
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. . . 60 percent of Americans are not regularly active, and 25 percent are not active at all.” 27. Elizabeth Kolbert, “Why Are We So Fat?” The New Yorker, July 20, 2009, 73. 28. Cited from a 2008 report by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University in Kolbert, “Why Are We So Fat?” 76. “Type 2 diabetes, coronary disease, hypertension, various types of cancers . . . are just some of the conditions that have been linked to excess weight.” 29. Eric Finkelstein, health economist, as quoted in Kolbert, “Why Are We So Fat?” 75. Note that beverage calories have been reduced 21 percent since 1998. Ad, “There’s a Better Way to Tackle Obesity,” New York Times, September 24, 2009, A-33 (sponsored by the American Beverage Association). 30. Ad (Coca-Cola), New York Times, October 4, 2009, 23. 31. Gardiner Harris, “Eye on Youths, U.S. Bans Flavored Cigarettes,” New York Times, September 23, 2009, A-1, A-4. “Every day, 3,600 children and teens start smoking and 1,100 become daily smokers, studies show.” See also Susan Estrich, “Whatever the Flavor, It’s Bad,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 4, 2009, C-5. “Studies have found that 17-year-olds are at least three times more likely to puff on funflavored cigarettes [which made up only 1 percent of the market] than are those over 25.” 32. Howard Wechsler, director of the Division of Adolescent and School Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as quoted in Jennifer Medina, “New Policy Outlaws Bake Sales in Schools,” New York Times, October 3, 2009, A18. 33. Anthony Gercai, as quoted in Fran Smith, “Farm to Folk,” Edutopia, December 2009/January 2010, 35. 34. Ann J. Kirschner, “Letter to the Editor,” New York Times, September 21, 2009, A-20. 35. Betsy McKay and Valarie Bauerlein, “New Report Argues for Tax on Soft Drinks,” Wall Street Journal, September 17, 2009, D-2. See also Jennifer Medina, “Sellers Face New Rules on Snacks in Schools,” New York Times, October 7, 2009, A-23. 36. Miguel Helft, “We Rent Movies, so Why Not Textbooks?” New York Times, July 5, 2009, BU-3 37. Carl Bialik, “Marriage-Maker Claims Are Tied in Knots,” Wall Street Journal, July 29, 2009, A-11. 38. Felicity Barringer, “White Roofs Catch On as Energy Cost Cutters,” New York Times, July 30, 2009, A-1, A-15. 39. Ronald Brownstein, “The California Experiment,” The Atlantic, October 2009, 76. 40. Brownstein, “The California Experiment,” 76. Shades other than white are only one-third as effective in reflecting heat. 41. Barringer, “White Roofs Catch On as Energy Cost Cutters,” A-15. 42. Gwendolyn Bounds, “Death by Mint Oil: Natural Pesticides,” Wall Street Journal, July 30, 2009, D-1, D-5. 43. Dickson D. Despommier, “A Farm on Every Floor,” New York Times, August 24, 2009, A-17.
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44. John Jurgensen, “The Battle over Bionic Vocals,” Wall Street Journal, September 11, 2009, W-1, W-7. 45. James K. Glassman, “The Cyber Way to Knowledge,” Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2009, A-15. 46. Paul Glader, “Online High Schools Test Students’ Social Skills,” Wall Street Journal, September 24, 2009, A-17. 47. As quoted in Tamar Lewin, “Moving into a Digital Future, Where Textbooks Are History,” New York Times, August 9, 2009, 17. 48. Susan Dominus, “Big Thinking and Radical Dreaming with Schools Chancellor,” New York Times, May 22, 2009, A-21. 49. Glader, “Online High Schools Test Students’ Social Skills,” A-17. 50. Geoffrey A. Fowler and Niraj Sheth, “Sony Opens New Chapter in Rivalry with Amazon over E-Book Readers,” Wall Street Journal, August 26, 2009, B-1. 51. Sheryl R. Ashire, chief technology officer for the Calcasieu Parish school system in Lake Charles, Louisiana, as quoted in Lewin, “Moving into a Digital Future, Where Textbooks Are History,” 17. 52. James Cascio, “Get Smart,” The Atlantic, July/August 2009, 100. 53. Bob Tedeschi, “What Your Phone Might Do for You Two Years from Now,” New York Times, November 5, 2009, B-8. 54. Stefanie Olsen, “Educational Video Games Mix Cool with Purpose,” New York Times, November 2, 2009, B-4. See also Katie Ash, “Digital Games Evolve as Tools for Teaching Financial Literacy,” Education Week, November 18, 2009, 8–9. 55. James F. Rayport, “Our Space: The Shift to a Social Web,” BusinessWeek, May 18, 2009, 67. 56. Sam Baker, “What’s a Friend Worth?,” BusinessWeek, June 1, 2009, 32. 57. Snell Putney and Gail Putney, The Adjusted American: Normal Neurosis (New York: Harper, 1964), 3. 58. Ad (ExxonMobil), “A Single-Cell Oil Well,” New York Times, July 30, 2009, A-25. 59. Alan Boss, astronomer and theoretical astrophysicist, as quoted in Claudia Dreifus, “A Conversation with Alan Boss,” New York Times, July 21, 2009, D-2. 60. Dreifus, “A Conversation with Alan Boss,” D-2. “Give life a few billion years and, under the right conditions, something is going to happen.”
Scenarios from Future Problem Solving Program International (FPSPI) Marianne Solomon and FPSPI Staffers
The Future Problem Solving scenario writing competition requires a student to write a futuristic short story based on one of the current year’s Future Problem Solving topics. Creative writers (grades 4 to 12) typically begin writing their compositions at the start of the school year. Their scenarios must contain 1,500 words or less and be set at least 20 years in the future. Students work on their writing for several months before it is submitted for evaluation at the affiliate level. The best futuristic writings from the affiliate programs are then submitted to the international level of evaluation. Scenarios are evaluated on the basis of their content, creativity, futuristic elements, and the author’s personal touch. In 2009, 187 scenarios were submitted to the International Scenario Writing Competition from 45 affiliate programs. FPSPI’s evaluation consists of two rounds. In round 1, each scenario is evaluated by three different evaluators, yielding three scores—rank, total score, and quality—that are combined to create the scenario’s calculated score, determining advancement to the final round. For final-round judging, the scenarios are evaluated by three additional evaluators to determine the top scenarios. Scenarios that advance to the final round receive a total of six evaluations by experienced, certified scenario evaluators. Staff member Deb Woythal notes, “The writers of the winning scenarios were judged as winners in their respective affiliate programs before competing against the top writers from all affiliate programs. The Middle Division first-place international winner in 2009 is from Virginia, while the Senior Division international winner is from Singapore. These two 69
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winning scenarios, based on the topics of pandemic and neurotechnology, were judged the ‘best of the best’ in their divisions.” Scenario writers generally spend considerable time researching their chosen topics before they create their scenarios, reworking and revising the original drafts several times. Some receive that writer’s bolt of creativity and write the scenario in one sitting. Most report that they have labored over their writing for months. Each affiliate program’s top three winners as well as the top international winners are invited to the International Conference to participate in the Onsite Scenario Competition. They are placed on a four-person writing team, and collaboratively each team decides how to structure their scenario based on the International Conference topic. They must create this collaborative scenario in a two-hour time frame, and they have a wonderful time interacting with one another and sharing their contributions to the team scenario. FPSPI staffer JoAnn Sundermann adds, “Some creative writing teachers or Talented and Gifted (TAG) teachers use the scenario as a required or optional school assignment. I found that it was a ‘unique’ assignment that sometimes appealed to students who were particularly interested in one of the topics listed (often a science topic). The combination of solving a problem found in current research and then projecting it into the future (but then most often using past tense in writing the story) was a very tough concept for many students to grasp—in other words, it ain’t as easy as it looks!” The 2009 Middle Division champion is from the Virginia FPSPI affiliate: Sandra Edwards-Thro from Grafton Middle School (coach William Thro). The Senior Division champion, from the Singapore FPSPI Affiliate, is Yeo Tze Qing from Raffles Girls’ School (Secondary) (coach Ong Shu Juin). Dear Earth Sandra Edwards-Thro Topic: Pandemic I don’t know if eyes or neurochips will ever see this, but I have to try. The Martian Council says nobody survived the Sea Pandemic, but sometimes, the rumors go, if you tune to the right frequency, you can detect a faint pulse from Earth. All I know is the truth hurt me like sunlight falling on eyes accustomed to darkness. Society isn’t ready for such honesty. We’ve been living under artificial lights for too long. Perhaps someday people will liberate themselves from technological bonds. But for now, I can only send this letter to the address on the canister and hope that someday the truth can set us free. Ah, the Sea. It was a network of minds, linked by neurochips, a library of all human knowledge and every person’s thoughts. It offered instant communication through telepaths (TPs) and understanding through downloads.
Scenarios from Future Problem Solving Program International (FPSPI) It was Earth’s grandest creation—but also, its destruction. A peculiar new form of amnesia surfaced in 2157. Memory diseases such as Alzheimer’s disappeared with the digitalization of thoughts onto neurochips, but this new strain attacked that digital data. It bore closer resemblance to a computer virus than a biological one. To this day, no one knows what ship the Sea Pandemic used to spread from mind to mind. It crept into harbor unnoticed, more like fog in the days before weather control than a boat. Patients flooded facilities, their entire memories deleted. Nobody had the slightest inkling of what was going on. People turned off their chips, trying to save themselves. But it was too late. The doctors could do nothing but watch in horror as Earthlings’ minds deteriorated. For all their modern healthcare and technology, they were helpless. The Sea contained everything that humans knew. But humanity didn’t know how to cure the Sea Virus. The chaos subsided. Minds shut down, winking out one by one until Earth was restored to darkness. I felt like hurling the book against the holographic wall, but instead set it down carefully. It was antique after all, with actual paper pages—one of the last of its kind to be published. I’m also an antique, I thought with an inward sigh. I am an outcast in today’s culture because I love the truth too much. I dwell in the past, because a world where happiness is downloadable just doesn’t hold the same allure for me. It isn’t true joy ANYWAY, JUST a rush of endorphins. People today have never seen a sunset, heard rain’s rhythms, or felt wind ruffle their hair. How could they, when those things don’t exist in subterranean Mars? But they exist in books. That’s why I love reading. Nobody knows words nowadays. Why talk when you can download each other’s thoughts instantly through TPs? But I take secret pleasure in the way curves and lines can assemble into meaning and beauty. I work mainly as a digitizer, translating blogs from the earliest version of the Sea, the Web, into mentalese. I also read Shakespeare and the Bible. Sometimes the past holds its own low-tech wonders. However, also like the book sitting before me, I was useless. I’d resolved to discover what caused the biggest tragedy humanity has ever faced—the Sea Pandemic. But one year later, I still wasn’t any closer to my goal. This manuscript was only the latest disappointment I’d suffered. The deeper you tunnel, the more rocks you’ll find, I suppose. Nobody was willing to TP about the Extinction; some chips blocked me for just mentioning it. The government was evasive; they eventually stopped responding to my TPs. The lack of concern for the Sea Pandemic appalled me. Nobody cared about its cause—they were just glad it had vanished. You’d think people would be more unnerved by the death of billions.
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I’d found a few obscure articles describing symptoms that resembled the Sea Virus. Still, they occurred thirty years before the Pandemic, during the Martian Revolution. My colleagues taunted me. Everyone thought the Extinction was a fluke. I was starting to believe them. Still, another part of me whispered that there are no random accidents. At least, none this immense. But despite all the evidence that the Pandemic mystery had a solution, I’m not sure I would have continued searching for it if the answer hadn’t shown up at my door. My brain was set to exit sleep mode at six in the morning. I woke up fully alert and refreshed, one of the benefits of neurochipcontrolled slumber. Of course, most people don’t doze anymore. Ares’s artificial suns shine even at midnight, since sleep is too tiresome for most of the Martian population. But I like to dream. I flicked a switch and the lights above brightened. Light switches are very outdated, but it disturbs me when my apartment responds to my thoughts. I switched the holowall to the extinct Amazon, then flicked to a display of my front door. Outside was a canister, glinting in the synthetic glow of morning. It looked innocent and unimportant, but I wasn’t fooled. Teleporters replaced the postal service a century ago. The silver canister popped out of the wall a few second later, after it passed robotic inspection. I struggled to open it, stumbling backwards when the lid popped off. I retrieved the cap and studied the address tag. It was from Earth. Odd—the planet was being repopulated, but I hadn’t exchanged TPs with anyone there. Inside was a single sheet of type, printed on faded yellow paper. I removed it, groaning inwardly. The text was microscopic and blurred. Abnormally lengthy words dotted the page like sinkholes. But my curiosity overcame me. Dictionary in hand, I plopped into the antique swiveling office chair in front of the apartment’s control panel and began to read. Two hours later, I sank into an armchair, feeling its sensors detecting my pressure and moving to cradle it. My head ached from stumbling through text for hours. But the truth hurt more. Words always calm me when I grow too disgusted at a world where convenience replaces beauty. Now they fail me. After all, what words can capture the utter hopelessness that strikes upon the realization that for all our understanding of the human brain, we still can’t stop ourselves from hating? I don’t know.
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I do know that truth is like starlight, arriving even after its source has sputtered out. Writing this letter was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’m adapted to studying history—not making it. Yet here it is, seventy years late. The virus wasn’t a quirk, a by-product of dirtied seas and skies. It was something far more sinister. They designed it to enter a victim’s system through tainted doses of neurogytin, a chemical used in neurochips. However, after infecting its first victims, it spread electronically, swimming undetected through the Sea, like one of the demons thought to spread disease before Leeuwenhoek discovered bacteria. After downloading itself to neurochips, the virus waited, responding to electronic signals broadcast from elsewhere. The signals ordered it to either turn off or destroy its host by erasing their chip. Someone had made it with the intention of killing Earthlings. But the Sea, or the Ocean, its Martian counterpart, would have detected any murderous tendencies in individuals. Unless the very thing that did the detecting was the criminal, as I should have deduced. I may sound like a fanatical conspiracy theorist, bent on proving my deluded theories in the face of all logic. However, I’m clutching a confidential Martian Council report as I write this. They phrased their most top-secret briefings in words instead of mentalese, for added security in this age of TPs. A century ago, when Mars was still an Earth colony cloaked in rumors of revolution, Martians were designing a weapon. The negotiations with Earth were at a standstill. War seemed to be their last option. However, there was another possibility. They called it Operation Wave. It spread through shipments of neurogytin and lay dormant in Earthlings’ minds, waiting for Earthling leaders to agree to Martian terms. Martians were unaffected, since the Ocean was separate from the Sea. They never did intend to kill anyone, it seems. It was just a bluff. But it worked. Earth grudgingly accepted Mars’s independence. Mars sent the self-destruct signal to the virus. The two planets were at peace again; Earthling civilians went on with their daily lives, unaware of the tragedy they’d escaped. However, something had gone horribly wrong. The container for the tainted neurogytin was flawed. Even the Martian Council doesn’t know if it was tampered with or simply an honest mistake. Subjected to space radiation, the virus mutated, just as salmonella did when Earth scientists first discovered space mutations in 2007. It didn’t respond to the self-destruct signals, lying in wait. It awakened thirty years later, now immune to the cure designed so long ago. The rest, as they say, is history.
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So there you have it. Ten billion people died to guarantee the “freedom” of a few thousand. I’m sorry. Peace of Mind First Place Yeo Tze Qing Topic: Neurotechnology UNIVERSITY OF BOSTON, PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT Borderline Personality Disorder Archives: Case Study 94 The following four MemoPod entries were retrieved from the national Neuroheal Institution’s SubCess (Subconscious Access) Unit Patient #563’s MemoPod and used as a replacement for the therapy process by her psychiatrist when she ceased cooperating with him. They are the most significant of the thirty-six entries she wrote, and have since been made into a psychological case study on SubCess ethics and its implications. The patient was being treated for her borderline personality disorder. 28 June 2045 @ 08:20 pm This is life as it is now: colorless and dull as the ward that I’d first entered months ago, after Dr. Hurdstone abandoned me to the mercy of the SubCess Unit, just because I’d stopped talking to him. My pride at having managed to wear out the staff at the Minor Afflictions Unit of the Psych Ward has yet to die, but here, there is no one here to annoy or to listen to me but you, a pathetic piece of Kryplastic. They’ve kept me in the dark all this while, so I only found out why I’m here when I heard Dr. Hurdstone talking outside when the door was left ajar. Only then had I discovered they were trying to keep me safe for some twisted reason. They’ve even strapped me down primitively, so that I can’t hurt myself anymore with syringes and my nails like I did at the Minor’s, when the lunch packet knives grew scarce. One word I’ve caught stays painfully etched in my mind. SubCess. It leaves my tongue cold just saying it aloud. From the last I’d heard of it, the doctors apparently tune in to your brainwaves at a low frequency to access your subconscious and seek permission to provide treatments that require a patient’s consent when he or she is unable to do so. Borderline Personality Disorder Criteria Summary: Frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, alternates between extremes of idealization and devaluation of other people; insecure self-image, impulsive, self-destructive, unstable temperament and constant paranoia. I suppose I’m here only because I’d been battling their efforts to inject into me those PsychoCorrecting Nanobots that actively enter my brain to combat my disorder. How can I trust a horde of nanobots to heal my pain? After all, the doctors are only fighting so hard to “help” me to just make more money out of my stay in this place. Besides, who knows what they could do to me in SubCess, and who gives them the permission to conduct it anyway? I’m probably completely left out of the equation. Well, I don’t need these treatments. I wouldn’t have been here if not for that traitor of a friend, Stacy,
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who checked me into the Minor Afflictions Unit. All I’d done to her was to trick her children into believing their mommy was a witch. I tend to be milder with kids, but Stacy’s just too sensitive. Some best friend she turned out to be. I should have cut her out of the picture long ago. Now, I only desire human contact when I’m in dire need of someone to pester. Of course, you don’t count. I willingly unload my thoughts onto your impassive blue screen only to occupy myself and prevent my memories from ever resurfacing. Sometimes I wonder: perhaps they’ve been reading every word I free into your expanse. You see? You can’t trust people! The only foolproof way to live is to build walls around myself and push others away and make them wish they hadn’t tried to know me in the first place, so that they can’t get to me and see how ugly I am inside. The doctors will have to wait forever before they’re going to get to me. *** 1 August 2045 @01:30am I’ve done it again; I’ve lost control again. Maybe Dr. Hurdstone was right, I need to learn how to—no, he cannot be right. I was behaving ever so well, since I’d figured the only way they would release me was to fool them into trusting that I could live without the entire collection of psychotreatments so that I was free to return to my life, to act as I pleased. And then it happened. SubCess. They never told me it was coming. It’s an outrage of privacy and free will, and they’ve left me in the very state to be unable to fight back. There were three of them, in my ward in the middle of the night. None of them were whirring ever so slightly, so I deduced that they were humans. Armed with a holographic projector, electrodes, and some antennae that they attached to their heads, they looked so childishly futile that I’d almost sniggered aloud, but I didn’t want to give myself away. Then one of the shadows loomed closer. Fear riddled ever fiber of my being as I sat up instantly, screaming and flailing my arms wildly, wanting to fling and scratch away the darkness and everything else around me. I knocked over a thermocup that lay defeated, oozing grey sludge, and somewhere in a corner, I heard a low voice groaning in pain. The most infuriating thing is that they’d simply swooped out of my ward once I’d started screaming but the foam walls sponged my shrieks like spilt milk, silencing me. I was right after all. Everyone either loves you or hates you, and they all have plans to use you either way, like those doctors. I’d rather die in the Institution first than subject myself to their plans for me. No matter what they think they can do to help me, this pain never goes away. After fifteen years of nightmares of my parents’ beatings, every single night, I need no clarification on this matter. MEDIDOC #545, 01-08-2045, Patient #563 ---- SUBCONSCIOUS ACCESS PERMIT APPLICATION ---SUBCESS OBJECTIVE: To seek patient’s consent to be administered PsychoCorrecting Nanobot Injections to treat her borderline personality disorder. Patient has
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not responded to all other forms of treatment. SUBCESS ATTEMPT 1: Unsuccessful. Patient was unexpectedly awake at time of treatment. Accidently injured Dr. Hurdstone in the process. NOTE: Had motives for her apparent good behavior for the past week to allow her release from the Institution, despite still displaying irrationality of thought, as seen from the latest Weekly Irregularity Review of her MemoPod entries. SUGGESTED APPROACH FOR ATTEMPT 2: Add stronger sedatives to her prebedtime cocktail, and use Auto-Docs instead of humans to administer SubCess. Proposed date, 14 August 2045. ---- APPROVED ---15 August 2045 @07:23am It’s been a strange morning. It’s as if I’ve been gripping onto my mind so tightly all this while, and now, I’ve suddenly allowed myself to loosen my hold and free up some space in the corners of my mind. The pain of my memories, once like incurable wounds, seems to have numbed. I find myself pondering why I’ve ever let the memories of my dead parents dog me till adulthood. It must’ve been something mind-blowing they’ve added to my cocktail. *** 21 December 2045 @ 05:40pm I’ve finally broken free of the demons of my own warped mindset and paranoia, with the help of Dr. Hurdstone, SubCess and the nanobot injections. Recovery was like waking up while still in a dream. It was as though I had become consciously aware of my disorder, and could therefore easily smite it. Of course, now that we were on talking terms again, Dr. Hurdstone pointed out that was merely the nanobots at work. Now that the film of irrationality that blinded my thoughts from reality is slowly lifting, I’ve realized at last what SubCess has done for my condition. From my older entries, I can see clearly why my old self desperately needed SubCess. I was obviously not in the state to understand its urgency and permit the nanobot injections. Thankfully, my recovery has gradually brought with it the liberty to do as I pleased. And the best part of all—they’ve given me the latest WristPad to allow me to rebuild my connections to the outside world while I await my discharge. I can hardly wait to return to my life beyond the Institution to apologize to Stacy and everyone else I’d hurt during my illness, and start a new life. Patient #563, whose given name is Selma Rickhale, lived from 2024-2054. She had suffered from borderline personality disorder since childhood due to child abuse and did not show improvement until the psychiatrists at the Institution were forced to admit her to the SubCess ward to seek her permission to be treated with the PsychoCorrecting Nanobot Injections. She died at the age of 30, after being physically assaulted by rogue antiSubCess protestors outside her apartment, who were probably perturbed by how the Institution’s greatest SubCess success story demonstrated how the technology’s benefits outweighed their disadvantages. Their frustration against SubCess was wrongfully misdirected at Rickhale instead of the Institution, and cost Rickhale her life.
4 Upgrading Educational Futuristics
Do not suffer life to stagnate. It will grow muddy for want of motion. —Samuel Johnson*
Once a foundation has been established with the use of one or more of the 12 projects in chapter 3 and some quality time has passed within which the value of an educational futuristics (EdF) approach has been established, a school and/or school system should be ready to carefully, sensitively, and slowly ratchet up its employ of EdF. Twelve more projects explored hereafter could help. As in the preceding chapter, your own variations are very welcomed for inclusion in volumes to follow this one in our EdF series (please share them with our worldwide community of EdF developers at http://www.educationalfuturistics.com).
FORECAST IMPACTS Youngsters working in teams could produce a “NEXT?” card (a small index card complete with a forecast of relevance on one side and the source of backup material gathered from print or Internet resources on the other side). One such card might read, “By 2015, microscopic computer chips placed in the brain can help make a person become really smart, but insertion and upkeep costs are very high. Have-less Americans demand government subsidies to help them keep up here with more affluent Americans.” Another 77
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might say, “High school student governments get veto power over hiring of new teachers. Critics fear that only ‘hip’ candidates will get hired, regardless of teaching worth.” And a third might read, “School athletes get permission to bulk up on expensive safe steroids; low-income athletes charge discrimination, as they cannot afford this augmentation.” A good source for students seeking card ideas is the website of the Long Bets Foundation, where, since 2003, serious, measurable public forecasts have been posted and bet on (minimum of $1,000), the winner designating a charity. The project seeks to foster better forecasting and public accountability in the forecasting process. As of July 2009, bets were on about whether, by 2020, tickets for space travel, at least to the moon, will be sold online; solar electricity will be as cheap or cheaper than that produced by fossil fuels; 75 percent of new energy will come from renewable/sustainable sources; the technology will exist to “fax” inanimate objects; and the first human will have been cloned.1 Student-produced card forecasts could be shared aloud in class, with listeners encouraged to speculate about impacts good and bad, desirable and unwelcome. An EdF-oriented teacher could then explore the “why” and “so what?” of these speculations, along with creative ways to test them. (An interesting variant would have males and females given the same card out of earshot of one another and, after their speculations have been aired and recorded, bringing the genders together to compare and contrast their gender-related ideas.)
FORECAST DEVELOPMENT Youngsters can profit from watching on the sidelines as professionals try to formulate new formulas of predictive value. Attention, for example, could go to weather-forecasting models, one of the oldest and now most sophisticated of all forecasting tools. In mid-September 2009, for example, lead models suggested that parts of the U.S. corn belt would get a frost two weeks hence, and this sent prices sharply upward, as the corn crop in the ground needed more time to reach full maturity (the U.S. Department of Agriculture said that only 12 percent of the crop was mature, compared to a five-year average of 37 percent, and traced this to delays in planting due to climate change–based flooding). Taking this as an illustrative multifactored case study, students could analyze the reasoning chain and study the results of the frost forecast.2 Coming closer to age-related matters, teenage students with a keen interest in professional sports could study ongoing efforts to forecast why injuries strike certain professional athletes and not others. Students, especially
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young athletes and sports fans, can follow this future-shaping forecastseeking project even as it develops around them in real time. Every major league team and scores of independent analysts are trying to understand why injuries strike certain players. A multi-million-dollar problem plaguing professional sports teams is “the ability to forecast how players’ bodies will fare is a holy grail . . . [trainers are] trying to build a statistical formula that will give teams a competitive advantage and help them avoid players who spend their days in the training room and not on the field.”3 Likewise, these students may be intrigued by a 2009 claim that whether or not a player is elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by veteran baseball writers “is an entirely predictable outcome based on a few statistics.” Using a radical bias function, a sort of neural net approach, information technology researchers have been able to identify statistical communalities among Hall of Famers. Armed with these numbers the researchers can assign quite accurate odds (98.7 percent) that a given player will be elected—another of many fine examples of the forecast strengths of computer modeling.4
FORECAST LIMITATIONS Particular attention could wisely go to the many limitations of major forecasting tools. A good example is available in the recent loss of confidence in the once-exalted forecasting of the so-called quants. These math and science PhDs flocked to Wall Street in the past decade to build mathematical forecasting models that, to their astonishment, soon flamed out in 2008–2009 and helped lead to a global financial meltdown. Critics now lambaste these model builders for naively thinking that math alone could forecast human behavior, essentially the basis of finance. Quants convinced themselves that the entire world could be turned into Greek symbols, plugged into equations, priced, and predicted. EdF-oriented students could drill into aspects of the subject, especially postmeltdown efforts, to promote ethics, responsibility, and humility: Paul Wilmost, the most influential quant reformer, teaches that “in the end, we should all like models that wear their faults on their sleeves.”5 In a variant on learning about forecast weaknesses, youngsters could also study future-shaping projects outside the financial realm for which greatness was erroneously forecast. Drawing on careful research, they can identify the most significant flops, misjudgments, and fiascos of interest to them and, after diagnosing reasons for disappointment, go on to imagine ways in which success might have altered our future. Attention, for example, might go to business fiascos (e.g., Beta and VHS recorders, the Edsel, and smokeless cigarettes), sports fiascos (e.g.,
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Michael Jordan’s baseball career, Extreme Fighting promotion, and the Women’s United Soccer Association [1999–2002]), entertainment flops (e.g., a cinematic technology known as Smell-O-Vision and most summer-released Hollywood films), short-lived Internet disappointments (e.g., Flash Mobs and viral marketing), and poignant political disasters (e.g., the ill-fated careers of Senator Edwards and governors Blagojevich, Sanford, and Spitzer). Care should be taken to note that many grand forecast failures can spawn a trend, phenomenon, or motif whose influence actually helps alter contemporary and near-future popular culture—an end result that somewhat mitigates the disaster judgment. In addition, note should be taken of the sage contention that “doing nothing, and hoping Micawber-like that something will turn up, is as bad a solution as the grand slam that goes wrong.”6 Students should learn that even substantial setbacks can and often do cast a long shadow over tomorrow.7
COMPANY FORECASTS Print media today is replete with ads from leading global and national companies that want readers to link the company brand with good citizenship in general and pro-green accomplishments in particular. Led by a fair-minded teacher, students can practice the art of assessing such claims, many of which are cast as forecasts (“We plan soon to . . .”), as much hangs in the balance: if many such claims can be substantiated, one sort of appealing future appears likely; if not, we are threatened by another far less attractive one. Typical is an ad in 2009 by TNT, a major global moving company that boasts it is “becoming greener every day . . . we conduct regular reviews of the impact of our airplanes, vehicles, buildings, and investments on the environment. And with our fleet of electric vehicles, our carbon-positive office concept, and more than 100 videoconference systems throughout the world, we are constantly implementing new ways of reducing our CO2 emissions. What’s more, we also encourage our 16,000 employees and their families to help us make a change. We call this program Planet Me.”8 Likewise, Monsanto Technology LLC explains in major ads that “experts say we’ll need to double agricultural output by 2050 to feed a growing world. That’s challenge enough. But with a changing climate, the challenge becomes even greater. Providing abundant and accessible food means putting the latest science-based tools in farmers’ hands, including advanced hybrid and biotech seeds. Monsanto’s advanced seeds not only significantly increase crop yields; they use fewer key resources—like land and fuel—to do it. That’s a win-win for people, and the earth itself.”9
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Student users of EdF could learn how to evaluate such corporate claims about helping to make a finer future, such as by researching archived material, especially critical accounts; querying relevant green activist groups (which are often at odds with such ads); weighing the corporation’s responses to e-mailed questions from the class; listening to a classroom debate between a corporate spokesperson and a well-taken critic; and so on. Young learners could get valuable lifelong skills from the assessment process, honest companies could burnish their reputations, and the exposure of the false boasts of others could deservedly hurt them.
TEXTBOOK FORECASTS Drawing students into critiquing the content of city- or state-mandated textbooks is an especially sound aid to the maturing process as well as a proven boost of the sort of EdF-related learning that stays with one. For example, there is a revealing disjunction at present between what might be found written about the climate change challenge and what is contained in certain neutered mass-produced texts that have passed muster with “experts” and politicians on text approval/purchasing boards. Typical is a major textbook, Modern World History (McDougall Littrell, 2007), adopted in 2008 for all high school global studies classes in the Portland public schools. In 2009, a teacher invited his students to examine the text very closely. Many were troubled that global warming got only three paragraphs near the end of the 700-page book. The text seemed to slight what is at risk and said nothing about any of the endangered cultures or the urgent reform efforts of activists.10 Classroom discussion in such situations could usefully explore both covert values in texts and the nature of missing data and information.
PLACE-BASED FORECASTS EdF makes an especially good fit with a relatively new pedagogy that grounds learning in local phenomena and in the lived experience of area residents (including student researchers from area schools—which usefully helps make them the subject of their own education).11 Every locale has significant questions about its future that students can explore through interviews with residents. For example, how can this neighborhood, town, or city best prepare for major changes coming in our mix by age blocks, class, ethnic, or racial mix? What is next where our job mix is concerned? How might we prepare for the likely impacts of accelerated climate change? (In addition, students can assess what a locale “says” about
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the future; e.g., “Maine amazes with a weird, moody beauty, but its true magic is this: It encourages a long view.”)12 Students are likely to especially appreciate getting out of school per se, as this reduces their exposure to more of yesteryear’s outmoded “sage-on-astage” lecturing approach. A savvy high school teacher explains, “They’re so used to text messaging while watching TV and playing with their iPod and trying to study that it’s hard to be stimulating enough for their brains to focus. It’s not enough [for a teacher] to just stand up and talk.”13 Likewise, students can get a reminder studying a locale of the strategic value of humans in making a place what it becomes and could be: “You come to see with a new immediacy that the distance between two streets, two neighborhoods, or two people, between a blighted past or a promising future, between fertility or waste, is as great or as small as we choose to make it.”14 Employing focused “conversations” with local people (including “movers and shakers”), students can glean insights into their immediate world, the better to help them decide its place in their own near future. Some of what they learn in this research project could be shared with local decision makers (and media types), thereby making a solid contribution to futureshaping developments. Testifying to or even chatting with town leaders or a city council about fresh options for improving an area’s future can provide a constructive ego-boosting memory helpful across a youngster’s life. Best of all, students can get to know local people they might not otherwise meet, as invisible cultural barriers continue to separate different social classes, ethnicities, races, and religious groups from one another: “The more we know about others through their stories, in their own voices, the more inspired we might be to recognize those voices in our own.”15
SEER FORECASTS Youngsters could be cast in the role of “expert” and asked for their “time-ofarrival” forecasts (give or take five years) for 25 high-impact/high-probability developments (social and material). Guidance can be had from the example shared in the essay in chapter 9 of this volume by William Halal. Computer software (as in Delphi models) could be used to chart several successive rounds of such forecasts, each round recorded only after open discussion in class of the designated “years ±5” and the underlying rational. Wrap-up classroom discussion could unearth revealing assumptions about tomorrow, about the innovation process, and about human nature, all of this of considerable educational value. For example, students could be asked to come up with—after considerable background research (including interviews with relevant teachers, com-
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munity figures, and so on)—their forecasts for the five-year zone of arrival for settlement of long-standing land-based disputes (e.g., Israel, Kashmir, or Iraq), the election of the first female president of the United States, the achievement of cures for various types of cancers and other leading causes of death, the disarmament of nuclear weapon stockpiles everywhere, or the first message to Earth from a permanent lunar station.
OVERSEAS FORECASTS EdF-guided students have much to learn from ongoing experiments elsewhere in shaping a finer future. To focus on only one timely matter—that of upgrading critical infrastructure systems—we have models worth study in, for example, Canada, where natural gas is being used to power vehicles; China, where massive new “green” cities are being built; Denmark, where solar and wind power are maximally used; France, where nuclear energy provides 80 percent of all power; Holland, where artificial islands expand usable land surface and the ocean is held at bay; Iceland, where geothermal and hydropower are major allies; Japan, where high-speed “bullet” trains show the way; and Nova Scotia, where tidal power is highly advanced. Taken as operational models worth adapting to our situation, these overseas projects can be usefully seen as forecasts—provided that K–12 youngsters first do due diligence and thereafter as voters elect to promote their employ.
“WHAT-IF” FORECASTS Young learners can profit from speculating about myriad impacts from possibilities unlikely of occurrence but rich nevertheless in what we can learn from pondering them. For example, in a July 28, 2009, column in the New York Times, writer David Brooks posed a “fantastical but thought-provoking” futures question: “What would happen if a freak solar event sterilized the people on that half of the earth that happened to be facing the sun?” Brooks went on to speculate that “our ability to have children links us to the future, and encourages our industriousness and faith in tomorrow. It helps give meaning and purpose.” Accordingly, Brooks concluded that “we are blessed with the disciplining power of our posterity. We rely on this strong, invisible, and unacknowledged force—these millions of unborn people we will never meet, but who give us the gift of our way of life.”16 Student teams could be asked to pose comparable what-if dilemmas for other teams to respond to, and a class could hear team forecasts and offer additional ideas about complex Rubik’s cube outcomes. One such what-if
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question of likely interest might ask, “What would happen if our robots soon had ‘minds’ fully as capable as our own?” Others might be “What would happen if China soon becomes more powerful than every other country, possibly even our own?” “What if the 12 or more nuclear-armed nations concluded that, first, banning all testing of atomic weapons and then eliminating nuclear-weapon stockpiles and soon after steadily eliminating all atomic weapons in favor of the development of peaceful nuclear programs was in their best interest, and what if non–nuclear weapons states agreed at the same time to more intrusive inspections by UN organizations?” or “What would happen if by 2050 we get a hint of an intelligent life form elsewhere in the cosmos?” These what-if questions need not be located in a distant future but can be immediate. For example, “What would happen if we decided to get serious about aiding the rehabilitation of the over 650,000 ex-offenders who return home from state and federal prisons every year—a number larger than the active-duty U.S. Army?” Our incarceration rate is presently “massively higher than those of other democracies and is now the highest in our history.”17 Part of that shameful record is due to the fact that lack of help has over 50 percent of ex-offenders back in trouble with the law within three years of release.18 What if we expanded the federal Second Chance Act of 2008 and created a safe transition zone in major cities that helped ex-offenders with housing, addiction treatment, job training, and family unification? Students could assess the rewards and costs of this what-if change in policy and weigh the contention that “the ability to see humanity beyond failure is what makes America the land of the second chance.”19 Likewise, students could explore the what-if implications if a major future-shaping change helped end misogyny (hatred of females). A case can be made that the struggle for gender equality is “the paramount moral challenge of our era.”20 Students could explore the costs of daily systematic abuses of females worldwide through infanticide, differential nutrition and medical care, maternal mortality, honor killing, and other deprivations. They could weigh the meaning of the contention that unleashing women’s energy is a key to a nation’s economic success. They could especially focus on the situation here, including sexual and spousal abuse, as “acknowledging misogyny close to home helps us think better about its sources and possible remedies.”21 A what-if learning exercise that honestly explores gender equality is likely to reward all across their life span. Finally, a what-if that is actually on the verge of implementation warrants the attention of EdF-guided students. As the Obama administration has endorsed extensive use of “behavioral economics,” we move into a bold new large-scale social experiment in nudging the future behavior
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of citizens in ways thought by “experts” to be in the citizens’ own best interests. Since we do not always behave rationally, as when we do not use helmets when on motorcycles, some “social engineers” believe that we must be steered into making better choices. A federal “regulatory czar” will try to make regulations recognize the limits of human rationality and adjust their rules accordingly; for example, “The same people who would skip investing in a 401 (k) if they had to ‘opt in’ to the plan will participate if they have to ‘opt out’ in order to skip it.”22 In this connection, several European countries already use an opt-out approach to help remedy such social problems as a dire shortage of organs for transplant. In the United States, close to 4,000 patients die annually, or about 13 daily, for lack of an available liver transplant. Some 80,000 languish for years on dialysis waiting for a kidney. The number of donors, however, was lower in 2008 than in 2005 despite decades of work to encourage people to sign donor cards and donate to loved ones.23 Nationwide, roughly 12,000 to 15,000 people have been declared “brain dead” but are being kept alive temporarily. Their comatose bodies could be “farmed” for three vital organs per person, but only half of them now wind up as donors. As doctors do about 20,000 organ transplants a year, we need far more people to agree to be donors in advance. Germany, which uses an opt-in system, gets only a 12 percent rate of participation. Nearby Austria assumes that citizens have opted in unless they expressly opt out—that is, act to register their unwillingness—and has a 99 percent rate of participation. Our national reliance on an opt-in approach, in sharp contrast, has us achieve only a 38 percent national rate level.24 Opt in or opt out? Behavioral economics, open to attack as manipulative, paternalistic, and patronizing, argues for policies that work by changing the default setting. It is fraught with future-shaping controversy, and EdFguided students could usefully get in here at an early stage of the matter.
DIRE FORECASTS Guided ably by a mature adult teacher, young learners might dare to look squarely into life-and-death matters humans generally prefer to shy away from. Typical is the prospect of bioterror warfare, as with the deliberate spread of smallpox by a radical group that possesses dried powdered smallpox. Those who urge our taking extreme defensive measures believe that they need to awaken a complacent nation to a genuine threat; their opponents insist that this forecast exaggerates the matter, as there is no evidence the al-Qaeda has the means to culture viruses, and dried smallpox is just too dangerous for even terrorists to attempt to handle. EdF-guided students
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could assess the opposing arguments and cautiously take a knowledgeable position in the debate.25 Forecasts of near-future wars over increasingly scarce supplies of water warrant attention. The Tibetan plateau and its environs, for example, running from China to Afghanistan, shelter the largest perennial ice mass on the planet after the ice at the two poles. Its snowfields and 18,000 glaciers feed almost every major river system in Asia. Many are now losing their capacity to build up enough snow and ice at high altitudes to compensate for the rate of melting at lower ones. Given present trends, almost 67 percent of the plateau’s glaciers could well disappear within the next 40 years. The average annual melting rate of mountain glaciers seems to have doubled after 2000 from the rate of 1980 to 2000. In the short run, of course, there will be an abundance of water. Experts worry now, however, about the long run: “There will be deficits. These will have national security consequences as countries compete for ever scarcer water resources supplied by transnational rivers with as many as two billion users.”26 EdF-guided students should find sobering value in exploring in this harrowing prospect. Climate change (discussed in the essay in chapter 6) is thought by many to be the key question currently facing humanity. Dire forecasts warn that failure to indefinitely stay inside a 2°C rise in average global temperature could set off dangerous feedback cycles leading to runaway global heating and the destruction of most life on the planet. Computer modeling suggests that a 1°C rise over the next 30 years is very likely, given the amount of carbon dioxide that we have historically and are presently emitting. Our chances of capping the damage at this 2°C level are put at less that 20 percent since the rate of increase in global carbon emissions has quadrupled in the past decade. Although the rise in global temperature was slowed a bit by the recession that began in 2008 and may be further reduced by a 2012 post-Kyoto world accord, fossil fuel energy remains the source of 80 percent of our world energy supply, and much combines to protect that “dirty” dominance. Some experts warn that if we do not arrest the emissions increase by 2015 and reduce it steadily so that by 2050 it has fallen 85 percent from today’s level, life as we value it may not go on at all. Plainly, EdF-guided students have much to study here.27 Finally, a more theoretical tact here could involve the unnerving question of whether to soon allow humans to volunteer for a one-way ticket to Mars. The intense solar radiation emanating from the sun’s cosmic rays will most likely require spaceship shielding so heavy as to make its fuel load last only for the trip there and not be useful for a return voyage. Astronauts who sign up must understand that they will spend the rest of their lives on the Red Planet, assuming that their trip there goes as well as intended. (Travel
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to reach the closest star, by the way, remains a matter at present of science fiction, as with our current best rockets, it would take us 100,000 years to get there.)28 Why would earthlings make this sacrifice? Students could study the argument of those scientists and futurists who contend that “we need to move beyond Earth if we are to improve our species’ chances of survival should something terrible happen back home [biotech warfare, a deadly massive pandemic, an enormous asteroid impact, massive climate change devastation, thermonuclear war, and so on]. This requires people to leave, and stay away. . . . To boldly go where no one has gone before does not require coming home again.”29 We have good reason to make humankind a multiplanet species. For example, we have identified something like 400,000 asteroids and are tracking over 100 that may yet pose a threat of a collision with Earth so awesome as to wipe out our species, among many others.30 So expensive and dangerous is human space travel—especially to Mars, the nearest planet where Homo sapien life might be settled—that students would do well to ponder this long ahead of near-future decision points. The pros and cons of an extreme solution to expanding the range of human civilization beyond our own planet—as by permitting one-way tickets into deep space—are complex and warrant extended reflection over decades, if not centuries, ahead: “NASA and Congress are unlikely to do something that could be perceived as signing the death warrants of astronauts.”31 Obviously allied to such matters are deep-reaching value questions. As we have proven ourselves capable of wretched atrocities, mass genocides, the Holocaust, and other unspeakable tragedies, we would seem earnestly in need of spiritual and ethical guidance. EdF, while agnostic where competing theologies are concerned, aligns itself with the humanities—and especially with utopian thought—in supporting efforts to improve our moral intelligence. EdF would have young learners wrestle with deep-reaching questions of faith in human goodness, intentions, rationality, trustworthiness, and the like. This exercise can help youngsters and their teachers nurture a keener personal sense of right and wrong and all the nuanced shades in between. Whatever personal theological faith they might hold, it could be enriched for their drawing reflectively on thoughts of tomorrow rather than only of the past and present.
DISARMAMENT FORECASTS EdF-guided students are likely to be surprised to learn that we are not as far along in disarmament as we might wish. To be sure, recent gains are
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impressive: “There are fewer ballistic missiles in the world today than 20 years ago, fewer states with missile programs, and fewer hostile missiles aimed at the United States. Countries still pursuing long-range-missile programs are fewer in number and less technologically-advanced than 20 years ago.”32 These gains not withstanding, there are still over 23,000 nuclear weapons in the world today (over 4,000 in Russia), even as smaller nations seek nuclear capability: “Today, the nuclear threat can be delivered by all kinds of states or terrorists, including suicidal jihadists for whom mutual assured destruction is a delight not a deterrent.”33 Indeed, since the late 1990s, when India and Pakistan tested bombs, “the perceived value of acquiring nuclear weapons around the world has increased, the cost of rule breaking has declined, and none of this has evolved to America’s benefit.”34 The United States and Russia have together 4,900 strategic nuclear weapons at the ready. The United States has not yet ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, signed by 182 other countries and ratified by 150, which limits the ability of nuclear states to field fancier warheads and makes it harder for nuclear wannabes to develop weapons. It cannot enter into force until nine key states—including the United States, China, and India—also ratify. The Obama administration has pledged to work for Senate ratification and has promised to rule out a nuclear first strike (something the Bush administration would not do) and to provide a “nuclear posture review” by the end of 2010. Students could study the pros and cons of the treaty, as it could push our nuclear arsenals, the number of strategic force launchers, and the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched missiles, and bombers to the lowest levels since the early years of the Cold War. One form it could take is being championed by Britain: “a new and comprehensive grand bargain on nuclear proliferation: access to civil atomic energy via an international uranium bank for states that renounce current or future nuclear arms, together with a reduction of nuclear weapons by nuclear weapons states.”35 Skeptics, however, worry about “a nightmare scenario, perhaps just ten or twenty years away—a crisscrossing regime of hairtrigger nuclear deterrence among unstable governments, some of which have collaborated with religiously motivated militants and terrorists.”36 Forecasts here differ radically. Some experts expect the U.S. Senate to decline to go along, fearing a loss of leverage in world affairs. Winston Churchill warned, “Be careful above all things not to let go of the atomic weapon until you are sure and more than sure that other means of preserving peace are in your hands.”37 Other experts expect the Senate to advance a vision of a nuclear-free world, one that drives down the world’s nine major nuclear arsenals to much smaller sizes “as quickly as possible—perhaps to the tens or low hun-
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dreds of weapons, in the case of the United States—and, while doing so, to make nuclear weapons as illegitimate and impractical as possible.”38 One proponent, Senator Dianne Feinstein, contends that nuclear disarmament is “the most important task facing global leaders today,” and she believes that progress here can set the world on a new course—all the more reason for attention going here in an EdF-guided curriculum.39
SINGULARITY FORECAST Arguably the most controversial forecast in contemporary futuristics, the term singularity refers to a time (say, 2035 C.E., give or take five or so years) when we may have created smarter-than-human machines. This may cause such rapid, thorough, and deep-reaching change as to have humans lose control of machine-based intelligences and end our dominion over all things. Indeed, a leading science-fiction writer, Vernor Vinge, who coined the term “singularity,” darkly speculates that intelligent machines “would use [people] the way we’ve used oxen and donkeys.”40 Widely employed in literature, movies, TV, and video games, this vision of smarter-than-us machines divides futurists into three camps: alarmists, such as Bill Joy, who worry about the risk we run of ensuing human captivity; enthusiasts, such as Raymond Kurzweil, who expect benign ultrasmart machines to offer huge advances in life extension and wealth creation; and the undecided types (probably the majority of futurists at this time). Students could wade into the debate and begin by taking note of presentday gains once thought only sci-fi fantasies, such as “a robot that can open doors and find electrical outlets to recharge itself. Computer viruses that no one can stop.”41 They could weigh the significance of the opening in 2009 of a “Singularity University” with courses to prepare a cadre to help society cope with the ramifications. They could assess the rebuttal of scoffers, such as “I suppose everyone is entitled to dream, but when the ‘technorati’ can’t find an effective solution to something as simple as pop-up ads or spam, I have a hard time believing they are on the verge of true artificial intelligence.”42 Careful to recognize that research and development here is global and well financed and has a covert military edge (“smart” weaponry gains are likely long before any “singularity” arrives), students can appreciate how very high are the stakes in this question of who (or what) shall stay in control. Synthetic biology also warrants student attention. A new discipline, it seeks to assemble the biological tools necessary to write programs that will not only alter nature but guide human evolution as well. No scientific achievement has promised so much, and none has come with greater risks
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or clearer possibilities for deliberate abuse, for “if it truly succeeds, it will make it possible to supplant the world created by Darwinian evolution with one created by us.”43 A pioneer in the field boasts, “We have got to the point in human history where we simply do not have to accept what nature has given us.”44 Ethicists are already worried about the wide implications of being able to alter nature so fundamentally. They note the lack of agreed-on mechanisms for safety, experiments, and so on. Who will control this new technology? Will everyone have access to its rewards, or are we heading toward a world of genetic haves and have-nots (as in the 1997 movie, Gattaca)? How likely are accidents that could have us held hostage to unnatural organisms we are not prepared to counter? Could terrorists use synthetic biology as a new weapon of mass destruction? EdF-guided students obviously have much here to consider.
SUMMARY There is no end of EdF projects worth incorporation into the K–12 world (curriculum, extracurricula, physical premises, and so on). The 12-item list in this chapter only hints at unlimited possibilities. An extended list, for example, might include an EdF “backcasting” project that studies historic “disruptive technologies” that have shaped our future (the steam engine, antibiotics, the atomic bomb, the contraceptive pill, and so on), study what many seers take to be the disruptive technology of our era, the Internet,45 or expand classroom work already under way in cuttingedge high school science courses that takes nanotechnology seriously—“its potential to transform solar power, and possibly cure cancer, as well as ethical and safety concerns surrounding the science.”46 Looking further out, projects might explore the exciting implications of the game-changing 2009 find of water on the moon, as this has the potential to fundamentally change our space program—“It means our astronauts may one day be able to ‘live off the land,’ which could significantly reduce costs.”47 They also might wrestle with high-quality packages of alternative cutting-edge ideas for building a cleaner, healthier, smarter world—ideas that “show that innovation is the most promising elixir for what ails us.”48 Once a school is energized by EdF applications, it is easy to forecast that participants will enjoy developing fresh learning ventures presently beyond imagination. Positive changes can be expected in the school’s culture, changes at once both incremental and also, in the long run, transformational. Convinced by evidence that learning and futuristics go better together, members of such a learning community can help take K–12 education to new heights.
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NOTES *As cited in Eliza Gray, “Samuel Johnson and the Virtue of Capitalism,” Wall Street Journal, September 11, 2009, A-19 (referring to Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, 1759). 1. See http://www.longbets.org, the Arena for Accountable Predictions; “a public arena for enjoyable competitive predictions, of interest to society, with philanthropic money at stake.” 2. Ian Berry, “Fear of Early Frost Heats Corn Market,” Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2009, C-13. 3. Michael S. Schmidt, “Turning the Trainer’s Table into an Actuarial Table,” New York Times, July 8, 2009, B-11, 14. “Every major league team and scores of independent analysts are trying to understand why injuries strike certain players.” 4. Tim Marchman, “A Computer Cracks the Cooperstown Code,” Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2009, B-6. 5. As quoted in Matthew Phillips, “Revenge of the Nerd,” Newsweek.com, June 8, 2009, 52. 6. Peter Hall, Great Planning Disasters (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), xx. “Muddling through is no bad prescription for the ordering of public affairs, so long as it is done with intelligence and foresight” (xxvii). 7. Invaluable here is Martin J. Smith and Patrick J. Kiger, Oops: 20 Life Lessons from the Fiascoes That Shaped America (New York: HarperCollins, 2006). 8. Advertisement in the June/July issue of ODE: For Intelligent Optimists, 1–2. 9. Advertisement taken out by Monsanto in the Wall Street Journal, June 10, 2009, A-7. See also http://www.ProduceMoreConserveMore.com. 10. Bill Bigelow, “The Big One: Teaching about Climate Change,” Rethinking Schools, Summer 2009, 24. 11. G. A. Smith, “Place-Based Education: Learning to Be Where We Are,” Phi Delta Kappan, April 2002, 584–94. 12. Art Carey, “On Vacation, Rediscover the Bliss of Disconnecting,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 5, 2009, C-1. “The glacial landscape compels geological contemplation. The vast night sky is spangled with advertisements for eternity.” 13. Science teacher Brani Burger of the Freedom Area High School outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as quoted in Grace Rubenstein, “Laying New Track: Project Learning Speeds Reform in a Pennsylvania Railroad Town,” Edutopia, December 2008/January 2009, 29. 14. Charles Isherwood, “Have You Ever Visited the Broncks?,” New York Times, September 18, 2009, C-3. 15. Lauren G. McClanahan, “Educating Heather,” Rethinking Schools, Summer 2009, 47. 16. David Brooks, “The Power of Posterity,” New York Times, July 28, 2009, A-21. 17. Michael Gerson, “Land of the Second Chance,” Washington Post, September 18, 2009, 23. 18. Gerson, “Land of the Second Chance,” 23. 19. Gerson, “Land of the Second Chance,” 23.
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20. Martha Nussbaum, “Seeing Women’s Rights as Human Rights and a Key to Countries’ Progress,” New York Times, September 8, 2009, C-5. 21. Nussbaum, “Seeing Women’s Rights as Human Rights and a Key to Countries’ Progress,” C-5. 22. Jason Zweig, “About Time: Regulation Based on Human Nature,” Wall Street Journal, June 20–21, 2009, B-1. “Of course, the financial industry will adjust its own behavior, trying to outsmart the new rules as fast as they are printed.” See also Neil King Jr., “Sunstein’s Ideas at Work in U.S. Policy,” Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2009, A-4. “The idea behind this approach is that rules work better if they are attuned to people’s habits and predilections rather than simply to a desired outcome.” See also Cass Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New York: Penguin, 2009). 23. Sally Satel, “About That New Jersey Organ Scandal,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 27, 2009, A-13. A draft bill would “enable governmental entities to offer donor benefits while raising penalties for brokering. States could offer health and life insurance to living donors, or funeral benefits to families of posthumous donors. Donors could also be offered a tax credit or perhaps a very generous contribution to a charity of their choice.” 24. Richard H. Thaler, “Opting In vs. Opting Out,” New York Times, September 27, 2009, 6-BU. “Mandated consent may achieve a higher rate of donations than presumed consent, and avoid upsetting those who object to presumed consent for whatever reasons.” 25. Wendy Orent, “America’s Bioterror Bugaboo,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 17, 2009, A-29. 26. Orville Schell, “The Thaw at the Roof of the World,” New York Times, September 26, 2009, A-21. “The ice field[s] . . . are melting in large part because of greenhouse gases emitted thousands of miles away.” 27. Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2008). All the statistics and ideas are drawn from this one remarkable source. “Unless we decide to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within just a few years from now, our destinies will already be chosen . . . as the carbon cycle feedbacks . . kick in one after another . . we will find ourselves powerless to affect the outcome” (219). See also Katey Walter Anthony, “Methane: A Menace Surfaces,” Scientific American, December 2009, 69–75, and Roger Howard, “The Politics of Climate Change,” The Futurist, November–December 2009, 24–28. 28. Claudia Dreifus, “A Conversation with Alan Boss,” New York Times, July 21, 2009, D-2. “The speed of light is so fast and distances are so immense between stars that there’s zero probability that anybody could come here to invade.” 29. Lawrence M. Krauss, “A One-Way Ticket to Mars,” New York Times, September 1, 2009, A-25. 30. Dreifus, “A Conversation with Alan Boss,” D-2. 31. Krauss, “A One-Way Ticket to Mars,” A-25. 32. Joseph Cirincione, nuclear arms expert, as quoted in Fareed Zakaria, “A Return to Reality,” Newsweek.com, September 28, 2009, 22. 33. Thomas Friedman, “Our Three Bombs,” New York Times, October 7, 2009, A-25. See also Dianne Feinstein, “Nuclear Agreement Is a Good First Step,” San
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Francisco Chronicle, July 10, 2009, A-15. “The odds are growing of terrorists obtaining a nuclear weapon in the next few years.” 34. Steve Coll, “No Nukes,” The New Yorker, April 20, 2009, 31. 35. Gordon Brown, “All Together Now,” New York Times, September 23, 2009, A-27. 36. Coll, “No Nukes,” 32. 37. As quoted in Keith B. Payne, “Arms Control Amnesia,” Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2009, A-15. 38. Coll, “No Nukes,” 32. 39. Feinstein, “Nuclear Agreement Is a Good First Step,” A-15. “Nuclear weapons pose a grave threat to humanity.” See also Editorial, “Just Say No,” New York Times, October 12, 2009, A-20. 40. Cited in Halal’s essay in chapter 9, as first quoted in Glenn Zorguette, “Waiting for the Rapture,” IEEE Spectrum, July 10, 2008. 41. John Markoff, “Ay Robot! Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man,” New York Times, July 26, 2009, A-1, A-4. 42. Brian E. Coggins, “Human vs. Machine: Which Brain Is Ahead?” (letter to the editor), New York Times, July 30, 2009, A-24. 43. Michael Specter, “A Life of Its Own,” The New Yorker, September 28, 2009, 56. 44. Jay Keasling, professor of biochemical engineering, as quoted in Specter, “A Life of Its Own,” 56. 45. In this connection, see Larry Downes, The Laws of Disruption: Harnessing the New Forces That Govern Life and Business in the Digital Age (New York: Basic Books, 2009). 46. Sean Cavanagh, “Nanotechnology Slips into Schools,” Education Week, April 1, 2009, 1. 47. Michio Kaku, “Water on the Moon!” Wall Street Journal, November 18, 2009, A-17. 48. The Editors, “World Changing Ideas,” Scientific American, December 2009, 50. See also Ann Feeney, “Getting to Solutions at WorldFuture 2009,” The Futurist, November–December 2009, 59–60.
Ideal High School, New School Day: Year 2020 (Log in: Cyber School Bus. World History: Teleport to Pangaea Virtual Island in Avatar Dress Code [Arab]. Prepare to Represent Palestinian Authority. Review Oslo Peace Accords.) Robert L. Frantz
Tags: Just-in-Time (JIT), U.N. Cyber School Bus, synchronous learning, bore holes, Net 2, Net 3, avatar, Pangaea, 3G technology, affective learning, asynchronous learning, Moodle, social presence, teacher presence, cognitive presence, Learning Course Management System, threaded learning, blended learning, and Swarm Intelligence Theory
Futurists have predicted that between 2020 and 2025, all education will be delivered on an individual basis. Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, in his book Disrupting Class, has predicted that half of all education will be delivered on an individual basis by 2015. Can this really be happening? Yes, because education could become virtually free through technology, education through technology could be delivered just in time and any place, and education through technology can be as effective, if not more so, than traditional “brick-and-mortar” education. These are very bold statements, but let me share my own education experience and research into our current technology revolution. My first experience in education at a distance involved global videoconferencing from my nonprofit organization’s studio in Washington, D.C. From this location and with access to high-speed Internet, we were able to invite local K–12 students to participate in the United Nations Cyber School Bus program. Once a year, students from around the world would come together to work as a team on building resolutions in support of the UN Millennial Goals. One particular year was exceptional because joining the program were high school students from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The subject was “Water 95
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as a Human Right” (who better would understand water as a human right than Africans?). The program also included participants in the videoconferencing from six other high schools and 80 students physically participating at the UN headquarters in New York City. The final resolution at the end of the day was voted on, approved, and presented by the students to the president of the General Assembly, who in turn presented it to the General Assembly as a whole for adoption. Our students in the studio were so excited that their school class later raised nearly $800 to be used to dig two shallow boreholes in a village dependent on subsistence farming (boreholes are shallow wells that provide temporary sources of water and are essential for survival during the dry season in sub-Saharan Africa). The exuberance shown by these students reflected both affective and cognitive learning. It is this kind of life event outside the normal classroom that could frame their future thinking and career paths. Another videoconferencing event involved students from Ukraine, Poland, and two schools from the United States who came together to discuss global politics. The student groups were required to act as the students from another country, and the results turned out to be rather humorous. At one point, the Ukrainians started scolding the Americans for, then, current Bush policies. But the Americans countered by saying that they were the Irish and that the Ukrainians should scold the Polish students who were representing the United States. The point of the exercise was to view the world through the lens of different countries and different cultures in order to arrive at common consensus leading to peaceful solutions to difficult problems. Today, with the evolvement of Net 2, Net 3 technology, what we did globally through videoconferencing we have now expanded into a much larger global net. The global virtual community today allows students to interact with other students from around the world 24/7. The students can teleport anywhere in the virtual world and do their “meet-ups” in a virtual classroom, around a virtual campfire, or in any desirable scenario location. They would arrive in their Avatar bodies, dressed according to the local customs of the country but speaking with their actual real-time voices. When controlled academically, my scenario would have the students teleport to my island known as Pangaea, which metaphorically resulted when the continental drift reversed itself, returning our planet to its original single-island state—“a place where students can learn that they are part of one world and not a world apart.” Here they can view world problems through a different-perspective lens and share their common future dreams and hopes with fellow students. This technology has serious academic interest. (See http://www.secondlife.com. If you meet Colonel Watanabe in the virtual world, that’s me.)
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Let us return to the videoconference experience I shared previously because shortly following this session, a significant world event occurred that demonstrated the power of another emerging technology: the mobile phone. The successful Orange Revolution in Ukraine was credited in part to student activists who coordinated their activities via their mobile phones. Another significant international protest occurred recently in Iran, where mobile phones powered by 3G technology allowed students to use Twitter to communicate and coordinate their activities. If you were on a Twitter grid at this time in the United States, you could follow the minute-by-minute events that occurred during the protest marches. It is predicted that this form of technology will result in significant improvements in democracy and economic growth around the world. As an example, developing countries, like those on the African continent, should soon realize a technological revolution as 3G mobile phone use is introduced along the existing extensive cellular transmission tower infrastructure. I conduct extensive nonprofit work in Africa and predict that education provided via mobile phones, when combined with existing microfinance programs, will dramatically close the digital/economic divides that have been a major frustration on the continent. In our nonprofit work, we refer to this as “Innovation ⫻ Implementation ⫽ I2.” The enhancement of communication will translate into economic freedom, increased democracy, and increased personal dignity among the African citizenry. Teachers today should consider mobile phones not as a nuisance but as an educational asset. A recent observation of a very successful seminar started out with the speaker providing his Twitter address and encouraging participants to Tweet during the presentation. The audience shared their thoughts on the topics with other participants and with the speaker. The speaker could review the Tweets on break and address them when he resumed speaking. The speaker could also survey the audience and even quiz them on their understanding of the subject. This demonstrates how mobile phones can be a resourceful education tool promoting both affective learning and cognitive learning. So far, I have talked only about synchronous technology and social software tools. But to examine the bold predictions made in the beginning of this essay, we need to understand the evolvement of asynchronous technology, referred to as online learning (learning at a distance). Let’s address this in terms of convenience, cost, and effectiveness. We are seeing that postsecondary education is rapidly moving toward online education. Almost half of education at this level is now offered online. The outreach to adult learners is proving successful because online education is convenient, occurring at any time and anywhere in the world. Phoenix University now commands impressive market share with its global
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online programs. Other universities are moving in this direction but are encountering resistance from tenured professors, unions, and administrative bureaucracy. Community colleges are also moving in this direction, initially through their certificate programs. Virginia community colleges are expediting online training for their teachers because of the threat of the swine flu epidemic. This could become a permanent change in their future concentration. K–12 schools are also exploring online education—initially as an outreach to the rural communities but also as an alternative to traditional secondary education schools. In regard to cost savings, today we have free “open-source” Internet platforms, such as Moodle (Modular Online Delivered Learning), which is gaining competitive advantage over more expensive, licensed software, such as Blackboard. Moodle involves only server and administrative costs. The Moodle tools allow courses to easily be built by teachers themselves, thereby avoiding expensive designer and programmer costs. This disrupting technology will soon make education available and affordable globally. Like the mobile phones in Africa, this new pedagogical delivery will enhance global productivity, enhance economic freedom, promote democracy, and result in the Pangaea metaphor becoming a reality. Finally, is online learning effective? As of this writing, a 93-page report on online education was provided by SRI International to the U.S. Department of Education. This meta-analysis, conducted over a 12-year period and representing 99 studies, compared online with traditional classroom performance on the same subject and reported that online students scored in the 59th percentile on tested performance as compared to the average classroom performance in the 50th percentile. There is increasing evidence to further support these results, but the key to effective online education is understanding theory behind the pedagogy. Learning technology has outpaced theory development, but “strong theory” is starting to catch up. One theoretical model advanced by R. Garrison is called the “Community of Inquiry” and has been validated by other researchers. His model includes three cluster constructs: social presence, teacher presence, and cognitive presence. The interaction of these three clusters results in the overall education experience: the social/cognitive overlap supports discourse, the social teaching overlap sets the educational climate, and the cognitive/teaching presence results in the proper selection of content. In order for teachers to be effective, they must be trained in a Learning Course Management System that introduces them to the theory so that they can properly utilize the tools available on virtual platforms like Moodle and effectively deliver their education programs.
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A very powerful aspect of online learning is that it facilitates constructivist pedagogy, which is student-centric. When we recognize that there may be as many as 13 different learning styles (styles like Kolb’s Experimental Learning Theory) and as many as eight intelligence domains (Gardner), the student-centric approach allows teachers to tailor education to meet the student’s individuality. Further, online constructivist pedagogy necessitates critical thinking, and online learning accomplishes this through “threaded learning.” Threaded learning in turn is the opportunity for the teacher to demonstrate his or her academic knowledge. Although online teaching requires more preparation and attention by the teacher, the pedagogical rewards are decidedly more satisfying. There is no doubt that our Generation Y (Millennial) students can adapt to online technology, for they are the “gamers.” A question that must be addressed is the age at which students can begin the transition to online learning. The answer lies with maturity, but researchers use the notion of “autonomy,” or, if we think of a continuum line for autonomy, at one end we would find structure and at the other end dialogue. The more autonomous (mature) a student is, the more the teacher can rely on structure: a good syllabus outline, thoroughly written lectures, and clearly written declarative course objectives and assignments. At the other end of the continuum would be the word “dialogue,” where less mature (less autonomous) students would require more verbal instructions through the media of video, audio, chat rooms, blogs, or face-to-face interaction. The age of the student would require a careful evaluation of each student by the teacher. I would boldly suggest that this could be offered to students as young as K–5. Those students demonstrating the necessary maturity could start with blended learning (a combination of in-class and online classes) and transitioning to full online when ready. In closing, a question pertinent to the previous discussion must be addressed. With exploding technology, where information available to us is growing at an exponential rate but can absorbed at only a finite level, how do educators filter out extraneous information? As a possible solution and for your homework assignment, search “Swarm Intelligence Theory.” Prepare a 500-word essay and upload it by the end of next week. Remember to demonstrate critical thinking.
Part III REFINING EDUCATIONAL FUTURISTICS CONTENT
Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another. —John Dewey*
Two chapters hereafter add warranted complexity to the matter and remind us that things are seldom what they seem to be. Chapter 5, “Ignoring Educational Futuristics,” tells of a recent ongoing effort to create a unique urban inner-city school worthy of the audacious name high school of the future. That early results suggest it is anything but offers many valuable lessons to help guide more successful launches and, not incidentally, blunt the barbs of cynics who cite this one (still evolving) case as “evidence” of our alleged inability to pull this off. Chapter 6, “Educational Futuristics and Greening Turmoil,” urges green change agents in the K–12 world to not mistake today’s relative reform progress (as in getting solar for school roofs and so on) as a guarantor of success for other more costly reforms. Rather, drawing on Educational Futuristics’ (EdF’s) grasp of the record of similar far-reaching change efforts across American educational history, the chapter anticipates increasing resistance from vociferous elements of the public and offers related advice to those K–12 greens who appreciate that to be forewarned is to be forearmed (an old saw of timeless worth). If we soon make overdue gains in introducing EdF, we might begin to graduate the sort of can-do youngsters whom filmmaker and education reformer George Lucas calls for: “They would be more independent thinkers, more critical thinkers, more logical thinkers. And they would be better 101
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equipped for a world that is completely overwhelmed with information. The key to education is to help students find information, evaluate that information to test its accuracy, and use information in creative ways.”1 Coursing through all this material is the idea that we have a remarkable foundation on which to build. Futurist Wendell Bell, for example, offers over 40 reasons to “foresee a sustainable future of hope, individual satisfaction, and social harmony.” Among others on his list are such items as “nanotechnology that may usher in a new post-industrial revolution on a chip, allowing manufacture of self-replicating ‘knowbots’ designed to produce goods and services, and eliminate many scarcities, . . . greater worldwide cooperation . . . [and the] establishment of human settlements on the moon, Mars, and elsewhere.”2 This empowering image, predicated on cautious optimism, can help us move forward with well-grounded hope in both head and heart, the better to help us formulate and act on change-earning strategies of merit.
NOTES *As quoted in John Cook, The Book of Positive Quotations (New York: Gramercy, 1993), 448. 1. As quoted in Joe Mullich, “George Lucas Wants More ‘Greek Philosophers and Cobblers, ’” Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2009, A-15. 2. Wendell Bell, “Foreword: Preparing for the Future,” in Lessons for the Future: The Missing Dimension in Education, by David Hicks (London: Palgrave, 2002), xi–xii.
5 Ignoring Educational Futuristics
From the errors of others, a wise man corrects his own. —Publilus Syrus*
An extraordinary daylong forum held on May 28, 2009, in front of a packed audience of educators, edu-wonks, and policymakers had a small group of 13 academics, an education journalist, and an educational entrepreneur share the results of their field research concerning what is arguably the bestknown high school in the world: the Philadelphia School of the Future. The presenters reviewed the school’s three years of planning followed by three years of operation (2003–2009) seeking unique transferable lessons in how to upgrade schooling in underperforming large urban districts. Across the day, I took extensive notes, eagerly gathered research reports that will appear in a high-brow book in 2010, and resolved to write this short informal account of the findings and my interpretation of them—as I had been thunderstruck by the anomalous absence of attention to educational futuristics (EdF) both in the forum and in researcher accounts of the school’s reality. When in November of 2009 I unexpectedly had the opportunity with 50 school superintendents from everywhere to make my third visit to the school, I made a special point to discuss sensitive matters with two especially frank staffers and listen as well to the new “chief learner” (principal)—a half day that went far to firm up my ideas about the venture. There are sterling educational models worth replicating and others worth drawing on instead more for unintended warnings about how not 103
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to proceed. Fortunately, we learned eons ago to appreciate what can be learned from unintended negative lessons. We have such a valuable opportunity in the ongoing story of the so-called school of the future, and as EdF advocates, we have much of value to learn from its mistakes. Begun in 2003 and opened in 2006 at a staggering cost of $62 million, the school was funded and staffed by the Philadelphia School Board. Its Microsoft advisory partner—the largest software company in the world— sought field-proven results from the venture that could be scaled up and replicated nationwide if not also worldwide. It had high hopes that its cutting-edge educational software could provide a new template for making a significant difference in urban inner-city education.
STEPPING OFF ON THE WRONG FOOT Philadelphia’s School of the Future is now well known to over 2,000 visitors from over 50 countries and most states of the union (to say nothing of very extensive attention from the mass media). This notwithstanding, four EdF-related problems in the design and execution of this comprehensive, nonselective high school stand out: an initial overemphasis on information technology (IT), an initial underemphasis in hiring on futuristics, an initial indifference to tomorrow in the building’s stark ambience, and an initial rejection of EdF consulting (full disclosure: I initiated and was part of the rebuffed offer). Each start-up problem helps explain why, as of 2009, the entire venture remains a pale shadow of its potential and bares hardly any resemblance to a school of the future. Indeed, writing at the end of September 2009, an education journalist suggests that “its problems have left many analysts wondering whether the much-ballyhooed school can live up to its hype . . . a visitor would be hard-pressed to decipher how the school is fundamentally different from a typical high school, aside from the superiority of the faculty.”1 First, there is the problem of imbalance in emphasis. Advised from the outset by the Microsoft Corporation, the school—after three years of preopening planning—set out to meld new computer technology (Microsoft based) with new learning approaches (project-based learning, prose “report cards,” and so on). Everything pivoted around innovative uses of IT. Unfortunately, however, though not surprisingly, there was a wide range of computer skills among both teachers and students (selected by lottery, with no academic standard for admission). To make matters even worse, there were serious bugs in the software and many hardware glitches in the critical early months when stability and reliability were vital. The school’s wireless system was unstable, and outages eroded trust in IT.
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Much to the further bewilderment of youngsters (now numbering 750), the school opened deliberately without any library or textbooks, and each student—regardless of his or her computer skills—had to rely entirely on a laptop lent by the school. Indeed, there was no budget line for purchasing texts. In addition, the school initially employed an innovative “report card” that substituted evaluative terms for customary letters or numbers, much to the puzzlement of some students and their folks (95 percent of the families were low income). Confusion and self-doubt were common (at least as told to me by engaging students who led two walking tours I took over several months in 2007). Second, the planners chose to hire a brand-new staff without holding them to any level of futures consciousness. Conspicuous by its absence in the hiring process was any attention to tomorrow—the name of the school not withstanding—and futures consciousness was not employed as a criterion in the selection process. Teachers, while apparently standouts in their specialization, came with no particular or professed interest in the future or in helping youngsters nurture any such interest (even if puzzled youngsters had taken notice of the school’s name). A rare opportunity to create from scratch a learning community of future-focused educators and students went unrealized. Third, while the very expensive Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design–certified building remains today a stunning piece of graffiti-free progressive “green” architecture, the planners passed up a precious opportunity to create any sort of explicit futures ambience. They could have posted future-oriented artwork, put sci-fi book jackets in display cases, or hung student drawings of space settlement life. Instead, the school interior (at least when I toured in 2007 and again in 2009) was antiseptic, bare, and boring, much as might be found in a hospital or prison but not as might be expected in a high-spirited, zesty, and creative community of teenagers and their teachers. Fourth, the planners rejected relevant aid available from area and Washington, D.C., EdF sources. Drawing on two long discussions I had had in 2006 with the chief learner (principal) weeks before the doors opened to the entering class, I arranged to provide the planners with a formal EdF presentation by myself and two contributors to this volume: Professor Stephen Steele and Timothy Mack, president of the World Future Society. Our PowerPoint slides explained at length and in depth how the School of the Future could employ a futures-oriented curriculum, a seeming obligation given the name they had chosen for the venture. We indicated how EdF would complement a Microsoft goal of helping to create a learning community that was inspirational, not just functional. But our advice was casually passed over in favor instead of employing “old wine” in “new
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bottles,” which is to say, the high-profile use of conventional curriculum as taught via free laptops and classroom whiteboard technology (books remained off limits). Naturally, there are other error-based lessons worth note. Any such venture, for example, should have an IT troubleshooter on the premises from day 1 (the school did not get one until year 3). It should help create and nurture a Parents Association from day 1 (the school did not take this seriously until year 3). It should forge and nurture bonds with influential community leaders from day 1 (the school has an uneven record). And it should host many and diverse community groups and activities when not in session (the school does little of this).
DO THE RIGHT THING Contrariwise, there are at least eight sterling lessons worth immediate adaptation: 1. Four years after opening its doors, the Philadelphia School of the Future has finally introduced a mandatory digital-literacy assessment for all incoming students. 2. Freshmen are taking a new required course to prepare them to create high-quality multimedia projects. Later in the year, they will design and construct staircases for a local organization that builds houses for the homeless. 3. The Teacher Hiring Committee includes many student members. 4. The selection process for new teachers requires them to submit an extensive online application as proof of computer use proficiency. 5. The principal is not called by that hackneyed title but is called instead the chief learner, an antirankism term of value in narrowing stultifying status differences. 6. Although hard pressed by a district-policed standards-driven curriculum, teachers discretely pursue innovative project-based learning within the confines of their classrooms. The culture has always rejected the conventional “teach by telling, learn by listening” model and its “milewide, inch-deep” survey-style courses. 7. Consistent with this, youngsters have begun peer-to-peer instruction, the most powerful educational tactic of all, and they now tutor one another in computer skills as well as provide minor computer repairs at the school’s Help Desk. 8. A team of teachers, students, and parents are meeting throughout the 2009–2010 school year to redesign—once again—the curriculum.
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Microsoft, having invested considerably in staff time (and still doing so), will now curate the entire project. It plans to incorporate lessons from the ongoing project (it is hoped the negative ones as well as the eight positive ones cited previously) into a Global Innovate Schools Program for use in 12 countries and over 35,000 schools worldwide. In the interim, it is owed considerable appreciation for its willingness to have this Philadelphia project put under the microscope.
SUMMARY On balance, given its four initial mistakes (IT myopia, hiring blindness, ambience blandness, and EdF neglect), the story of the School of the Future remains more a cautionary tale than one of a model worth emulating— though many on its staff intend to change this soon for the better. At best, it would seem “an ideal whose realization remains somewhere down the road.”2 An IT consultant who was a member of the original design team and who helped from 2003 through 2007, ruefully writes, “Do we have a school of the future? I don’t think so. We have a beautiful building that is a safe haven for its students. We have a traditional curriculum being taught in a conventional way. We even have some teachers who insist on using the books they are used to and not creating online materials or using the portal and the Internet.”3 Resistance to change, a strategy of establishing or reinforcing barriers to entry, haunts the scene.4 Which is not to justify using the word failure. Mary Cullinane, the Microsoft liaison from the very outset, can have the last word regarding any such overblown verdict: “It is only in its third year, and innovation always takes time. We can’t use a short-term yardstick for a long-term journey; shame on us if we give up so easily, and so quickly. We’ve learned a great lesson here: that no matter how much money and technology you pour into something, it’s really the people who matter.”5 EdF users can take from the tale four valuable guidelines to introducing far-reaching change into a new setting. First, do not mistake IT innovations for the whole of educational futuristics. Necessary but insufficient, such props help show the way—but the way is far more a “soft” qualitative matter. Second, every prospective new staffer for the classroom, library, gym, front office, and so on should be asked in the hiring process about their futures consciousness, such as how much attention they have been paying to trends of consequence, to innovations, and to other future-shaping matters, especially as these bear on the lives of K–12 students. Third, enough effort cannot be made to create a futures ambience. The setting tells much, and young people in particular pick up clues to what is really valued by
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their elders from settings. Finally, outreach to and cooperation with area and national education futurists is a no-brainer. We should take every opportunity to adopt “best practices,” and draw for inspiration and particulars on outstanding ideas and models available around the globe. Coursing through all this is an empowering contention of musician Frank Zappa: “Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”6
NOTES *John Cook, ed., The Book of Positive Quotations (New York: Gramercy, 1993), 519. 1. Kathleen Kennedy Manzo, “School Sees Better Days in the Future,” Education Week, September 30, 2009, 18. See also the school’s website at http://www.micro soft.com/education/schoolofthefuture.htm. 2. Manzo, “School Sees Better Days in the Future,” 18. “The school’s messy path to reform has included leadership instability, wavering commitment from the central office to its mission, swings in curricular approaches, technological glitches, and challenges in meeting the academic needs of a disadvantaged student population.” 3. Jan Biros, a researcher at Drexel University, as quoted in Manzo, “School Sees Better Days in the Future,”19. “Most educators here [at the school] agree. But they have not given up on pursuing something better, something closer to the original plan.” 4. On strategy as an attack on change, see Jonathan A. Knee et al., The Curse of the Mogul (New York: Portfolio, 2009). 5. As quoted in Meris Stansbury, “School of the Future: Lessons in Failure: How Microsoft’s and Philadelphia’s Innovative School Became an Example of What Not to Do,” eSchool News, June 1, 2009, 6. 6. Quoted in “A.Word.A.Day,” http://www.wordsmith.org, October 7, 2009.
6 Educational Futuristics and Greening Turmoil
It is no exaggeration to say that how educators of conscience respond to the ecological emergency will echo through the ages. —Editors of Rethinking Schools*
Where ongoing efforts to green K–12 schooling are concerned, high-profile operational goals are increasingly taken for granted; for example, energy is being earnestly conserved. School buses are being converted to use ethanol or natural gas. Reuse of water bottles is being promoted, and all sorts of waste material is being recycled. Some schools are even recycling waste vegetable oil from the cafeteria and converting it into biodiesel fuel for use in school tractors. These gains are commonly regarded as a sure thing, a bandwagon winner of indefinite duration. Maybe—or maybe not. The situation offers a good example of how the use of educational futuristics (EdF) can help clarify matters and even surface an early-alert warning of value. Appearances to the contrary, the “greening” of K–12 schools may be anything but a closed matter. Rather, a costly fracas appears likely to extend many years into the near future. The battle has not been decisively won by the “greens”; it has barely been joined, and in this grim possibility rests an extraordinary challenge to K–12 educators—those who do and also those who do not, for a variety of reasons, currently endorse “green” gains (especially in school venues). Users of EdF, drawing on the over 200-year record of change in school culture, can forecast increasing turmoil rather than “smile-button” 109
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affirmative consensus where school greening efforts are concerned. Why? Because all challengers to the status quo of K–12 schooling—such as in the case of today’s spirited pro-green advocates—have naturally and always stirred antichange opposition, reflecting burning issues already railing the larger society, where a list of winners and losers in American businesses will inevitably be rearranged. Key “hot-button” issues in school culture change remain unresolved, and disputes can flare up at anytime (e.g., the proper place of prayer in the classroom, the content of sex education material, the proper weight of quantitative measures of “learning,” the best placement of “challenged” children, or the soundest use of bilingualism). Other cultural controversies have earned a sort of resolve (such as mixing the genders in the same classroom, albeit same-sex schools persist and may be gaining more recruits; mixing the races in the same buildings, albeit resegregation by locale makes stealthy gains; teaching dogma, as in primary charter schools operated by fringe groups, albeit students must measure up to basic state educational goals; and so on). While, of course, there is no “telling” the future—an arch-tenet in serious futuristics—users of EdF can extrapolate cautiously from past and present culture “wars” in K–12 schooling. Employing these tools, they can suggest that school-based greening advocates prepare for considerable turmoil and likely setbacks. Naysayers and deniers remain dedicated and determined: “There is still a small army of propagandists and in-the-pocket scientists who want the world to believe the planet is not in crisis. What’s worse, the untruths spread by these climate change challengers end up in schools and textbooks.”1 Given the ongoing financial squeeze experienced by most American households, to say nothing of entities like towns, cities, states, regions, and the federal budget, a pro-savings pressure is likely to dominate public policymaking considerations for several years to come. Official estimates by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) put average annual cost per household from higher energy prices at $98 to $140; estimates commissioned by an industry group put the average cost per household at $1,000 in 2015 and $1,400 in 2020.2 Accordingly, candidates for school boards, for example, can be expected to run on platforms promising no property tax raises (e.g., the infamous Proposition 13 of California) and thereby ensure no significant gains in school revenues. “Bean-counting” opposition is likely to challenge enthusiastic calls by greens for adding solar panels to school roofs, releasing students for community service work helping to weatherproof nearby low-income households, developing roof vegetable gardens on or off of school buildings, experimenting with wind power, buying locally raised organic food for the school lunchroom, and so on.
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Innovators want to spend, and bean counters prefer not to do so: seldom do the twain meet but that one “vanquishes” the other. America’s schools already annually spend more ($7.5 billion) on energy than on textbooks and computers; forecasts of steady increases in energy bills over the indefinite future cast a dark shadow.3
ON THE NATIONAL SCENE The proposed 2009 climate bill—the most ambitious energy and climate bill ever introduced in Congress and the first comprehensive attempt by the United States to mitigate climate change by putting a price on carbon emissions—is only now (as of November 2009) wending its way to possible implementation. As its related costs get passed along in complex ways to average Americans (the House version had 1,400 pages of details), controversy will heat up. The EPA and the Congressional Budget Office put the cost at less than 50 cents per household per day, though that does not take into account benefits from avoiding hard-to-calculate costs associated with accelerating climate change. However, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, estimates that the cost would be much steeper: $11.78 per day in the coming decades. According to House Republicans, the costs could “cripple the U.S. economy and drive American jobs to countries that do not have climate regulations.”4 Critics of green-related costs already demand sharp restrictions on proenvironment outlays: “The Republican leadership continues to claim that the [2009 climate bill] will cause an unacceptable rise in energy prices.”5
ON THE LOCAL SCENE Local school boards are likely to insist that superintendents economize more than ever and pass the word along to school principals. The threat here to pro-green innovation cannot be overestimated. Schools exist within “nested systems,” and their vulnerability to top-down cost-containment pressures is considerable (ask any careerist in a school’s main office). Much hinges on the willingness of local voters to boost taxes on themselves or to signal willingness to have the federal government boost taxes on them (smart money bets against both of these possibilities). Resilient and creative pro-green teachers, of course, will try to finesse spending strictures, as by reusing materials and eluding costs (as on hardcopy texts) by substituting virtual items such as free online “texts.” They can also fight back with cost-savings data such as from a 2006 study of 30
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retrofit green school buildings. It found an average 33 percent reduction in energy use and a 32 percent reduction in water use, all this at a considerable savings in cost (green schools cost less than 2 percent more than conventional schools to build and thereafter have much greater savings).6 Especially attentive students can learn an informal “lesson” here of worth about how one stays in the good fight when obstacles expand. To compound matters, however, these teachers wrestle with postrecession job insecurities new to the K–12 scene: “In a sign of how severe the employment downtown is getting [July 2009], even schoolteachers, an occupation once viewed as recession-proof, are feeling the pain . . . [and] the brunt of lost jobs has been borne by younger teachers [just the type most drawn to green advocacy] . . . the [standard] increase in teaching positions has leveled off as school districts struggle with budget pressures.”7 As if cost-containment blowback against outlays for new green gains were not challenging enough, another EdF forecast concerns the likely impact of baby-boomer retirements. Seventy-nine million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 are arriving in their retirement years, and the oldest became eligible for Social Security in 2008.8 By 2030, one in five Americans will be 65 or older, a ratio never before known in the country’s history (although already a severe drain on the economies of Japan and various European nations).9 While the best-educated, healthiest, and, arguably, the smartest generation thus far in our history, many boomers are nevertheless increasingly worried about the postrecession solvency of their 401k retirement plans and/or the deterioration of large-scale pension plans: “This recession has really shocked people. Never before has the bottom fallen out so fast or affected so many people so deeply. . . . Previously recessions came on more slowly, their layoffs occurred more gradually. . . . Something fundamental in our society has changed.”10 Many retirees have heard or read Cassandra-like forecasts about the “end,” or at least the alleged inadequacy, of the Social Security and the Medicare programs (e.g., there may soon be too many retirees dependent on too few working-age people).11 Not surprisingly, then, retired dollarshort boomers are expected to “slow the economy down for the next 12 to 14 years.”12 Their new mantra counsels “don’t spend on expensive coffee, eat home more often, hold on to that car longer, and put away the dream retirement will buy you a house on the shore.”13 For many years to come, intergenerational conflict may intensify as those under and those over age 65 argue whether to raise taxes to fund services relied on by more and more oldsters and who gets what from ever-scarcer private and public financial resources. A significant number of oldsters can be expected to champion frugality in all things—in household outlays, in spending by school boards, and so on. As they were one-fifth of all voters
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in November 2008, while only 13 percent of the population, their voice is heard by lawmakers.14 One index of how serious the unfolding situation may be is available in this 2004 warning: “This is the moral crisis of our age. We are collectively endangering our children’s economic future . . . our country has spent decades piling up astronomical bills for the next generation to pay. Forcing them to do so will destroy their lives and ruin our country. The only solution is to radically, but rationally, reform our social insurance institutions and take other critical steps to prevent our nation’s bankruptcy.”15 Complacency, in short, concerning the future of the greening of K–12 schooling would seem mistaken. This seemingly surefire development is by no means ensured. Rather, ever more opposition can be expected from pocketbook-focused citizens—young and old alike—hurting from rising costs associated by them with greening mandates, regardless of the scientific truth of the matter. Paradoxically, many protesters may actually agree with many green ideas about “saving” the Earth in the long run but still oppose pro-green expenditures that pain them in the short run. In response to this hard-nosed realism, users of EdF can offer advice to progreen teachers (and their allies in school administration and school boards). To begin, they can recommend the use of personal examples. School personnel, for example, can begin to conspicuously “walk the (green) talk.” In place, for example, of yesteryear’s reliance on single-passenger gas-guzzling car commutes to and from a school or school district office, school staffers can chose to carpool, switch to public transportation, or even try bicycling (especially if commended for this effort by administrators who add plaudits to a personnel file). Local media should be encouraged to take notice, the better to help area taxpayers appreciate the earnestness of a pro-green cadre. Second, users of EdF can search the Internet for research that specifies cost savings possible from this or that proposed green innovation. It will not suffice to argue in general terms, for example, that “if we were to weatherize and retrofit millions of buildings in the United States, the energy costsavings would let you pay for that work in two to four years.”16 Attractive propositions of this sort require detailing to be taken seriously. Moralizing and jawboning count for far less with dollar-short school board members who need cost-effective, revenue-positive answers to their questions. Elected school board officials want to know what might be saved if they authorize new green expenditures. For example, in what time period can a school board expect what sort of savings from what costs entailed in installing solar panels, switching to waterless toilets, or developing an instructional nature trail on school grounds? They need assurances that much-needed fiscal responsibility will be evident in planning, execution, and upkeep—a reasonable expectation worth honoring throughout.
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For example, in 2009 in Watertown, Massachusetts, proponents of renovating a warehouse into a very green school building broadcast widely an estimate of an $80-per-square-foot cost as compared to $250 for new construction. They also noted impressive savings made by requiring that recycled wheat board—made of newsprint and soy flour—be used in building lockers and storage cabinets; it does not need painting and requires little upkeep.17 A third option would have a school’s pro-green cadre position itself as responsibly open-minded where basic issues and reform specifics are concerned. Given how complex the matter is, there is ample room for people of integrity to respectably disagree about the current soundness of alternative climate models and the underlying quality of science in conflicting apocalyptic or even recovery scenarios. In addition, the jury is still out concerning the relative worth of alternative reform options: “The real debate is not between the bill’s supporters [House climate control bill] and the dead-ender climate clown club. It is between cap-and-trade’s supporters and its critics within the scientific and environmental activist communities. Groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have science if not politics on their side when they decry Waxman-Markey as an industry diluted half-measure with soft gums that falls far short of what is necessary to avoid cataclysmic climate change later this century.”18 We are caught up in a long-standing attempt to learn which policy mechanisms work best, “and the answer is far from in.”19 Inside the K–12 world, green advocates should promote and protect their reputation as citizens who value debate and are open to new findings. Users of EdF can direct attention to websites that highlight “best practices” elsewhere. Green advocates in the nation’s 14,000 or so school districts are busy even now learning how to do right in this turbulent matter. The sooner the “wisdom of the crowd” is drawn on and field-tested successes elsewhere (including in other countries) are adapted by K–12 activists, the greater the likelihood school-based greens can turn turmoil and strife to educational advantage. Finally, users of EdF can discretely, if also earnestly, follow advances in esoteric matters that just might—over many years ahead—make the difference. Nanotechnology, for example, sometimes thought the game changer of them all, enables humans to manipulate particles from the ground up. This ability to morph objects at a molecular level might soon provide us with clean alternatives to carbon-based fuels. As noted in chapter 4, the singularity, another game changer of consequence, enables humans to change the brain via the insertion of biochips and thereby vastly augment human consciousness: “Possibly, the future brain may come to perceive the hid-
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den mysteries of ecology, and therefore, learn to co-exist in the world more ecologically.”20
SUMMARY EdF-guided K–12 educators should make an effort to buffer schooling from an anti-green backlash and also stay abreast of relevant if distant reform possibilities. They have a unique and invaluable role here to model for their young charges. Successful, their environmental learning schools can “help create a new generation of green consumers, inventors, installers, and educators.”21
NOTES *Editors of Rethinking Schools, Summer, 2009, 5. 1. Editor, “Teaching Green,” Rethinking Schools, Summer 2009, 19. 2. Kevin Conley, “The First Secretary of Climate Change,” Popular Science, July 2009, 54. 3. Hilary M. Oswald, “The Answers Are Blowing in the Wind,” Edutopia, June/ July 2009, 15. 4. David A. Fahrenthold and Steven Mufson, “Q and A in the Climate Bill,” Washington Post, July 5, 2009, A-19. 5. John M. Broder, “Adding Something for Everyone, House Leaders Won Climate Bill,” New York Times, July 1, 2009, A-17. 6. Vivian Loftness, “Growing Green Schools,” Edutopia, December 2009/January 2010, 31. See also James Daly, “Reading, Writing, and Retrofits,” Edutopia, December 2009/January 2010, 44–46. 7. Alex Frangos, “Even ‘Recession Proof’ Schoolteachers Feel Pinch of Employment Downtown,” Wall Street Journal, July 3, 2009, A-2. 8. Barrett Sheridan, “Boomer Bears,” BusinessWeek, June 29, 2009, 18. 9. George O. Hagestad, “The Aging Society as a Context for Family Life,” in Aging and Ethics: Philosophical Problems in Gerontology, ed. N. A. S. Jecker (Clifton, NJ: Human Press, 1991), 21. 10. Jack Welch and Suzy Welch, “Winning Back a Wary Workforce,” BusinessWeek, July 13 and 20, 2009, 88. 11. Arthur B. Shostak, “Boomer Alert! Trends Worth Careful Attention,” Career Planning and Adult Development Journal, Fall 2006, 104. 12. Harry Dent, Investment manager, as cited in Sheridan, “Boomer Bears,” 18. 13. Maria Panaritis, “Whom Would You Push Off the Boat?” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 5, 2009, E-2. “Sacrifice, it seems, is being used as a coping mechanism for pragmatists.” 14. Eduardo Porter, “Think about the Grandkids,” New York Times, October 12, 2009, A-20.
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15. Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Scott Burns, The Coming Generational Storm: What You Need to Know about America’s Economic Future (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 246–47; italics in the original. 16. Van Jones as quoted in Sarah van Gelder, “Van Jones,” Yes! Summer 2009, 13. See also Van Jones, The Green Collar Economy (New York: HarperOne, 2008), where many useful numbers can be found. 17. Oswald, “The Answers Are Blowing in the Wind,” 15. 18. Alexander Zaitchik, “The Dark Side of Climate Change: It’s Already Too Late, Cap and Trade Is a Scam, and Only a Few Will Survive,” http://www.alternet.org/ story/141081, July 7, 2009. 19. Daniel B. Botkin, “Letter to the Editor,” New York Times, July 3, 2009, A-20. 20. Arthur Saniotis, “Future Brains: An Exploration of Human Evolution in the 21st Century and Beyond,” World Future Review, June–July 2009, 10. “A poignant question here is how will global warming and climate change impact the brain’s evolution?” 21. Loftness, “Growing Green Schools,” 32.
Optimistic Environmentalism: A Guide for the Responsible Educator Tsvi Bisk
MY EDUCATIONAL DUE DILIGENCE Energy and environment are the central issues of human civilization in the twenty-first century. K–12 must educate for scholarship and core skills but also for hope, optimism, and the shared values of national and societal myths. In other words, the educator must walk a fine line between the radical skepticism of the critical scientific approach and a hopeful optimism without which life is not worth living. This balancing act has always been difficult—never more so than today.
MY ENVIRONMENTAL/ENERGY DUE DILIGENCE Teaching students how to define terms precisely is one of the primary tasks of the educator. For example, ecology is a science, while environmentalism is an “ism,” that is, an ideology, a set of beliefs, of how human beings should live in their environs. Ecology literally means knowledge of our house (our house in this instance being nature itself) as economy means management of our house (our house in this instance being commercial human society). Environmentalism is a value-laden philosophy and social movement concerned with how human beings treat their environs (natural and social). The ideology of environmentalism can either be based on the science of ecology (knowledge) or stray into theology (a dogmatic belief system). 117
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Environmentalists might be divided into two major categories: 1) human centered (anthropocentric), a point of view that centers on the value of human beings and advocates for a clean environment because it is good for human beings, and 2) nature centered (biocentric), a point of view that centers on the value of nonhuman species, processes, and ecosystems, the proponents of which sometimes denigrate policies based on a primary concern for human beings. You could have your advanced students research the philosophical foundations of both approaches and create debating groups representing each view. You could then add these questions: 1) Are these two approaches mutually exclusive? Human beings are both product and part of nature, and one branch of biocentrism adopts a scientific position that conscious life is the very foundation of nature. 2) In a democracy, which argument for quality environmental policy would be most effective? Would the average citizen be most persuaded by arguments relating to the health of his or her children or to the welfare of endangered species? In addition, you can consider two axioms for classroom discussion about global warming based on the science of ecology: 1) Global warming has been a natural phenomenon for the past 20,000 years (New York was covered by an ice sheet half a mile thick as recently as 10,000 years ago). 2) Human activity since the industrial revolution has significantly increased the pace of global warming well beyond what any natural cycle could account for and might trigger a cascading effect that could be catastrophic for human life. Since it is a natural phenomenon, “stopping global warming” and “saving the planet” are unscientific catchphrases. The globe will warm or cool as it pleases (we are in for another “ice age” in about 10,000 years no matter what we do), and the planet will be here for billions of years after the human species has disappeared and will eventually be destroyed by our expanding sun. More accurate but less sexy slogans would be to “minimize the human contribution to the present natural cycle of global warming” in order to slow its rate and “save ourselves.” It is not the planet that needs saving or even life on this planet; rather, it is us, the human species, that needs saving. The planetary ecosystem has survived mass extinctions in the past (95 percent of species wiped out, 65 percent of species wiped out, and so on). Evolution will certainly rise above our puny efforts to lay waste to the ecosystem. The real question is whether the human species will survive its own criminal negligence regarding the environment. Despite general public perception, the “last” ice age did not “come to an end” 10,000 years ago. We are in an intermediate period of the current ice age called the Holocene, which is considered to be an interglacial period of the current ice age. Interglacial periods are intervals of warmer global
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temperatures that separate glacial periods within an ice age—periods when global ice sheets melt, raising ocean levels. The planet’s oceans have risen 40 to 130 meters in the past 20,000 years. Your students could be asked, “How, if oceans are connected, can one account for this differential—shouldn’t the rise be uniform across the planet?” Their answers should indicate that tectonic plate movement pushes some landmasses upward (the Himalayas, the Alps, and the Rockies are “growing” every year). The vast weight of glaciers has pressed the landmass down, while their retreat liberates the landmass, which then rises significantly. These and other factors (such as the thermal expansion of water, which varies according to clime) contribute to the differential.
CLASSROOM DISCUSSIONS AND PROJECTS The stage has been set for fruitful classroom discussions and research projects. Why are predictions of sea levels rising an additional one to two meters by the end of the twenty-first century supposed to be so terrible if they have already risen from 40 to 130 meters over the past 20,000 years? Is the increase in the rate of rising levels the variable that is of concern, and, if so, why? Will saving the environment for healthy human habitation be a crushing burden on our economy? If history is any judge, the opposite will be the case. It will create a more robust economic foundation of human civilization and greater economic opportunity for more individuals. The economics of environmentalism is a subject worthy of many student research projects. The space program could serve as an analogy. No economist would have recommended undertaking the space program on purely economic grounds. Its great expense was considered justified for security and political reasons alone. Yet much of modern economy has derived from it: cell phones, satellite communications, the Internet, computers, computer-based design and manufacture, and so on. Might we not expect that a massive national or international project to completely liberate the planet from dependence on fossil fuels by 2050 would have much the same results? We would create economic sectors and products (and thus opportunity and growth) that we cannot even imagine. Professor William Halal of George Washington University claims green technology is already “a $500 billion dollar market and expected to reach $10 trillion by 2020.” Your students could review the economic history of innovation and national projects instituted for noneconomic reasons: the interstate highway system, the Internet, space, and so on. Informed positions on policy suggestions are a necessity for the twenty-first-century citizen.
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Your students should know that responsible policymaking is complicated. Some believe that there are more immediate dangers to human civilization than global warming—are these dangers that human technology can eliminate? Examples include asteroids and comets, the La Palma megatsunami, and the Yellowstone supervolcano. Students could be tasked to research these alleged dangers as well as proposed solutions and take positions regarding policy priorities. Given limited budgets, what should get priority: global warming or these issues—and why?
BAD WAYS OF ARGUING Ben Franklin once said that you never win an argument—you only make an enemy. When many environmentalists engage global warming deniers (often politically conservative) in debate, they often adopt a tone of condescension that is guaranteed to arouse resentment. Since many conservatives believe that the only proper function of government is to protect the person and property of the individual and provide for the common defense, environmentalists might note that pollution damages property and health, while dependence on oil compromises the common defense. Your students could debate the issue from both perspectives. Have them research the economic costs of pollution (damage to property, health costs, and so on) as well as the claim that American energy policy is financing the enemy in the war on terror. When the real property, health, and defense costs of conventional energy are considered, we may find that alternative energy is already competitive with conventional energy. Can we drill our way out of a shortage of energy? The answer is a resounding no. It beggars the imagination as to how serious people can still chant the mantra “drill, baby, drill.” Even if global warming deniers are right, we have only two decades to significantly implement alternative energy solutions if we wish to sustain our modern way of life. It is the declining availability of both oil and coal that is shocking. “Drill, baby, drill” is an empirically bad argument. Minority contrarian views to the “scientific consensus” about global warming should be treated with respect because reference to scientific consensus is also a bad way of arguing. It is a reliance on “authority” rather than reason. The job of educators in a democratic society is to cultivate skepticism about, not respect for, authority. This is especially so since the historical record of the scientific consensus has not been brilliant. The scientific consensus has been wrong regarding Galileo, Harvey, Pasteur, Semmelweis, Jonas Salk, and others. Almost all scientific progress has been made by individuals going against “scientific consensus.” This does not mean that the scientific consensus is always
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wrong. Indeed, on this issue, I believe that it is right. It is simply a poor, antieducational way to argue. Risk management as a function of policymaking should be brought into the mix. Denying a 5 percent chance that global warming doomsayers are right is also very bad arguing from a purely scientific perspective. If this probability occurs and would spell catastrophe for humanity, what should be done? Should society take steps to neutralize it or not? Your students can research corporate risk management practices as they might apply to environmental issues.
UTOPIAN THINKING AS AN EDUCATIONAL DEVICE Our primary job is to help children envision themselves in a more positive alternative future that they can help make—to stimulate ambitions to (in the words of Tom Paine) “reinvent the world.” Here, utopian thinking and futurist scenarios have a vital educational role to play. Let us envision a possible energy/environment reality by 2099 (within the lifetimes of many students, given present life expectancy trends). You might use the following as a platform for discussion and research: “Everything mentioned exists or is scientifically plausible and technologically doable.”
SCENARIO: PLANET EARTH 2099 In 2099, human civilization has become a closed system—that is, 100 percent recycling of all human waste and zero externalization into the commons. The depolymerization of all organic waste (sewage, garbage, and so on) has become the major source of liquid fuel (replacing oil). This recycles existing CO2 instead of adding CO2 from fossil fuels. Algae growth (which consumes CO2 as a feedstock) tops off liquid fuel shortfalls and, along with massive global reforestation, creates CO2 sinks. Global atmospheric CO2 has been reduced to pre–industrial revolution levels, significantly slowing global warming. Energy productivity has become the dominant theme. New lighting technologies, smart materials, and superlight composites, together with 100 percent recycling, enables humanity to maintain a rich consumerist civilization at declining cost to both economy and environment. The cradle-to-cradle philosophy of McDonough and Braungart is triumphant. Lighting technologies in 2099 have surpassed compact fluorescent lightbulbs and light-emitting diodes. Buildings are built from smart materials that heat when it is cold and cool when it is hot and that turn sunlight into
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electricity. Most homes, hotels, and hospitals have minidepolymerization units that convert sewage and garbage into fuel. Many buildings have become completely independent self-sustaining energy units. Airplanes, vehicles, and trains are built from superlight composites such as carbon nanotubes, which were prohibitively expensive years ago but which industrial engineers have learned how to produce cheaply. The savings in fuel when jumbo jets weigh 50 tons instead of 400 tons is tremendous. The same is true of cars, trucks, trains, elevators, ships, and so on—in short, anything that consumes energy in order to move. Since liquid fuel is now an algae or waste derivative, which is infinitely renewable, humanity has solved its energy problem. The possibilities of space have also become a reality in 2099. Most mineral extraction now comes from the asteroid belt or the moon, and this has enabled our precious planet to begin to heal its scars. Space elevators lift up toxic waste to be disposed of in that great incinerator in the sky called the sun and bring down raw materials and finished products. Energy for this solar system economy is provided by space-solar energy generators capable of operating 24/7. Our home, this Earth, has now become a engaging, empowering, and enlightened bedroom community instead of the gigantic waste dump we had turned it into in the past. We have assumed the stewardship that has always been our shared obligation, our contribution to Earth’s well-being.
Part IV EXTENDING EDUCATIONAL FUTURISTICS
To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable. —Helen Keller*
Each of the three chapters in this section tackles a separate if related fundamental question: How do we get there from here? and What is there likely to be there when we get there? In the first instance, the focus is on getting educational futuristics (EdF) adopted in the United States from the level of the classroom through to that of the nation (and soon, thereafter, the world). Later, the focus shifts to the foreseeable future, and the puzzle wrestled with asks how the content of EdF itself might differ over the years ahead, so rapid are changes coming in relevant technologies and sciences. The three chapters are alike in being seriously speculative. Together, they whet the appetite for tomorrow’s preferable EdF choices and also responsibly raise alarm about preventable matters. Chapter 7, “Educational Futuristics and a Paradigm Shift,” takes the entire discussion beyond the present to advocate a far-reaching remaking of K–12 education. A case is made for an EdF-centered approach, the details of which are explored at some length. In Chapter 8, “Educational Futuristics: Delivery Possibilities,” hopeful attention goes to a “perfect storm” of promising matters—the remarkable federal emphasis at present on funding K–12 innovation, the prosaic nature of contemporary educational reform specifics, the possibility that key change agents might finally be ready to “discover” and endorse EdF, and 123
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the “trim-tab” possibilities of the charter school movement where adopting EdF is concerned. In chapter 9, “Educational Futuristics Tomorrow,” the potential of three controversial matters is explored, as each shows signs of soon impacting with major significance on K–12 education. The first, community organizing, is readily devalued as a shopworn underperforming “loose cannon on the deck,” a surprising topic to include in a discussion of schooling’s future. EdF, however, frames the matter quite differently and raises the possibility that its time may have come. The second subject, cognitive neuroscience, is as little known as community organizing is readily recognized (albeit few Americans can define it). Barely under way as an exciting scientific frontier, it may yet change everything we think we know about teaching and learning and about teachers and learners. A mix of leading sciences and the humanities, it continues to attract to its labs and field studies more and more of the “best and the brightest,” a promising sign where advancing EdF is concerned (see the related essay by Daniel Shostak). The chapter’s third subject is still more exotic yet. A logical extension of the communications revolution, it asks what K–12 might resemble if learners come equipped with casual voice-dictated 24/7 wireless access to all the information on the ever-expanding Web. In addition, their guide in the matter might be extraordinarily “smart” software in the form of an intelligent personal agent (IPA) whose humanlike attributes make it a serious competitor for the learners’ favor with a classroom human teacher. Taken together, radically improved community organizing projects, radically developing cognitive neuroscience, and a radically different information management system (via a “warm-and-fuzzy” IPA) would seem a mix worth continued scrutiny , the sort that EdF users can ably provide (see the related essays by William Crossman, Robert Frantz, Marsha Rhea, and David Pearce Snyder in this volume).
NOTE *As quoted in Gretchen Dianda and Betty J. Hofmayer, Older and Wiser (New York: Ballantine Books, 1995), 153.
7 Educational Futuristics and a Paradigm Shift
The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed. —William Gibson*
Alvin Toffler, perhaps the world’s best-known living futurist, urged in 2007 that we start a national dialogue about the schooling we really want for our youngsters: “Let’s sit down as a culture, as a society, and say, ‘Teachers, parents, people outside, how do we completely rethink this?’”1 Were we soon to take up the challenge, we would find, for openers, as essays in this volume by Joseph Coates and also by David Pearce Snyder make clear, a zesty paradox. Our history in educational reform reveals a propensity to live in high tension with two seemingly contradictory forces or ideas at the same time. At present, we impose on K–12 schooling a quantitative testing focus via the federal-mandated No Child Left Behind Act. Yet we also take pride in encouraging qualitative gains, as when our charter and magnet schools get accolades for successful experiments. We uneasily endorse both extremes—quantitative-bolstered conservatism at the core of K–12 schooling and yet also bold risky qualitative efforts at the periphery. We require classroom alignment with state-dictated curriculum but also wink at the discrete autonomy of experienced teachers in the classroom. We accept incremental evolutionary progress but also listen attentively to leaders wax eloquent about audacious goals. This time-honored self-contradictory and thereby self-limiting paradigm will no longer suffice. It is time for a paradigm shift, one that dares to “move the cheese,” so to speak. 125
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Paradigms are knowledge filters and sets of rules that simplify thinking. As such, they become difficult to recognize as we tend to take them for granted (“as everyone knows . . .”), In short order, a paradigm can prove more of an encumbrance than an aid, as it can mask faulty premises, unexamined assumptions, and a bias in favor of preserving the status quo. Holders of an antiquated paradigm are as much as hostages to ideas and values that could be obsolete or are becoming so. A paradigm shift enables us to see the same information and ourselves in a new way, as in coming to differently see the needs of K–12 youngsters and our role as educators in meeting these needs. Recent American history is rich with examples of such far-reaching shifts. For example, we have gone from banning abortion to now allowing it on request, from regarding smoking as a private matter to banning it in pubic places and emphatically discouraging it, from outlawing same-sex intimate relations to now legalizing same-sex marriages in five states, from banning adoptions by same-sex couples to now permitting it almost nationwide, from banning use of marijuana to allowing it for medical purposes, and from outlawing assisted suicide to legalizing it in three states (Montana, Oregon, and Washington).
PARADIGM-SHIFT RECORD Where education is concerned, we have had our fair share of paradigm shifts. We have gone, for example, from isolating intellectually challenged youngsters to now mainstreaming them in conventional classrooms, from reserving teaching posts in the younger grades only for females to now welcoming males, from forcing pregnant teachers to take leave to allowing them to decide when to do so, from stigmatizing vocational education classes as dumping grounds to regarding them as valuable career preparation sites, from stark discrimination against female athletic programs to mandated equal treatment, and, most recently, from profligate uses of energy and materials to green-influenced efforts to conserve energy and reduce our carbon footprint. The current major paradigm shift under way promotes so-called twentyfirst-century skills. Its promoters call for replacing “brick-and-mortar” school buildings with a “brick-and-click” hybrid approach, replacing the sage-on-a-stage role of the teacher with a guide-on-the-side approach, and replacing test-centric assessment criteria with performance-based measures regarding adaptability, collaboration, creativity, global awareness, media and technological literacy, and problem-solving finesse. This new paradigm, in short, boasts “a particular vision of the future and the cultural ideals that it embodies.”2
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Unfortunately, absent from the previously mentioned twenty-first-century skills prescription—and its rather prosaic vision of the future—is exactly what educational futuristics (EdF) can help K–12 learners seek: a discerning appreciation for alternative perspectives on tomorrow. In addition, EdF offers an empowering tool kit for using this appreciation profitably across a lifetime as well as for helping to improve the future. EdF emphasizes the value of commitment, loyalty, and trust—each a virtue ignored in the twenty-first-century skills paradigm—and without which we are not likely to soon restore our postrecession confidence. Accordingly, the K–12 education paradigm shift now under way will not reward as it might unless and until we achieve a thoroughgoing integration of EdF into it.
PARADIGM-SHIFT PROPS The artful, creative, deliberate, and diplomatic introduction of EdF would promote five attributes discussed next that compliment the twenty-firstcentury skills prescription and increase the likelihood American youngsters will graduate high school “global citizens” able to both thrive in a global economy and help set matters right. First, every iota of K–12 schooling would have a futures connection— from A to Z, or from algebra through to zoology (and every subject in between, including extra curricula matters). Every aspect of a school’s culture would include attention to future subject matter. Young learners, for example, could expect cafeteria employees to be able to explain nutritional choices, even as a school bus driver could answer their questions about the recent conversion of the bus to natural gas use. There would be no waiting for the last class of the semester to hear a teacher imagine his or her subject out 5 or 10 or more years: that sort of brow-arching visioning would be integral to the course and part and parcel of the futuresfocused ethos of the culture. Second, experimentation would be endless, creative, and transferable. With the future understood as rich in possibilities (negative as well as positive), the learning community would bring unfettered curiosity to the table, regard everything as open to question, and thrill to the (research) chase, so to speak. School food, for example, would be studied with an eye toward returning some of it (back to the future) to scratch cooking as was true 30 years ago. Today, more than 80 percent of the nation’s 14,000-plus school districts cook fewer than half their entrées from scratch, although advocates for better, healthier school food hope that $100 million in 2009–2010 federal stimulus funds may soon lead to improvements in the situation.
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EdF-guided teachers could promote attention to wellness-linked foods, novel ethnic foods, and other menu items that take youngsters beyond present-day clichés into more adventurous eating experiences.3 Drawing on unprecedented communication links made possible by razzle-dazzle information technologies, EdF enthusiasts would study, test, and share schooling-relevant findings—as with futuristics K–12 nutrition—as never before. Third, young learners would be full partners in the venture. The “sin” of rankism, arguably the worse “ism” of them all, would be avoided by a concerted effort to respect the dignity of every learner, regardless of age: “The reason so many students—regardless of color—withhold their hearts and minds from learning can be traced to the fact that their top priority and constant concern is to shield themselves from the rankism that permeates education from kindergarten to graduate school. Rankism erodes the will to learn . . . it must be negotiated out of all of our social institutions.”4 Adult educators might be called “colearners” rather than “teachers” if the learning community concluded that the conventional title made an invidious and superfluous distinction. Colearners would work with youngsters rather than do things to them. As caring role models, they would exemplify taking intellectual inquiry—and youngsters—seriously.5 There would be no separate restrooms or parking spaces for staff, and they would be expected to casually join students in the same pleasant school cafeteria. Above all, key administrative decisions would be made in concert with all affected parties, as, for example, with student government represented on all top decision-making bodies rather than as, at present, only by key (adult) administrators in isolation from youngsters. Allied across the age divide, all would commit to making K–12 education finer than before they got involved. Fourth, cooperative relations with schools around the globe would be common. Trading project ideas, research findings, and other aids to EdF gains with high-performing systems across the world and in virtual settings like “Second Life” would be normative. Students from other cities, states, and countries would add value to the mix. In addition, outreach would be made to learning sources like the Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope Project. Schools in 37 states and 14 countries already take part, with 48,000 students profiting from a special curriculum built around NASA’s programs and real-life missions.6 Likewise, attention would go to adapting practices from innovative educational methods, such as the Waldorf approach, which infuses art, music, and movement into lessons and allows a teacher to follow his or her class from first grade through eighth grade.7 In place of a competitive ethos, emphasis would be placed on cooperation, the better to nurture a future where far-reaching collaboration trumps the temptation of shortsighted “zero-sum” relations: “It’s important to be outward-looking in reforming
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education. Recycled local solutions are no longer enough. Bold, brilliant, and better alternatives beckon.”8 Finally, even heralded “best practices” would be understood to have an expiration date, the better to help keep up an appetite for innovation. “Best practices” have a tendency to become ossified, so comfortable do participants get with increasingly familiar routines that originally posed engaging challenges are rewarded in both material and nonmaterial ways. To escape from this velvet trap, schools infused with an EdF orientation would trade “old-shoe” comfort for fresh gains made possible from new untried material—this a brave and empowering, if also an unsettling, option. Typical is the daring-do required to move beyond e-books to test opensource digital textbooks, a newcomer already hailed by some educators as the “next big app” in K–12 schooling.9 At sites like that of the CK-12 Foundation (http://www.ck12.org) or Currika, teachers can adapt textbook material at no cost and combine items into a custom-tailored “text.” Called a “flexbook,” it can include links to supplemental material and be updated 24/7 to respond to changing events and discoveries. Best of all in these times of economic stringency, all such texts are free.10 Likewise, an appetite for innovation would have teachers be “first responders” in using “vooks,” a publication that boldly intersperses videos throughout electronic texts that can be read and viewed online or on an iPhone or iPod Touch (a supporter contends that “you can’t just be linear anymore with your text”). Subjects seldom thought of as learning resources, including the school cafeteria ambience, the school recess ambience, the school bus ambience, and all school-based sports, will be looked at anew. (Relevant here are $5,000,000 of “pure innovation” awards for “promising ideas” newly available from the U.S. Department of Education to help “develop a culture of innovation and continuous improvement.”)11
PARADIGM-SHIFT PRODUCT Taken together, these five components of an EdF culture—ethos, experimentation, entitlement, entanglement, and expiration—make for a heady mix, a culture at considerable variance from that one we know today in far too many K–12 schools. Plainly, as the devil is always in the details, nurturing the five attributes— if done artfully and in high spirits—should be an exhilarating experience. Students may not only come to possess job-gaining skills but also achieve a higher “futures IQ” as they learn how to question alternatives for shaping tomorrow and improve what they first considered adequate. EdF supporters may ratchet up the quality of questions that they never stop asking about improving EdF, for, as John Dewey counseled, “Arriving at one goal is the
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starting point to another.”12 Best of all, we will have earned a thoroughgoing paradigm shift in K–12 education.13
SUMMARY Why might we soon achieve a pro-EdF paradigm shift? The essay in this volume by David Pearce Snyder suggests “four irresistible forces” that in combination make highly likely “a dramatic break with the past,” namely, the postrecession necessary to “do more with less,” the arrival of peak oil pricing, a growing shortage of K–12 teachers, and the popularity with young people of information technology devices that trump conventional teaching tools. In his essay, William E. Halal forecasts that “the automation of rote learning will likely cause the same result that occurs as we automate any human activity—attention shifts to higher-level functions . . . K–12 education will never again be the same.” In turn, Will Crossman, in his essay, suggests that present-day reliance on reading will give way to reliance instead on emerging interactive voice-in/ voice-out information technologies that employ all-sensory cognitive powers. Replacing the written word in this way “carries great potential for a total positive redesign of K–12 education.” All the more reason, then, to step out smartly now and, drawing on an operational plan for advancing EdF (such as the five-year plan discussed in chapter 2), get on with it: K–12 youngsters—present and as yet unborn— merit nothing less.
NOTES *As quoted in “Books & Art,” The Economist, December 4, 2003, 16. 1. Alvin Toffler, “Future School,” Edutopia, February 2007, 53. 2. Jeffrey Dill, “Teaching the Virtues of a Global Citizen,” Culture, Fall 2009, 3. 3. Kim Severson, “Schools’ Toughest Test: Cooking,” New York Times, September 30, 2009, D-5. 4. Robert W. Fuller, Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2004), 2. 5. In this connection, see Alfie Kohn, “The Value of Negative Learning,” Education Week, September 16, 2009, 33, 40. See also Alfie Kohn, “Foreword,” in Turning Points: 27 Visionaries in Education Tell Their Own Stories, ed. Jerry Mintz and Carlo Ricca (Roslyn Heights, NY: Alternative Education Resource Organization, 2010). 6. Alissa Walker, “Out of This World: A Charter School in the Mojave Desert Charts the Heavens,” Edutopia, October/November 2009, 50.
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7. Malaika Costello-Dougherty, “The Waldorf Way,” Edutopia, October/November 2009, 32–36. In 2009, the first public high school inspired by Waldorf opened in Sacramento, California. 8. Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley, “From Fear Factor to Peer Factor,” Education Week, September 16, 2009, 31. 9. Judith Curr, publisher, as quoted in Rich Motoko, “Curling Up with Hybrid Books, Videos Included,” New York Times, October 1, 2009, A-4. 10. Kara Platoni, “California Goes Digital,” Edutopia, December 2009/January 2010, 14–15. 11. Erik W. Robelen, “Potholes Ahead on Innovation Fund,” Education Week, 29, 3, September 26; 1, 26. 12. As quoted in John Cook, ed., The Book of Positive Quotations (New York: Gramercy, 1993), 299. 13. For an unsparing account of drags on innovation in the K–12 world, see Michele McNeil, “States Are Lagging on Innovation Front, New Score Card Says,” Education Week, November 18, 2009, 6–7.
Fixing Has Failed—Let’s Revolutionize K–12 Joseph Coates
K–12 is one of the most heavily bureaucratized sectors of our society and, hence, one in continuous active opposition to innovation, change, the identification of failures and shortfalls, and the moves to remedy them. A dozen or so educational situations in K–12 have been repeatedly examined by task forces or commissions, followed by inaction or halfway measures.
THE IRON TRIANGLE Following World War II was the baby boom with the inevitable massive growth in public education that taxed the bureaucracy to determine the quality of the army of new teachers and how to reward them. Bureaucracy wants people to be identical, at least with regard to their pay-grade levels and the services provided. Uniformity simplifies rule making and the administration of rewards and sanctions. Needing many new teachers and with no means to adequately certify them, a tacit deal was struck, creating an “iron triangle”—a catchphrase to indicate a three-way set of relationships that is virtually unbreakable. The bureaucracy turned to the universities, which agreed that they could produce the necessary number of qualified teachers. In turn, the teacher unions and the people hiring the teachers now had a certification mechanism. The iron triangle makes it difficult to argue differences among teachers, which would call for a flexible pay structure. With the apparently objective university certification adopted by the local school bureaucracies and the 133
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generally high admiration in which the university graduates were held, the iron triangle was welded into a shape to serve school administrators, universities, and labor unions. Fixing the educational system is never going to work because the concept of fixing implies that there is some thing, whether it is a truck, a newly constructed building, or a school system, that is basically sound but where something relatively minor has gone awry. Hence, let’s fix it. It is intrinsic to bureaucracy to shun core problems. Its deepest-seated functional belief is that it can always fix things that are awry. Colleges find that perhaps as much as one-third of their incoming freshmen class need remedial courses in what two generations ago were routine high school English and math. It illustrates another intrinsic failure in the system. There is no coordination, feedback, response, or declaration of needs from elementary to high school or from high school to college or, in the reverse direction, complaints from college to high schools and from high schools back to elementary—corrective feedback does not fit the bureaucratic model.
IGNORING MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES A quite different sort of neglect is the way the school system has turned its back on the marvelous work coming out of Harvard on multiple intelligences. The conventional IQ test is really a test of two intellectual domains, the spoken and written word, and mathematics, particularly arithmetic and geometry. Two things relating to the use of the IQ test interfere with education. One is that totally wacky sense of democracy in the widespread refusal to recognize that kids of various IQ levels need different course content as well as teachers in different roles. The educational bureaucracy is the great leveler, trying to dish out the same material to all students. The Harvard work by Howard Gardner shows that there are as many as 9 or 10 different intelligences that should be taken into account by the school system. For example, we all know people who are exceptionally gifted in music or in human relations or who always seem to know where they are (they never get lost). Others have great insight into their own strengths and limitations. Introducing these newly recognized intelligences that are primarily genetic and, to some extent, socially and environmentally caused into school planning would be transformational in people’s lives, family, work, and other institutional and political activities. Some progress is slowly being made in getting awareness of these new concepts into K–12.
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THE MOST NEGLECTED GROUP The most neglected group of students in K–12 is not the handicapped, those needing social support, or those needing a free lunch. It is the students who are the potential future leaders of society who are most neglected. The school system throughout the country consistently lies about those students with IQs of 140 or higher. The school system’s position about those kids is that they should not be moved ahead but rather have their program enriched. If your IQ is 140 or higher, there are few enrichment programs that will meet your skills, challenge your performance, and raise you to new levels of excitement about learning. There are notable exceptions throughout the country of giving appropriate education to the exceptionally bright. (Specialized high schools with worldwide reputations are located in New York City and suburban Washington, D.C.) The school bureaucracy throughout the country lies—claiming that it is a social disadvantage to the students to skip grades. On the contrary, research shows that there is no significant effect on the social adjustment of girls moving ahead as many as three grades and on boys as many as two grades. Children quickly accommodate to the new age level of classmates and are readily accepted. Most of the numerous imaginative programs developed since the Great Depression (80 years ago) about the education of the superintelligent kids are ignored by nearly all large and small school systems For the best and the brightest, K–12 schooling is primarily an exercise in boredom.
THE CATASTROPHIC COLLAPSE OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION A quite different sort of failure of the system is the collapse of vocational education, which now is not tied to the real structure of employment. People engaged in traditional skilled craft vocations are in declining numbers, while white-collar work is increasing and now dominates the workplace. Meanwhile, the concept of vocational education has become a meaningless catchphrase in too many communities and too many schools, standing for the place where the dummies are put because they could never succeed in college entrance programs. Vocational education should be one of the most attractive opportunities for students who are interested in work for both their head and their hands. There is a growing shortage of plumbers, carpenters, electricians, stonemasons, and all those essential occupations that build and maintain the physical side of our society. The greatest void in vocational preparation is for those who will be white-collar workers.
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PHYSICAL CONDITION AND HEALTH The physical condition of American schoolchildren is widely and continually publicized as a national scandal—overfed, underexercised, and having little contact with physical games or team activities. To suggest that the physical well-being of students is outside the school budget is inane, especially in cities. The unprecedented extent of obesity marks two failures of schooling: first, to give a proper place to satisfying youths’ animality, and, second, to deal with diet and nutrition, both at school and at home, in a way that relates effectively to children’s interests, still-forming tastes, and thinking patterns.
SEXUALITY The physiological—and particularly the sexual—maturation of children is coming earlier and earlier, with no significant plans for straightforward sexual education. Students are working their own way by trial and error into becoming sexually active. The school system must recognize that sexual activity begins somewhere around age 15 or 16, and clear, frank, open, and complete education on how to manage that change is required as part of one’s growth, maturity, and responsibility. With marriage now coming at 25 to 27 years, who if not the schools will help young people manage their sexuality during its first active decade?
QUATERNARY EDUCATION The biggest development, on the horizon, making K–12 shockingly obsolete, is what I call quaternary education. After primary education and secondary education, if we consider college as tertiary education, the biggest area of new education is quaternary education: that education that is usually outside the formal system and can occur at any age. It is becoming prominent in the workplace by people who want to move ahead by acquiring new knowledge and skills without sitting all day in a school building. In addition, as we become more prosperous, quaternary education is rapidly opening cultural matters to us all. Figure 7.1 suggests the importance of quaternary education in terms of what is already familiar. The classical goal of K–12 was to accomplish three things: preparation for work, carrying on our cultural heritage, and preparing us for an active life in the democratic political process. These goals have never been officially abandoned; rather, from neglect, they have become museum pieces. Preparation for work, as noted, is a nearly total failure. The only thing really open to them is low-paid work or going on, ill prepared, to college. Quater-
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Figure 7.1. The U.S. Education System
nary education reflects the need for lifelong learning not only connected with employment and advancement in one’s occupation but also for a better understanding of the now global world that interacts with all of us. The second goal, of passing on a cultural heritage, has been lost in the hypersensitivity of a false interpretation of democracy, emphasizing that there are good things in every culture. The cultural heritage of the United States should have a priority over lost civilizations and smatterings of ancient empires’ histories. What are the key cultural heritage points that should be made in a way that really infects and structures the mind of a child? The third goal, preparation for political life, is hidden away by school administrators under the guise that if they teach the formalities, they have done enough. We fail to teach how to participate by recognizing an issue, how to think it through, and how to act on conclusions.
SOCIAL GRACES—POLITE BEHAVIOR Try to have a conversation with a 14-, 16-, or 18-year-old. You will find it difficult. It is not just the conventional reticence of youth; schools fail to
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teach their charges how to have a conversation or to engage in a dispute or how to use argumentation not just to win—that is the football model of speech—but rather how to enlighten and be enlightened by learning to learn from others.
THE DIGITAL WORLD For many people, the introduction of computers into the school system seems to be an enormous step ahead because it will prepare children for the world of work. In fact, however, there is little evidence to show that the computer is making any massive improvement in the performance of students. To have one computer for a class of 20 so that it is available for an hour a week is not learning to use the computer—it’s just another gadget. Wouldn’t it have been ridiculous a century ago to have rationed ink? “You may have ink in your inkwell one day of the week, and that is how we will teach you penmanship.” Almost every technology introduced to enhance learning experience failed because it did not fit the curriculum or the style or the schedule of the teacher. The computer could become just another more or less pointless add-on.
THE FUTURE Each of the previously mentioned nine points or issues is well beyond the trivial fix. Yet the structure of county, city, and state education authorities are all totally bureaucratized. Few or none of them want to admit that there are core structural problems that call for drastic change. Fixing is not the solution. We must revolutionarily transform K–12 into a system that performs effectively at all levels and that integrates smoothly with work or college. We need to assemble the scanty knowledge of what is good, solid, and reliable and work it into effective nationwide programs. Where could it start? It might start in a school system—in a county, a city, or a state—but we have to start with a completely integrated approach and carefully monitor that system. Each critical part of education is connected to the future—as preparation for a better, more satisfying, or richer life; the preparation for successful and satisfying employment; continuing to expand one’s horizons of knowledge and information; and better understanding of public and political issues (which are always future oriented) to lure the student into better citizenship.
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There are three broadly different approaches to futurizing education. The first is to teach the future in the way that one now teaches history, that is, as a series of developments with some linkages among and between them, with emphasis on dates and outcomes. Approaching the future that way will give kids a golly-gee-whiz look at what might happen or could happen. We just do not need that model of futurizing education; leave that for public entertainment. The second approach is to introduce a course in each level of schooling about the future and present that course as a content matter to be understood, assimilated, and regurgitated—we do not need that. The third approach is what we need, namely, to run through the whole school system the teaching of how to explore the future as an integrated part of all the substance of K–12. Included would be building the tools for thinking systemically about the future and about alternative outcomes and their consequences and giving students experience in using those intellectual tools. The future could be seen as a course like algebra, which is not valuable in itself but is valuable in how it is applicable in so many areas of life. Experience in exploring the future would give the students tools and the imagination to think through the kinds of work they would like to do throughout their lives and the kinds of policy choices that a local or national situation faces, how to size up a candidate for office and his or her agenda, and, finally, to define new goals for one personally, for one’s group or family, and for our nation and the world. The most transformational change that could be done in schools, vital to our well-being, is to make the future the core of the curriculum. Wishful thinking will not make this revolution come about. Scholarly analysis will be of little or no help. Problem definition is gratuitous. What is needed is a Ralph Nader in the world of education—a brilliant activist whose plans, programs, and initiatives are always nationwide, while any particular start may be local. He or she will show us how to make K–12 a national issue, how to skip over the dead-end paths that local politics lays in front of us, and how to motivate millions—not just to improve their local situation but to move the whole nation forward as well. He or she is probably out there, but doesn’t yet know it. Perhaps what we can most effectively do is to announce that we are waiting for him or her.
From the Three Rs to the Four Cs: Emerging Technologies’ Positive and Transformative Impact on K–12 Education over the Next Decades1 William Crossman
THE BRIGHT PRELITERATE, PRE–THREE R’S YEARS From the moment Jessica Everyperson was born, her brain, central nervous system, and all her senses shifted into high gear to access and try to understand the incredible new informational environment that surrounded her—new sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and tactile experiences and even new body positions to deal with. Jessica approached her new world with all her senses operating together—networking—at peak performance as she tried to “make sense” of it all. Jessica’s new reality was dynamic, constantly changing from millisecond to millisecond, and she immediately and instinctively began to interact with the new information that poured through her senses. Jessica’s cognitive ability to access new information interactively and to use all her senses at once to optimize her perception of that ever-changing information is all about her hard wiring. Jessica, like all “everypersons” everywhere, was innately, biogenetically hard wired to access information in this way. For Jessica’s first four or five years, her all-sensory, interactive cognitive skills blossomed with amazing rapidity. Every moment provided her with new integrated-sensory learning experiences that helped consolidate her “unity of consciousness,” as the ancient Greek philosophers called it. Because each learning experience was all sensory, Jessica’s perception of reality was truly holistic. This meant that the ways in which Jessica processed and interpreted and understood her perceptions were also holistic. And this meant that she was 141
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developing the ability to both perceive and understand the “many sides” of a situation—the cognitive skills that form the basis of critical thinking and lead to a broad and compassionate worldview. During those preschool years, Jessica also became proficient in using the variety of information technologies (ITs) that continued to be introduced into her environment: radio, TV, movies, computers, video games, cell phones, and iPods. Early on, she pretty much stopped watching TV, which engaged only her eyes and ears, and switched to video games, which engaged her eyes, ears, and touch/tactility. Before she could even read a word, Jessica had become a multimodal multitasker, talking on her cell phone while listening to her iPods while playing a video game. At this point in her young life, Jessica was feeling very good about her ability to swim in the vast sea of information using the assortment of emerging ITs. Not surprisingly, she was also feeling very good about herself. Then, Jessica started school.
THE BRIGHTNESS DIMS: HELLO K–12, HELLO THREE R’S (READING, ’RITING, AND ’RITHMETIC) On Jessica’s first day in kindergarten (or maybe it was in first grade), her teacher was really nice, but the message that the school system communicated to Jessica and her schoolmates was harsh. Although none of the teachers or administrators ever stated it in such blatant terms, the message, as expressed via Jessica’s school’s mandated course curriculum and defined student learning outcomes (SLOs), was this: reading/writing is the only acceptable way to access information. This is the way we do it in our society. Text literacy is the foundation of all coherent and logical thinking, of all real learning and knowledge, and even of morality and personal responsibility. It is, in fact, the cornerstone of civilization itself. And the message continued: Since you don’t know how to read or write yet, Jessica, you really don’t know anything of value, you have no useful cognitive skills, and you have no real ways to process the experiences and/or the data that enter your brain through your senses. So, Jessica, from now on, through all your years of schooling—through your entire K–12 education—you and we, your teachers, must focus all our attention on your acquiring those reading and writing skills. From that moment on, Jessica’s learning experience took a radical turn. Instead of accessing a dynamic, ever-changing reality, she was going to have to focus almost entirely on a static reality that just sat there on the page or computer screen: text. Instead of accessing information using all her integrated senses simultaneously, she was going to have to use only her eyes.
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And instead of experiencing information interactively—as a two-way street that she could change by using her interactive ITs—she was going to have to experience information as a one-way street: by absorbing the text in front of her without being able to change it. Welcome, Jessica, to the three Rs, the essence of K–12 education. Of course, Jessica and her classmates, particularly in middle and high school, will take other courses: history, chemistry, political science, and so on. However, these other courses count for almost nothing when students go on to college, where they have to take these subjects all over again (entrylevel history, chemistry, and political science courses) or when they enter the vocational, business, and professional world, where they have to receive specialized training for their new jobs. College admissions directors and workplace employers really expect only one narrow set of SLOs from students who graduate with a high school diploma: that the students have acquired a basic level of text literacy. Jessica, like almost all her kindergarten or first-grade classmates, struggled to adjust to this major cognitive shift. Actually, for the first year or so, Jessica was excited and motivated to learn to read and write by the special allure of written language itself. The alphabet—and putting the letters together to make words—was like a secret code that grown-ups used to store and retrieve information. The prospect of learning to read and write made Jessica feel that she was taking a step into the grown-up world. However, this initial novelty and excitement of decoding text soon wore off, and most of the children in Jessica’s first-, second-, and third-grade classes, including Jessica herself, had a hard time keeping up. By the fourth grade, numbers of students were falling further and further behind the stated text-literacy SLOs for their grade level. Their self-confidence was getting severely damaged, and they were feeling more and more alienated from school and education itself. Not surprisingly, Jessica was no longer feeling very good about herself.
YOUNG PEOPLE’S REBELLION AGAINST THE THREE R’S AND TEXT LITERACY What’s going on here with Jessica and young people in general? Our children are intelligent, very intelligent. From the earliest age, their brains are like sponges soaking up and interpreting experiences and information that floods their senses. Almost all young children—except perhaps those with certain learning disabilities—love to learn about everything, including learning about the learning process itself. They’re continually asking “why?” in an effort to understand the world around them. It’s a survival mechanism that we humans
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have evolved over millennia, much like newborn deer that can stand and run minutes after they’re born. Young people’s failure to excel or to even reach proficiency in reading and writing in K–12 is reflected in the school literacy rates that continue to fall or, at best, remain stagnant decade after decade. It’s reflected in the tragic rising dropout rate of middle school and high school students, particularly African American and Latino students. The question that parents and educators need to ask ourselves is, do our children, who start out on life’s path as intelligent youngsters, become less intelligent as they pass through the K–12 years? The answer is no. Studies consistently show that although young people’s text-literacy rates are falling, their IQs are rising. What’s going on here is that young people today are rebelling against reading, writing, and written language itself. They are actively rejecting text as their IT of choice for accessing information. They feel that it’s no longer necessary to become text literate—that it is no longer relevant to or for their lives. Instead, young people are choosing to access information using the full range of emerging ITs available to them, the ITs that utilize the fullness of their all-sensory, interactive cognitive powers. Because their K–12 education is all about learning to gather information via text, young people are rejecting the three R–based educational system as well. Why, Jessica is asking, do I need to spend years learning to read Shakespeare’s Hamlet when I can download it and listen to it, listen to it via audio book CD, watch a movie or DVD of it, or interact with it via an educational video game of the play? We may be tempted to point out to Jessica and her fellow text rejecters that when they’re text messaging, which they’re often doing these days, they’re writing and reading. But it’s not really the writing and reading of any actual written language—and Jessica knows it. Texting uses a system of symbols that more closely resembles a pictographic or hieroglyphic written language than an alphabetic one. “n2u” may be understandable as three symbols combined into a pictogram, but it’s not written English. In my opinion, “n2u” exemplifies not a flourishing commitment to text literacy among young people but rather the rejection of actual text literacy and a further step in the devolution of text/written language as a useful IT in our electronically developed societies.
EMERGING VOICE/VIDEO/BODY MOVEMENT ITS WILL COMPLETELY REPLACE TEXT (AN ANCIENT IT) IN SCHOOLS —AND EVERYWHERE ELSE What is text/written language anyway? It’s an ancient IT for storing and retrieving information. We store information by writing it, and we retrieve it by reading it.
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Six thousand to 10,000 years ago, many of our ancestors’ hunter-gatherer societies settled on the land and began what’s known as the agricultural revolution. That new land settlement led to private property and increased production and trade of goods, generating a huge new influx of information. Unable to keep all this information in their memories, our ancestors created systems of written records that evolved over millennia into today’s written languages. But this ancient IT is already becoming obsolete. Text has run its historic course and is now rapidly getting replaced in every area of our lives by the ever-increasing array of emerging ITs driven by voice, video, and body movement rather than the written word. In my view, this is a positive step forward in the evolution of human technology, and it carries great potential for a total positive redesign of K–12 education. Four “engines” are driving this shift away from text. First, evolutionarily and genetically, we humans are innately hard wired to access information and communicate by speaking, listening, and using all our other senses. At age one, Jessica just started speaking, while other one-year-olds who were unable to speak and/or hear just began signing. It came naturally to them, unlike reading and writing, which no one just starts doing naturally and which requires schooling. Second, technologically, we humans are driven to develop ITs that allow us to access information and communicate using all our cognitive hard wiring and all our senses. In addition, we tend to replace older technologies with newer technologies that do the same job more quickly, efficiently, and universally. Taken together, this engine helps explain why, since the late 1800s, we have been on an urgent mission to develop non-text-driven ITs—from Thomas Edison’s wax-cylinder phonograph to Nintendo’s Wii— whose purpose is to replace text-driven ITs. Third, as noted previously, young people in the electronically developed countries are, by the millions, rejecting text-driven ITs in favor of allsensory, non-text ITs. This helps explain why Jessica and her friends can’t wait until school is over so that they can close their school books, hurry home, fire up their video game consoles, and talk on their cell phones. Fourth, 80 percent of the world’s people are functionally nonliterate. Since the world’s storehouse of information is almost entirely in the form of written language, these billions of people have been left out of the information loop and the so-called computer revolution. If we gave a laptop computer to everyone in the world and said, “Here, fly into the world of information, access the Internet and the World Wide Web,” they would reply, “I’m sorry, but I can’t use this thing because I can’t read text off the screen, and I can’t write words on the keyboard.” Because access to the information of our society and our world is necessary for survival, it is therefore a human right. And the billions of people
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who are being denied access to information because they can’t read or write are being denied their human rights. They are now demanding to be included in the “global conversation” without having to learn to read and write. Three great potential opportunities for K–12 education in the coming decades arise out of this shift away from text. • The 80 percent of the world’s people who are functionally nonliterate, using non-text-driven ITs, will finally be able to claim and exercise their right to enter, access, and add to the world’s storehouse of information. • Voice-recognition technology’s instantaneous language-translation function will allow everyone to speak to everyone else using their own native language. Language barriers will melt away. • People whose disabilities prevent them from reading, writing, and/or signing will be able to select specific functions of their all-sensory ITs that enable them to access all information.
THE BRIGHTNESS RETURNS: GOODBYE THREE R’S, HELLO FOUR C’S Every minute that Jessica and her friends spend getting information and communicating using video games, iPods, cell phones, and other nontext ITs, they’re developing new cognitive skills. Their new listening, speaking, visual, tactile, memory, interactive, multitasking, multimodal skills allow them to access information and communicate faster and more efficiently than ever before. I believe that Jessica and her friends are developing the very skills that will be required for successful K–12 learning as we move into the coming age of postliterate K–12 education. Something good is also happening to Jessica’s brain and consciousness as she uses her all-sensory, interactive ITs. Jessica is retraining her brain, central nervous system, and senses. She is reconfiguring her consciousness so that it more closely resembles its original, unified, integrated, pre–three Rs state. Jessica’s worldview is broadening because she’s perceiving and understanding the world more holistically. And she’s feeling good about herself again. Jessica’s story—and there are millions of Jessicas struggling to succeed in our three Rs–based classrooms today—points the way to a new strategy for K–12 education in the twenty-first century. Basing K–12 education on the three Rs is a losing strategy, a strategy for failure. We have the emerging ITs on which we can build a new K–12 strategy, one that has the potential to eliminate young people’s academic nonsuccess and sense of failure and replace it with academic success and self-confidence. Instead of the three
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Rs, we need to move on to the four Cs: critical thinking, creative thinking, “compspeak” (the skills needed to access information using all-sensory talking computers), and calculators (for basic applied math). As text/written language falls more and more out of use as our society’s IT of choice for accessing information, so will the text-based three Rs. It’s a trend that’s already starting to happen. Videos as teaching and learning tools are surpassing textbooks in innumerable K–12 classrooms. Instructional interactive videos (we won’t be calling them video “games” anymore) are already entering our classrooms as the next big IIT—instructional information technology—because students want to be interactive with information. As the three Rs exit the K–12 scene, they’ll leave a huge gap to be filled. And what better way to fill that gap than by helping young people become better critical and creative thinkers—the most crucial cognitive skills they’ll need to help them build a more sustainable, peaceful, equitable, and just world. In order to store and retrieve the information, they’ll need to develop and practice these thinking skills; they’ll also need to systematically acquire the all-sensory, interactive skills to access that information: the compspeak skills. While these compspeak skills are the very same skills that Jessica and her classmates have been developing unsystematically by using their all-sensory ITs, systematic training in listening, speaking, visuality, memory, and the other compspeak skills should be a central component of their post–three Rs education. It’s ironic—and definitely shortsighted—that in a difficult economic and budget-cutting climate, classes that support these compspeak skills are the first to be cut: music (listening, visual, body movement, and memory), art (visual and body movement), physical education and dance (body movement and memory), speech (speaking, listening, and memory), and theater arts (all the above). Over the next decades, we will continue to replace text-driven ITs with all-sensory-driven ITs, and by 2050, we will have re-created an oral culture in our electronically developed countries and K–12 classrooms. Our greatgreat-grandchildren won’t know how to read or write—and it won’t matter. They’ll be as competent accessing information using their nontext ITs as we highly text literates are today using the written word.
NOTE 1. Some of the ideas discussed in this essay are discussed in greater depth in the author’s book VIVO [Voice-In/Voice-Out]: The Coming Age of Talking Computers (Oakland, CA: Regent Press, 2004). See also this author’s other works in the “Annotated Resources” section at the end of this volume.
8 Educational Futuristics: Delivery Possibilities
The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won’t keep. Something must be done about them. —Alfred Lord North Whitehead*
How are we to get there from here? This chapter shares operational advice, highlights four commonly overlooked possibilities, and tries to ratchet up the quality of the questions that remain. We begin at the level of a single school building and then extend far more broadly to the level of the nation’s school system (all 14,000-plus school districts and every level of government, teacher unions, nongovernmental organizations, and so on).
BUILDING LEVEL First, if you would help introduce educational futuristics (EdF) into a building, prepare to spend as much time as possible beforehand in actual schools and classrooms. Go there to listen, observe, and, only after, to ask questions. Try to revisit the same schools and classrooms over many years, the better to take the measure of gains and setbacks of change efforts that sought to shape a finer future. Pro-EdF actions are best introduced diplomatically, delicately, and even at a slower pace than many enthusiasts can always appreciate. They challenge a school’s culture. Backlash and blowback lurk in the shadows, as the status quo naturally defends itself. Accordingly, futurist David Hicks advises 149
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that “in the busy world of teachers, it is more appropriate to talk about the need for a futures dimension in the curriculum rather than using the term ‘futures education’ which is not in common usage in schools.”1 Unless the artfully managed arrival of EdF components is carefully thought through beforehand and sagely paced, EdF at your school might not have much of a future (no pun intended). Second, prepare to meet school people where they are, not where you wish they were. They are preoccupied with immediate stressors (budget shortfalls, rising energy costs, outdated technology, and so on). To warrant their attention, respect, and trust, you should convey an honest appreciation of what they are up against—and yet also convey confidence that they want to see beyond the present and weigh future-shaping choices. Wherever possible, some of the key sponsors you reach out to should include those looked at as inspiring models, as proven mature and diplomatic leaders whose endorsement or opposition to this or that carries weight. If, instead, key EdF sponsors are perceived—fairly or otherwise—as only fringe members of the K–12 learning community, as outliers (for whatever reason), the implementation campaign is stigmatized and weakened (possibly fatally so) from the outset. Third, prepare to cite ongoing experiments and resources here and abroad, as school people commonly appreciate help catching up with advances and tools that they are too busy to learn of otherwise. Especially valuable is attention that you can artfully pay to seemingly far-out matters seldom part of the mindscape of most school leaders, such as the possible availability soon of personal intelligent agents to help guide our mental world, the rapid development of psychopharmaceuticals able to improve learning and memory, and other frontier items that were only recently the stuff of science fiction. Search out mentors and allies in and outside the world of educational futurists, as this activity is best done in a shared rather than a lone format. Fourth, expect to be plied for your nomination of a single resolute future, such as one dominated by artificial intelligence and/or biochip inserts and/ or eugenics. Be resolute in declining—diplomatically—to answer. Not only is the entire idea brash beyond reason, but it also threatens to undermine confidence in probabilistic long-range forecasting. The future, thank goodness, is wide open, and your challenge is to illuminate probable, possible, preferable, and preventable choices school people should elect themselves to act on. Finally, it is vital that EdF at the building level remain kaleidoscopic and not get captured by advocates who see an advantage for their cause in co-opting this latest claimant to K–12 attention. For example, while meaning no harm, school system members (students as well as teachers) deeply identified with global warming reform efforts are likely to think that any
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focus on tomorrow should have their climate control issues ranked above all others and possibly even treated to the exclusion of all others. Likewise, other school system members intensely concerned with antiwar efforts, poverty relief measures, pro-sustainability gains, and so on may move to make the new EdF campaign only an adjunct of their older and betterestablished one. While understandable, all such maneuvers should be anticipated, diplomatically rebuffed, and, where possible, turned to advantage; that is, links should be forged to these social movements and friendships achieved across boundary lines even while the right of your EdF campaign to steer its own course is clearly established. It is sound, for example, to join with those outraged that school buildings are not getting modernized (28 percent were built over 50 years ago), provided, that is, that EdF supporters diplomatically urge add-ons to rehabilitation plans that are futuristic, such as an on-site year-round greenhouse, the addition of solar panels to rooftops, conspicuous weatherization of all buildings, and so on.2 EdF is far too expansive to fly the flag of any one future-shaping issue, however much its backers and the day’s headlines might seem to recommend.
NATIONAL SCENE These are years of unprecedented opportunity in K–12 matters, with over $100 billion of the 2009 federal stimulus package (the $784 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act [TARP]) going to boost the $30 billion the federal government already spends on K–12 schooling. The federal government is also offering $4 billion in a “Race to the Top” educational fund, the largest amount of discretionary money ever earmarked for innovative K–12 school reform. Another $650 million is available from $1 billion set aside for education as part of the 2009 TARP funds. It is earmarked for a nationwide competition under which some 2,700 school districts and nonprofit groups are expected to compete for pieces of a separate Investing in Innovation Fund. Combined, all eight previous education secretaries had less than half as much in discretionary funding over the past 29 years.3 Never before have such funds been earmarked for rethinking traditional approaches to education and redoing many if not all of them. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wants his agency to move from being a “compliance machine” to an “engine of innovation.”4 The process “finally allows the federal government to reward states that have made progress and to bypass slackers.”5 Duncan warns that “there are going to be some extraordinary winners, and some states that won’t be successful.”6 Some 50 million
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schoolchildren and 3 million teachers have brighter-than-ever in-school prospects where change is concerned.
CALLS FOR REFORM Over and again, the public is promised that efforts will be made to significantly bolster K–12 education. Districtwise, administrators will try, for example, to fund the creation of high-quality public magnet schools in urban districts, enable school choice through vouchers, promote interdistrict transfer programs to enable city students to study in suburban schools, give good schools in failing districts more autonomy, and modernize and “green” school facilities Teacherwise, administrators will try to invest resources in strengthening teacher preparation programs, staff professional development, opportunities to collaborate, better working conditions, and teacher retention; increase educator accountability by doing away with tenure; end job assignments based on seniority; award merit pay; create greater oversight; and extend the school day, especially for youngsters in need of supervision and/or remedial work. Studentwise, administrators will try to distribute more aid to more poor children, reduce class size, equip classrooms with forward-looking learning tools, toughen requirements for high school graduation, and provide “high-quality early-childhood and preschool programs, after-school and summer programs, and programs that develop parents’ capacity to support their children’s education.”7 With the emphatic exception of three items long opposed by teacher unions—the antitenure and antiseniority ideas, the voucher call, and the merit pay notion—most of the previously mentioned reform agenda has the cautious approval of the teacher unions, the most powerful component of the K–12 scene, that is, the 1.4-million-member American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the 3.2-million-member National Educational Association (NEA). Together the two labor unions have enrolled about 4.6 million teachers, or 70 percent of all K–12 public school teachers: “As the unchallenged leaders of public education, the unions have amassed formidable power rooted in collective bargaining and electoral politics . . . they are more powerful—by far—than any other groups involved in the politics of education.”8
GOING FARTHER The previously mentioned conventional reform agenda may prove beholden only to connect-the-dot thinking and passive student and parent
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accommodation to the status quo. Masked by rhetoric is a largely uncritical top-down reliance on excessive and inappropriate standardized tests, bolstered by the canard that high-stakes testing can shore up sagging schools. There is reluctance to tackle consequential funding inequalities among school districts and related systemic racism. Far too little attention is paid to the need for community involvement, democratic governance, and the development of a healthy, upbeat classroom culture. “Change here could be a case of mal-adaptation, non-adaptation, and/or semi-adaptation . . . of slight taken-for-granted improvement, but growing inadequacy.”9 David Pearce Snyder warns in his guest essay that as the education enterprise “employs millions of people, interacts directly with most American families, and maintains a $1 trillion infrastructure, [it] clearly possesses considerable short term inertia.” Other educational wonks ruefully note that “education reform has become the new status quo. It is what the nation does, year after year, as a matter of routine. . . . [But] the reforms have typically led to disappointment—and to demands for still more reforms.”10 If the system is not to remain tethered to the banal, a restart button must be pushed. To rescue it from itself, political power holders could insist that the education enterprise give EdF a major role. The nation’s two teachers unions might then surprise everyone by actually endorsing the idea. Why might these two power centers take so dramatic and substantial a move? They just might “buy into” some version of EdF because they are smart enough to recognize that they have much to gain; for example, political vote seekers and teachers unions alike can recognize in EdF a new way to strengthen their brand as being “with it.” Endorsing EdF can have the unions branded as farsighted champions of the preparation youngsters need to handle future shock and thereby as worthy of new votes and, in the case of the teacher unions, of new voluntary membership. Teacher unions, in particular, recognize a pressing need to change their unappealing current image. A critic maintains, “All the reforms unions oppose—charter schools, testing, accountability, No Child Left Behind, performance pay—have been around for a while now, and the disasters the unions predicted have not come to pass. The unions are out of touch, and are courting irrelevance.”11 As if in response, both the AFT and the NEA have recently begun to constructively rethink key positions and behave in pro-change ways. For example, the AFT, in the spring of 2009, launched a Fund for Innovation with $1 million from members’ dues and $2.3 million from five private foundations. It sponsors an annual competition among AFT locals eager to support and promote teacher-led school reform efforts established jointly by teachers, administrators, and parents (such as creatively tying teacher pay to performance, a practice previously strictly opposed). AFT
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President Randi Weingarten boasted, “Our locals are not afraid to take risks and to share responsibility for student success. We are not adverse to change; we are leading it . . . bottom-up reform, led by teachers who are in the classroom every day, and their unions, just makes sense.”12 Likewise, in September 2009, the much larger NEA began to encourage tougher evaluations and to loosen seniority systems. It gave its locals leeway to make a long-debated radical change: they can now waive contract language that might hamper school districts from staffing troubled schools with highly experienced teachers.13 Put another way, it is just possible that the big three—key politicians, leaders of teacher unions, and influential career K–12 educators—know that they need to be more nimble in responding to rapidly changing conditions. They may appreciate that this is not a time for merely incremental change. They may understand that their policymaking mechanisms must become far more flexible and implementation far more expeditious. (Having served as a futurist speaker at events of both unions, I know firsthand the keen interest many members have in looking beyond and converting this perspective into progressive teaching tools.) If so, as the nation slowly recovers from its worst economy since the 1930s, EdF might begin to get overdue attention. With unprecedented federal funds now going into K–12 education, matters long obscured by a focus on funding inadequacies may finally get their due. Key politicians, leaders of teacher unions, and influential career K–12 educators may ask anew the core question, “Education for what?” to which this volume answers, “For prowess in future-shaping choice making”—a type of empowerment that can help an individual gain rewarding employment, active citizenship, satisfying family formation, endless cultural enrichment, and much more.
GOING BIG TIME My 2008 book closed with a call to create a national steering committee of representatives of leading educational organizations, called perhaps Education for Tomorrow (EFT), one that could help maximize the diverse opportunities mentioned previously. It might lobby for inclusion of funding support for EdF initiatives in the new National Educational Technology Plan expected early in 2010. The plan is expected to provide a “vision of how information and communications technologies can help transform American education,” complete with concrete goals.14 EFT might also lobby for greater U.S. participation in the testing and policy research conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, especially as many of its European member nations have ongoing EdF projects.
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EdF could also be a major feature in the common core standards now being drafted by the Council of Chief State Officers and the National Governors Association. Likewise, it belongs in the national curriculum standards now under development by the U.S. Department of Education. A specialist believes that this federal effort is “on the right track. More than in the past evidence has been brought to bear to determine what is truly important for students to master. . . . And the best practices of high-performing countries are being used to inform the standards.”15 Without EdF as a guiding focus, however, the national standards may wind up “driven by data derived from simplistic tests keyed to simplistic standards keyed to a simplistic, dysfunctional, obsolete, 19th-century curriculum.”16 National nonprofit organizations, such as Citizen Schools, Education Equality Project, Great Schools, Jumpstart, New Leaders for New Schools, Project Tomorrow, and Teach for America, have a strategic part to play in sorting out research findings for K–12 policymakers too busy to cull the literature. They could usefully include EdF in their literature review and, more broadly, in their reform agenda.17 In this way, more grassroots community leaders and parents of school-age children might get onboard, and the likelihood of continuity of reform at the building level would be greater. They could draw especially on the democratic ethos in EdF to help enhance the democratic character of schooling, an overlooked yet decisive reform possibility. Indeed, a specialist advises parents intent on volunteering at the middle school level to go “where you can learn the most about the school’s curriculum and classes”18 (in this connection, see the related discussion in chapter 9 of people power via information technology (IT)–boosted community organizing groups and the formation of a new national association of high school students).
TRIM-TAB POSSIBILITY Given the need to navigate from where you are rather than from where you wish you were, it sometimes seems that the best near-future bet for EdF may involve not the main players cited previously but rather what is equivalent to a trim tab. As large ocean liners require great force to turn their rudders, small adjustable flaps called trim tabs are placed on the keel to help steady or redirect them. Deck officers need only exert a small amount of pressure via a trim tab to put considerable force on the main rudder, thereby demonstrating “how the precise application of a small amount of leverage can produce a powerful effect.”19 Charter schools may yet prove the trim tab needed to get EdF the trial it amply warrants. First created about 20 years ago, they were expected to
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be small learning communities that would develop and share innovative practices, empower teachers and parents, and especially improve the life chances of lower-income youngsters. They have since become “one of the most prevalent and most talked about school reforms in the nation. Today there are 4,578 such schools (many now opening pre-K classes) in 41 states and the District of Columbia, enrolling about 1,400,000 students.20 Roughly 300 of the nation’s charter schools are regarded by some experts as high-profile, high-performing schools of distinction (many are operated by Edison, Mastery, Green Dot, Uncommon Schools, and so on).21 Indeed, in 2007, the top-ranked school among 1,500 schools in New York City (the largest school system in America) was Williamsburg Collegiate Charter School, run by the Uncommon Schools network.22 Some critics, however, persist in contending that “the sector has shown little evidence it is more likely than a traditional school system to develop innovative programs or practices . . . [and new research finds only] 17 out of 100 charter schools [out of the nation’s 4,578 such schools] do indeed improve student outcomes.”23 Allowing cautiously for this controversial contention, “through the growing list of high-profile success stories, like 82 KIPP [Knowledge Is Power Program] charter schools [which employ many Teach for America veterans], the public is starting to understand reform is actually possible. That’s a big deal, because the hopelessness that marred previous eras took a lot of people’s eyes off the prize.”24 This model emphasizes lively lesson plans, high expectations, and committed teachers who believe in their students.25
CASE STUDY: ACADEMY FOR ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE California has at least one such outstanding K–12 charter school (and undoubtedly many more), one that, while not an explicit EdF operation, comes so close as to encourage hope that it (and others to follow) might soon fit the bill. In 1997, the Academy for Academic Excellence opened on a 150-acre desert site about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles. Now serving over 1,300 students accepted at random, it has a waiting list of 3,000, and its youngsters—whose test scores are the highest in the county—have as seniors the pleasure of weighing multiple college admissions. In addition to all the IT classroom supports imaginable (interactive whiteboards and so on), students at the academy operate a fully functional space center, track objects in space at the request of NASA, and report their observations to NASA scientists. They work in Mission Control, a two-story lab modeled on NASA’s iconic rooms. It has a curved wall, projection screens, videoconferencing, and a glassed-in viewing platform for spectators.
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The K–12 academy also has an observatory with three major telescopes, a Link Flight Simulation Machine (the type used by U.S. Air Force pilots), and a T-38 U.S. Air Force plane (the type used to train NASA pilots). In addition, it has a simulated planet whose sandy, red-tinted land formation includes a cave that can accommodate rovers and students searching for mineral samples. Along with this space-science focus, students study endangered fish kept in large tanks, help nurse sick desert tortoises back to health, and cultivate native plants in a greenhouse that they replant in local areas disturbed by mining. They also have access to a massive full film production studio complete with blue and green screen capabilities. It has several Macintosh-equipped editing suites in which students produce a wide variety of material, ranging from way-out music videos to very academic reports on their research for NASA. Students assist in observatory events, lectures, and NASA-related mission demonstrations popular with area residents and serve as tour guides for the over 150,000 nearby youngsters who have thus far visited the site on field trips. In 2009, the academy invited its student body to collaborate with an architect in envisioning educational additions that a capital campaign is now seeking to finance. The youngsters asked for a climbing wall where footholds are marked with math equations that students must solve before they ascend, a hallway that will teach time with gigantic interactive pendulums and hourglasses, and a lunch area that will be a pavilion where students sit in the belly of a model blue whale. The school’s can-do developer, busy now also operating a second nearby charter school, maintains that any school can do what his two schools do for their students,26 namely, to help youngsters see beyond the present, enjoy a participatory and contributory education, and graduate eager to help shape a finer future.
RELATED DEVELOPMENTS It remains to point out that positive developments of any type in K–12 schooling widen the opening for the overdue infusion of EdF—and more and more examples of progress brighten the scene. Typical is the record of the New Tech Network, a nonprofit group that designs high schools to make extensive use of computers. It already guides 40 high schools in nine states whose students “typically out-perform comparable schools in standardized tests.”27 Linked here is a second innovation, the use of what is called a magnet theme, as in adding a Montessori approach to a struggling, predominantly low-income school. The likelihood is good that it will reopen the following
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school year with an overflow application from middle-class households, a key to a public school’s rejuvenation. Marketed sagely, EdF might soon qualify as such a magnet theme. Note should also be taken of the extension in 2009 of the Edible Schoolyard Project, first developed in 1995 in Berkeley, California, to a Brooklyn, New York, Gravesend neighborhood with the dubious distinction of having the lowest percentage of green space in the borough. At Public School 216, the project will help inner-city youngsters cultivate an organic quarter-acre plot and a four-season greenhouse on school grounds, the goals including overdue gains in green and nutritional literacy. At the district level, it is encouraging to watch comparably novel experiments in Chicago, Washington, New Orleans, and New York with a redefinition of the concept of school district. The old meaning was “operator” of a uniform set of schools and services; the new approach, called the portfolio district plan, puts administrators in the role of “holder” of a diverse mix of schools, each meant to meet a particular need, as in trying out new ideas, possibly even someday soon including the EdF idea. Finally, attention is owed K–12 programs for gifted education, a niche sometimes ruefully regarded as a “stepchild,” so poorly supported is it in far too many states.28 This notwithstanding, were such programs to grab hold of EdF subject matter and demonstrate its educational rewards, this could prove the “better mousetrap” that might bring along other elements of the K–12 world.
SUMMARY Odds improve all the time that EdF may finally soon get the experimental adoption it has always merited and America’s students have always deserved. Ideas for introducing EdF into a school, a district, and even, at best, the entire national school system are many and readily available for use. Unprecedented amounts of federal funds earmarked for innovation beckon. Key agents for change (especially the two national teacher unions) signal availability. Foundations are responding as never before (e.g., the Gates Foundation in late November 2009 gave $290 million in hopes that unionaided and also charter school–linked long-term experiments in four cities can soon help transform teacher management policies nationwide).29 Far more speculative though no less promising is the idea that a national organization of EdF supporters might soon be developed. National standards might soon be tweaked to include EdF. Charter schools might yet take the lead in field-testing EdF, and future-shaping changes already under way, even though unattached at present to an EdF ethos, might help make a broad EdF movement possible.
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As if all this wasn’t enough, the next chapter explores the possibility that community organizations and possibly even a new national organization of high school students might join a pro-EdF campaign. Awesomely audacious? Yes, though with creative, sustained, and up-front support, much can be accomplished.
NOTES *As quoted in Gretchen Dianda and Betty J. Hofmayer, Older and Wiser (New York: Ballantine Books, 1995), 220. 1. David Hicks, Lessons for the Future: The Missing Dimension in Education (London: Palgrave, 2002), 123. 2. George Allen and Paul Goodman, “Little Restored Schoolhouse,” New York Times, October 13, 2009, A-27. “Potentially, there may be $100 billion in tax-crediteligible school modernization projects nationwide.” 3. Erik W. Robelen, “Potholes ahead on Innovation Fund,” Education Week, September 16, 2009, 26. See also Neil King Jr., “Schools Push Hits the Road,” Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2009, A-3, and Sam Dillon, “Education Agency Will Offer Grants for Innovative Ideas,” New York Times, October 7, 2009, A-20. 4. As quoted in Robelen, “Potholes Ahead on Innovation Fund,” 26. See also Editorial, “Dollars for Schools,” Washington Post, July 30, 2009, 16. 5. Editorial, “Washington Steps Up on Schools,” New York Times, July 31, 2009, A-20. Even before the Obama funds became available, almost $80 billion was already scheduled to go into K–12 education in 2009–2010. Lack of money is no longer the system’s biggest problem, albeit it remains high on the list (it is spread about unevenly, costs rise endlessly, remedial work is very pricy, and so on). Editorial, “Obama’s ‘Race to the Top,’” Wall Street Journal, July 31, 2009, A-16. 6. As quoted in Susan Neuman, “Schools’ Maven,” The Atlantic, January/February 2009, 18. 7. Nicholas Kristof, “Democrats and Schools,” New York Times, October 15, 2009, A-27. 8. Terry M. Moe and John E. Chubb, Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education (New York: Jossey-Bass, 2009), 35, 54. 9. Michael Marien, “Futures Thinking and Macro-Systems: Illuminating Our Era of Mal-Adaptive, Non-Adaptive, and Semi-Adaptive Systems,” World Future Review, April–May 2009, 5–13. 10. Moe and Chubb, Liberating Learning, 4. 11. Richard Colvin, director of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media in New York, as quoted in Richard Whitmire and Andrew J. Rotherham, “How Teachers Unions Lost the Media,” Wall Street Journal, W-13. 12. As quoted in Stephen Sawchuk, “AFT Announces First Recipients of Innovation Fund,” Education Week, October 14, 2009; 6. After awarding the first eight winners of grants from among about 125 applications from AFT locals, Weingarten said, “This will be viewed in retrospect as one of the most important days in real
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education reform” (6). See the AFT advertisement in the New York Times, October 18, 2009; 5-WK. See also Kristof, “Democrats and Schools,” A-27. For an opposing view, including news of a grant to the AFT Fund from the Ford Foundation, see Editorial, “The Edsel of Education Reform,” Wall Street Journal, November 17, 2009, A-24. 13. Dana Goldstein, “The Education Wars,” The American Prospect, April 2009, 18. See also Ad “‘Green Shoots’ in Our Schools” (written by Randi Weingarten, president, AFT), New York Times, September 20, 2009, WK-5, and Robert Tomsho, “Teachers Union Shifts Stance, Backs Looser Staffing Rules,” Wall Street Journal, October 1, 2009, A-7. See also Richard Whitmire, “Why Michelle Rhee Has to Play Tough,” Washington Post, October 14, 2009, 16. Both unions support linking frequent testing with tracking systems that follow students in near-real time. The data are passed on to teachers trained to use them through finely honed professional development. In the end, students who don’t completely absorb the material the first time around get that skill retaught, sometimes in a different way by a different teacher. “And that’s just one part of their educational arsenal. In these high-performance districts, leaving no child behind is no mere slogan” (16). 14. Steve Lohr, “At Your Fingers, an Oxford Don: With One-to-One Learning, the 16th-Century Tutorial Gets New Life Online,” New York Times, September 13, 2009, WK-3. “Skeptics . . . point out previous waves of enthusiasm for computerizing classrooms have come and gone, with little to show for it.” See also Paul Hill, Portfolio School Districts for Big Cities: An Interim Report (Seattle: Center on Reinventing Public Education, 2009), available at http://www.crpe.com. 15. Vicki Phillips, “More Is Not Better,” Education Week, September 30, 2009, 28. 16. Marion Brady, “National Subject-Matter Standards? Be Careful What You Wish For,” Education Week, September 23, 2009, 24. 17. In this connection, see Steven H. Goldberg, Billions of Drops in Millions of Buckets (New York: Wiley, 2009). See also William A. Schambra, “Charity Aimed at Change,” Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2009, A-35. 18. On democratizing schools, see almost any issue of Rethinking Schools. On volunteering, see Sue Shellenbarger, “The School Volunteer Jobs That Most Help Your Kids,” Wall Street Journal, October 7, 2009, D-6. “The re-opening of schools this fall has triggered a 50 percent increase in volunteer signups at VolunteerSpot .com, a Web site for organizing volunteers [for schools]”. (D-1). 19. Howard William, The Trimtab Factor: How Business Executives Can Help Solve the Nuclear Weapon Crisis (New York: William Morrow, 1984), 27. In connection with large-scale change ideas, see also Arthur B. Shostak, Robust Unionism: Innovations in the Labor Movement (Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 1991). 20. Gary Miron and Leigh Dingerson, “The Charter School Express,” Education Week, October 7, 2009, 26. 21. Whitmire and Rotherham, “How Teachers Unions Lost the Media,” W-13. 22. Whitmire, “Why Michelle Rhee Has to Play Tough,” 16. 23. Miron and Dingerson, “The Charter School Express,” 26. 24. Joe Williams, executive director, Democrats for Education Reform, as quoted in Whitmire and Rotherham, “How Teachers Unions Lost the Media,” W-13. Note, however, that it is “important not to overstate the modest record of innovation
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established by charters so far, or to ignore the many ‘traditional’ public schools that have forged programs characterized by innovation, effectiveness, and equality.” Editors of Rethinking Schools, “Where Is Our Community Organizer-in-Chief?” Rethinking Schools, Fall 2009, 6. 25. See Jay Mathews, Work Hard. Be Nice: How Two Inspired Teachers Created the Most Promising School in America (New York: Algonquin, 2009). 26. Rick Pierce, as quoted in Alissa Walker, “Out of This World: A Charter School in the Mojave Desert Charts the Heavens,” Edutopia, October/November 2009, 50. 27. Lohr, “At Your Fingers, an Oxford Don,” WK-3. “Skeptics . . . point out previous waves of enthusiasm for computerizing classrooms have come and gone, with little to show for it.” See also Hill, Portfolio School Districts for Big Cities. 28. Debra Viadero, “Gifted Education,” Education Week, November 18, 2009, 5. 29. Sam Dillon, “Gateses Give $290 Million for Education,” New York Times, November 20, 2009, A-11. “Education is a tough issue. Bill and I often joke that maybe it is the toughest issue we’ve taken on” (Melinda Gates).
Future, Foresight, and Fulfillment: Incorporating Futuring in an International Baccalaureate Programme—A Work in Progress Stephen F. Steele and Mary Austin
Here we chronicle an emerging relationship between a public school International Baccalaureate (IB) Programme and the Institute for the Future(IF) @ Anne Arundel Community College (AACC). It reflects mutual benefit derived from diffusing foresight perspectives, tools, and techniques into the IB Diploma Programme for students in grades 11 and 12 and the IB Middle Years Programme (MYP) for students ages 11 to 16 in grades 6 to 10. We offer the relationship as a readily adapted future-oriented model for others seeking to enhance teacher training, professional development workshops, and collegial relationships.
IB AND IF @ AACC CONNECTION? “The future ain’t what it used to be” if you follow the sage guidance of baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra. But we might add that “getting to the future” hasn’t changed as much as we’d think. Trying to find ways to enhance futures thinking by connecting two public learning systems—K–12 and community college—isn’t as easy as you might imagine. Reasonably futuring “just makes sense” in twenty-first-century education. But not so fast. There are mountains of bureaucratic walls to scale and decades of institutionalized processes that need to be challenged. Maybe going over the wall is impractical, but finding two willing partners looking for a legitimate path around the wall to the future could be the key. IB and
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IF @ AACC were the partners. Who are they? How did they hook up? Let’s take them in turn.
THE K–12 PARTNER Both the IB Diploma Programme and the IB MYP are inquiry based and help students learn “how to learn.” They foster an interest in and understanding of one’s own culture as well as the cultures of people worldwide. Communication is also central. Students must study a second world language, and much emphasis is placed on communication in the classroom and as a means of assessment. The IB Programme’s mission provides an excellent context for futuring.
THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE PARTNER The IF @ AACC of the Sarbanes Center for Public and Community Service was created in 2003 to be the local information and training source for information on the future. A vehicle for the application of theories and concepts in real-world situations, the IF @ AACC promotes future thinking, develops the art of foresight, advises, consults, collaborates, and trains and facilitates creativity, planning, and trend analysis. Futuring has innate ties to the IB mission and vision through development of foresight, global views, creativity, leadership, systems thinking, and responsibility for the future.
WHAT IS THE MUTUAL BENEFIT? GETTING CONNECTED Constructing this path to the future called for a key decision: Was their mutual benefit to be derived? Was it worth the effort? The answers to these questions were in the hands of determined individuals. Leaders from the IB Programme and IF @ AACC met one to one to assess the common value and greater significance of synergy together. Could they promote each other’s missions while maintaining their identities within the larger systems? Action can clarify hazy situations. Leaders took calculated action to “get the programs together!” Weaving this connection meant several initial steps. Leaders from both groups joined the other group’s advisory team, producing ties for
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resource understanding and exchange. Instructors within both organizations were able to envision their teaching and their subject areas through a different perspective. Personal and professional connections marked the path to this “bottom-up” relationship. Persistent engagement marked progress.
FROM IDEA TO ACTION? Leading futurist Jim Dator’s Law maintains, “Any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous.” But ridiculous ideas often have a hard time finding their way into K–12 and community college cultures. While both cultures are fairly pragmatic in structure and action, it became clear that it was simply presumptuous to assume that either really could know “what the other needed.” A needs assessment of IB faculty led the way to a better understanding of interests and learning needs in integrating futuring into faculty teaching–learning repertoire. IB faculty respondents emphasized the practical in their list of important topics: Practical items that I can use immediately in class How futuring links to the IB Programme A “one-lesson” futures package that introduces students to the future Creating classroom futures and foresight exercises Futurizing an existing lesson plan Access to futures resources for lesson development Futures tools that enhance futures thinking From this outline, IF @ AACC staff crafted a “first-ever” futuring workshop for IB faculty. The stage was set for diffusing futures topics and tools into the program. Would this work?
WORKSHOP ON THE FUTURE—CONTENT AND FORMAT? Sometimes, “plain vanilla” is a great way to start the futuring process in a traditional learning culture. No frills or fancy stuff, just practically delivered content; even “old-school strategies” provide an avenue to foresight education. The IF @ AACC director and faculty members created and delivered a workshop based on the needs expressed by the
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IB faculty. The content was special, but the process was not. A thumbnail sketch follows:
Title: Thinking about the Future: Futuring, Foresight—Current and Possible Links to the International Baccalaureate Program Brief outline: Morning—Welcome/Introductions: Why Futuring and Foresight? How futuring links to the IB Programme. Creating and using classroom futures and foresight exercises. Afternoon—Futurizing an existing lesson plan (teachers should bring at least one lesson plan that they would like to futurize). A quick overview of futures resources. Feedback and evaluation.
IB faculty created futures/foresight exercises for their classes utilizing a set of futures tools (brainstorming, backcasting, futures wheels, and so on). For many, this was their first contact with some of the tools. These truly creative professionals developed a variety of disciplinespecific foresight exercises. Some used futuring as a way to further convey a specific discipline (e.g., geography or chemistry), while others focused on the future itself. Then faculty were challenged to “futurize” an existing lesson plan or create one that was “futurized” so that it included a futures component or was inherently future focused. By the day’s end, IB teachers were clearly excited by ways that futuring can provide both rigor and relevance in their classroom instruction. This approach was hardly “new school” but rather a beginning step in diffusing foresight/futuring into an existing curriculum. Of course, this initial learning experience had strengths and weaknesses. Let’s take a look at what works and what doesn’t.
WHAT WORKS: STRENGTHS The good news was that the workshop provided opportunities for practical creation of exercises and useful learning experiences. Here we emphasize “practical.” Likewise, it provided an “opening” for the diffusion of futuring and foresight into the place where “it all happens”: the classroom. This came to pass without requiring formal curricular change through active learning at the faculty level. It was a forum that fostered mutual respect for community educators in the public K–12 system and the local community college. Structurally, it matched up and linked corresponding curricula that might in fact have remained in two independent cultures.
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Finally, the workshop was a creative enterprise that utilized the professional talents of K–12 teaching faculty and community college faculty, an important camaraderie.
WHAT DOESN’T WORK: WEAKNESSES There’s no perfect world, but the IF @ AACC workshop cadre learned from their shortcomings. Let’s take these areas for improvement in turn. Content, time management, technology use, and relevance were areas that needed improvement. Critical to future success, more background on futuring itself was necessary. IB faculty members realistically complained that they were not sufficiently provided preliminary material for the workshop experiences. This one of the key faux pas that futurists need to remember—most people really don’t think this way. Faculty participants wanted more time for exercise creation and lesson plan development as well as more time for collaboration. More interactive and dynamic vignettes of future worlds would improve the experience and make futuring more relevant to middle and high school students. Workshop faculty needed to better utilize technology for the purpose of presenting and also capturing innovative products developed in the session. In short, workshop leaders missed the K–12 culture target to some degree.
WHERE DO WE GO NEXT? This ongoing IB–IF venture has room for growth for both partners. IB gains value from having yet another tool—futuring—for transmission of its learning vision. Futuring gains traction when it makes a crossover to existing like-minded structures. In all, this model opens a route for mutual IB and IF creativity. Practically speaking, IB Diploma Programme and middle school students can simultaneously fulfill IB requirements through futuring tools and techniques integrated into their programs. Several offshoots of the partnership emerged. IB networking in the public elementary schools led to an IF @ AACC after-school futuring program in which IB 11th- and 12th-grade students will mentor elementary school students as both student groups participate in a futuring program designed to reflect the future and their own futures. At an organizational level, futuring and IB will be showcased at an IB Mid-Atlantic Subregional coordinators’ group meeting.
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CONCLUSION: DID IT WORK? WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR YOU? Right now we can answer these two questions with “yes” and “don’t know,” The IB–IF linkage is in place. The partnership created a corridor for infusing futuring into the K–12 program, faculty interest was tweaked, and tools were provided. The synergy between the two programs has generated pathways in unexpected directions to elementary schools and IB regional organizations as well as professional writing and likely presentations. Will futuring become part of the IB classroom environment? It’s too soon to tell. As for the reader who is a contemplating making future thinking a part of public K–12, we leave you with two things. First, “old-school” or, at least, “familiar-school” strategies can and do work in bringing faculty onboard. “Gee-whiz” workshops are great, but the gee-whiz outcome can be produced in some common formats. Second, large-scale, top-down curricular change may not be the best way to diffuse futures thinking. Start where the action is, that is, at the faculty–student interface.
Note: Materials for the IB faculty futuring workshop and emerging after-school futuring materials may be obtained from the authors or from the director of the Institute for the Future @ Anne Arundel Community College,
[email protected].
The Journey of Wonder Writers Govil Gupta
As I was growing up, my passion was writing. Poetry, essays, short stories, you name it, I would write it. Writing was a marvel to me because I could present my own creativity and perspective and really just write about anything. Eventually, I wanted to share my thoughts and, if I was fortunate, give others the key to imagination that previous authors had given to me. Yet the challenge that I faced was that there were few places where I could share my writing. Yes, there were some that I submitted to; however, even those were annual contests that rarely gave the opportunity to be published, which I still believe is every writer’s ultimate dream. It all started in a car ride to the grocery store when I was in the eighth grade. I was having a conversation with my father about writing and asked him if he found any new writing contests. The discussion eventually sidetracked to younger students and how there should be a place where young writers can submit and publish their writing. Almost spontaneously, I exclaimed, “Why don’t I just create it?” So, I set out on what I thought was a nearly impossible mission: to create a portal where K–12 youth could submit their writing, have it evaluated by professionals, and be rewarded by getting published and winning iPods. Finally, another goal that I wanted to accomplish was to give back to the community. After much pondering, the only medium that I realized would allow this to happen on a widely accessible basis was the Internet, and that’s where Wonder Writers (http://www.wonderwriters.com) was born. I spent the summer designing the website, and before long, the first contest was launched with themes such as “Bravery” and “Choices.” A local 169
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newspaper featured an article about Wonder Writers to promote the contest, and we received over 100 entries by the contest’s end. The awards ceremony was held at the local library, where the published writers were recognized and $175 raised for charity. Today, almost a year and a half later, Wonder Writers has grown tremendously from the starting point. As of June 2009, Wonder Writers completed four contests, donating nearly $500 to charity. The most recent contest was “The Power of Youth,” in which Nickelodeon screenwriters, English professors, and journalists judged the 200 entries received. In addition, Wonder Writers was honored by several organizations, including ABC, Nestlé, and Project Tomorrow, and developed lasting community partners, such as Team Kids. The journey of Wonder Writers has been similar to writing, as the quote by E. L. Doctorow states: “Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” I founded Wonder Writers as an incoming freshman when I was 15 years old, going in with only basic knowledge, a passion, a mission, and, most important, the spirit of a dream with the belief that I could fulfill it. It is hoped that Wonder Writers has provided young writers with that portal that I sought from the beginning and helped out other philanthropies doing great things as well.
9 Educational Futuristics Tomorrow
The future offers more than we can foresee, but its nature will be determined largely by the way we think about it. —Thomas Hine*
In the foreseeable future, K–12 educators and others in their sphere of influence (students, families of students, townspeople, and so on) are likely to be challenged by every possibility mentioned in the 2008 precursor volume, the preceding eight chapters in this book, and the 13 invited essays included. In this chapter, we go out still farther and explore futuristic possibilities in three matters mentioned only lightly thus far, namely, community organizing, cognitive neuroscience, and an intelligent personal agent. Each can significantly shape K–12 realities—for better or worse. Advance reflection about them should profit from the use of an educational futuristics (EdF) perspective. Before tackling the three topics directly, it seems advisable to briefly review three guidelines. First, as there is—fortunately—no knowing the future (or we would lack free will and be puppets), the forecasts that follow avoid the two most taboo words in futuristics: will and will not. Reliance goes instead to terms that convey awareness of the fragility at present of our theoretical models of change, the enormous gaps in our data, and 101 unresolved and evolving questions we need answered to help firm up responsible forecasts.
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Second, as everywhere else in this EdF book, the ideas in this speculative chapter are the product of a single author, and none of the very able contributors of the 13 guest essays should be held in any way responsible (they read them here for the first time). However, whatever merit the ideas may prove to have is owed in part to the author having sat attentively and appreciatively in audiences addressed by essay contributors Bisk, Coates, Crossman, Halal, Mack, Shostak, Snyder, and Steele. Finally, as the forecasts that follow were penned in November 2009, assessment of their current worth as you read these words should take carefully into account consequential intervening variables. Forecasts are hightension “live-wire” thought constructs, best revisited often for renewed tests of validity (hence, the replacement today by leading Fortune 100 companies of their hidebound traditional five-year plan handbooks with electronic software documents that are updated daily). With these three guidelines as a backdrop, we can proceed to ask what, if anything, might be brewing where people power, science power, and information technology (IT) power is concerned as this bears on K–12 education.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE—POSSIBLY There is no gainsaying the enormity of the challenge that has continued and that does and likely is to continue to confront K–12 educators. The litany is too well known to warrant a lengthy recital (e.g., inadequate time to teach and reteach, top-down micromanagement from afar, obsessive attention to prosaic matters because they can be quantified, and so on). The picture darkens considerably when you add the pained situation of unenviable home lives of far too many youngsters and the harrowing nature of their neighborhoods. Little wonder that in the fall of 2009, as this book was being developed, public assessment of America’s schools had fallen to the lowest level recorded since 1981, when Americans were first asked to grade schools. Just 18 percent of Americans gave the nation’s schools a grade of A or B, down from 30 percent as recently as 2005.1 Although the nation’s more than 14,000 school districts were spending a record average of $10,000 a year per pupil, high school graduation rates were lower than they had been in 1970. Data from the 12 largest states found that 16 percent of those between ages 16 and 24 had dropped out. Nearly 50 percent of minority students drop out. One in three ninth graders was not graduating in four years, and barely half of minority students completed high school in four years.2
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Math and reading scores have been stagnant for 40 or so years. In early 2009, a federal test found that fewer than 4 of 10 fourth and eighth graders were proficient in mathematics. For the first time in 19 years, fourth-grade math scores were flat. What high school students know and what they could do in math would seem to have “barely changed over the course of thirty years, and not at all in the last fifteen.”3 As if to underline the point, according to the Education Trust, “the U.S. is the only industrialized country in which young people are less likely than their parents to graduate from high school.”4 Only about a third of those who do graduate are prepared to move on to a four-year college. Half who attempted in recent years to earn a college degree failed to do so.5 Nationwide, only 6 percent of college freshmen graduate within four years, and the average time it takes to earn a degree is lengthening.6 Only about 15 percent of low-income students earn a college degree within nine years of starting high school.7 In the 1960s, we had the highest high school completion rate in the developed world; by 2005, we ranked twenty-first. In college completion, we ranked second in 1995. In 2005, we ranked fifteenth. The United States now trails more than 16 countries in Europe and Asia in the proportion of 24-year-olds with bachelor’s degrees in the natural sciences and engineering.8 Accordingly, economist Paul Krugman notes with alarm “young Americans are considerably less likely than young people in many other countries to graduate from college. In fact, we have a college graduation rate that’s slightly below the average across all advanced economies . . . we need to wake up and realize one of the keys to our nation’s historic success is now a wasting asset. Education made America great; neglect of education can reverse the process.”9 The list of weaknesses goes on, but by now the point is clear: our educational system urgently needs redirection (for details and prescriptions, see the essays by David Pearce Snyder in chapter 1 and Joseph Coates in chapter 7). Community organizing (CO) projects, a historic source of change, may finally be ready to assume more significance than ever in K–12 matters. Grassroots activists, ably brought along as was President Barack Obama, may operate in the second decade of the twenty-first century in smarterthan-ever ways. Their organizations understand that progress hinges on taking a solution-oriented approach, creating a groundswell of informed public support, and providing free and effective training for parents and students alike.10 Where K–12 schooling is concerned, this may yet have progressive community organizations focus on helping target schools upgrade teacher
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recruitment, pull up student test scores, and adopt both an appealing college-preparatory curricula and a comparably appealing career preparation tract. Certain community organizations may campaign to convert schools in underserved inner-city neighborhoods into year-round 24/7 community centers. These buildings might include child care centers, dental and health services, up-to-date libraries and computer labs, nutritious meals, afterhours tutoring and recreation for children, and classes for adults (counseling, educational, vocational, and recreational). In rural America, many community organizations could campaign to aid the revitalization of small (and often dying) towns by trying to stem the brain drain that presently saps their energy. An effort could be made to deconsolidate regional schools and break up big educational “factories.” In their place could emerge small far-flung public academies where youngsters can get individual attention—and possibly, on graduation, even elect with smiles and confidence to remain in the area. What sets all this CO activity apart from earlier such efforts is the newfound ability to draw on the Web. Leaders and members alike can pose queries, debate difficult matters, exchange tips, and solicit support (generate a large turnout at a hearing, secure many warm bodies for a protest, and so on). In 101 other related ways, they can maximize the returns possible from IT’s intelligence-augmentation power. Less certain but still in the realm of the possible—and, by my values, quite preferable—would be adoption of the community organizing ethos by K–12 students. Even as certain European countries have long had meaningful nationwide organizations of high school students, so might the second decade of the twenty-first century see the emergence here of our first significant nationwide body of teenage students. Indeed, at least some of the modern high school’s shortcomings might be traced to the general absence or weakness of student power. Much is arrayed against this possibility. Scattered coast to coast across over 14,000 discrete school districts and lacking any “consciousness of kind” (this a social psychological perquisite for the coming together and staying together of a bloc), the nation’s 50 million school students appear at first glance only an inchoate aggregate. While many high schools host student government organizations, these are commonly insular, low-energy, self-centered bodies of no consequence. Preoccupied with preparing for a postgraduation life and encouraged by stereotypes to focus narrowly (as on one’s Twitter network or school clique), many high school students see themselves only as “overworked, overregulated, and overstressed.”11 Outside of or even active in student government, they would seem poor candidates for membership in a novel new nationwide body of education-focused young people.
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On the other hand, contemporary excitement about social networks, especially student fascination with participation in Facebook and similar virtual communities, raises the possibility of ever-wider alliances being created in the years immediately ahead. Leadership here could be expected initially from minorities with a pressing need for mutual support against prejudice and discrimination. Certain gay high school students, for example, and others often marginalized and bullied in a school’s culture (nonconformists and so on) may be available to help start a nationwide organizing effort via the Internet. As often before in the nation’s history of bottom-up social change, it will take stepping forward by a small cadre to get others to recognize the possibilities in people power. Smart enough not to frame the organization’s start-up as a single-issue matter (e.g., gay rights), the organizers could astutely solicit membership from one and all, the only qualifier being current matriculation in any type of high school. Their new organization would be inclusive, progressive, and tolerant. Meeting in cyberspace more often than in real space and employing teleconference advances, Twitter-based immediacy, photo exchanges in near-real time, and other empowering IT items, a national student organization could become a player of consequence in K–12 matters in short order—especially, that is, if the young organizers take EdF to heart from the outset. Members are most likely to trust peer leaders who evidence strength in all three time realms—past, present, and future—the better to protect clout in the here and now and give assurance of sustainability over time. Leaders who can articulate alternative tomorrows—probable, possible, preferable, and preventable—are likely to win recruits and campaigns alike. Typical of the future-shaping challenges that a national organization of high school students might take up is the need for vastly expanded support for the majority of students disinclined to go on to college (as discussed in chapter 1) along with alleviation of pressure on others to go to college (especially as only about 20 percent graduate after admission).12 A second focus might be on alleviating the harm to self-esteem inflicted by excessive police presence in so-called high-risk schools. For example, the number of uniformed police stationed in New York City high schools, some 5,200 in 2009, has expanded by 62 percent since the program’s start in 1998, and the group is now the fifth-largest police force in the United States.13 Related here is overreliance on metal detectors, as field research suggests that their removal from even high-risk high schools can lead to improved attendance, better retention, and higher graduation rates.14 A third concern involves the resistance of certain teachers to employ the electronic resources that young people rely on for learning outside class. Students are trendsetters in using technology to organize and complete
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schoolwork, a sort of digital advance team. As early adopters and adapters, they “create new uses for a myriad of technological product to meet their sophisticated needs. They can be predictors or at least harbingers of how technology could be used to transform education”15—provided, that is, that a national organization of high school students agitates to get school districts to start listening. A final concern—and, not surprisingly, my favorite—would involve alleviating the harm to post–high school employability, citizenship, and personal life management traceable to the absence of EdF in the culture and curricula of the nation’s high schools. In alliance with other forces discussed in chapter 8, the nation’s high school students could help achieve a long-overdue makeover in K–12 education: what more appropriate group to help lead the change. Seemingly bright prospects in the K–12 world for IT-aided (adult) community organizing, along with far more iffy prospects for (overdue) national collaboration among high school students, bring to mind a formulation advanced by journalist Tom Friedman in a related context: “Where there is people power wedded to progressive ideas, there is hope. . . . Where there is people power harnessed to bad ideas [such as keeping youngsters in their place], there is danger. Where there is no people power and only bad ideas [as in acquiescence to banal K–12 ways], there will be no happy endings.”16
POWER FROM BRAIN RESEARCH—PROBABLY As discussed in this chapter hereafter in the essay by Daniel Shostak, a young nephew and longtime mentor of mine, ongoing advances being made in the study of the brain hold out extraordinary promise where K–12 education is concerned (Shostak urges caution, however, as overexpectations and vendor hype haunt this kind of scene). Social cognitive neuroscience, in particular, stands out in ability to illuminate how biology, in the form of genes, influences behavior and vice versa. In time, K–12 educators may learn much of value about how the brains of young learners are influenced by this or that mode of instruction, method of delivery, type of testing, and so forth. In addition, insights are likely into how the brains of learners differ when they are from different social strata or have bonded to different social groups, this last an affirmation of the power of human attachments. Social-cognitive neuroscience draws on a creative mix of biotechnology, physiology, political science, psychology, and social science, along with elements of the humanities (theater and performance studies and so on). K–12 educators can look to it for help in “filling a hole in our understand-
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ing ourselves . . . [in our need] to define and systematize the emotions . . . [it could] take us beyond the obsession with I.Q. and other conscious capacities, and give us a firmer understanding of motivation, equilibrium, sensitivity, and other unconsciousness capacities.”17 Nature gave us brains that are fundamentally pluralistic—amalgamations of reason and emotion—and the best K–12 schooling is that which makes the most of this. Applications of seeming value in K–12 education are already paying off. Youngsters, for example, who are handicapped by dyslexia may profit from playing a video game called Fast ForWord. Drawing on brain-scanning research into the neurological roots of the problem, the game can help normalize brain differences through neuroplasticity-based training. Use of it has helped afflicted youngsters achieve significant increases in scores on standardized tests.18 Youngsters held back by inordinate low self-esteem and other similar constraints on mental health can get help reprogramming themselves through video game play. A set of online games can help the brain form more positive patterns of thought. They build on new understanding of the effects on the brain of social acceptance and rejection.19 Comparably intriguing are research advances in our understanding of the neurological roots of especially vexing social matters such as lying, racism, sexism, and the costly like. In time, moral science may converge with virtual reality software to allow youngsters to realistically role-play their reactions to different moral situations. Able in this way to uncover some of the root sources of their decision-making processes, they could then turn to neuroscience for help remapping their neural circuitry and reprogramming memory to craft a person they would like to become.20 Older teachers, concerned about the toll that aging can take on mental processes, might profit from working out several times a week in newfound “brain gyms.” Commonly based in computer labs and therefore accessible also from home, they offer attention-improving virtual games that research finds can help improve reasoning and memory. Aided by social-cognitive neuroscience to better understand how many of our actions stem from our emotions as well as from rational thought, K– 12 educators should soon find that insights into how their students’ (and their own) brains work represent a remarkable new ally.21 The well-known pioneering work on multiple intelligences of Howard Gardner, along with Martin Seligman’s pioneering work on positive psychology (happiness studies), newly buttressed by neurological research, is likely to get fresh use in progressive K–12 thinking. This last matter—positivity (and its cousin optimism)—is a particularly good bet for increased attention, as it “has been scientifically linked to better health, less depression, and longer life. These are benefits that are available to everyone. And they are free.”22
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Which is not say that brain research findings dealing with the “dark side” can be overlooked, as sadness is as much a natural part of life as is laughter. Mature K–12 schooling, drawing with integrity on social-cognitive neuroscience, will range widely across the human condition. EdF-sensitive educators are likely to be among the first responders here and, in their professionalism, likely to help spread the word.
INTELLIGENT PERSONAL AGENT Gains are being made in IT research labs around the world in developing an electronic alter ego, sometimes called an intelligent personal agent (IPA). One among many possible approaches here has a person endlessly answering ever-more-refined questions posed by the “voice” of extraordinarily clever software. It employs a neural net design that bars it from making the same mistake twice and leaves it with an insatiable appetite to “learn” more and more about its human host. Housed in whatever wireless hardware the human relies on (cell phone, laptop, and so on), the IPA endless drills down through its questioning to improve its “understanding” of its human host, and this may, in time, have it “know” more about that person than he or she consciously does (or his or her mate does). Connected to its host through an ear “jewel” casually worn by a human, the IPA is likely to initiate conversation several times a day as it tries to advance the well-being of is host. It can serve as a remarkable educational mentor since it has access to the greatest library yet created—the Web—and that IT library grows greater all the time. Brilliant in its use of data mining and data warehousing (the latter strategically aided by cloud computing), the IPA can be expected to form alliances with other friendly IPAs, the better to help increase its power in managing intelligence. For K–12 educators, the prospect is one of youngsters arriving at kindergarten empowered by their own much-loved IPA. Students are likely to appreciate the ability of their personal “Merlin” to make useful suggestions stealthily without explicit prompting. Growing up probably surrounded by virtual world software, “smart” home robots, and telecommuting workfrom-home parents, many K–12 students are likely to regard their IPAs as unexceptional if also invaluable allies. The advent of IPAs is likely to shake things up, to put it mildly, as this piece of intelligence augmentation would be a major game changer. It may arrive incrementally, as with our use today of Google Alerts and the like, albeit with an air of inevitability. By about 2030, we may even be complacent about (nearly) everyone relying on machine intelligence for sophisticated foresight, detailed analysis,
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and augmented insight—all of it available 24/7, custom-tailored to our personality and mental capability, and whispered in the ear in the dialect of our choice. IPAs may even handle certain relatively risk-free interactions on our behalf without prior permission, as we may by then have come to regard them as trustworthy extensions of ourselves (and, in certain conventional matters, brighter and more able than ourselves).23 Of only this can one feel assured: after our world begins to host IPAs, education of all types—preschool through to one’s demise—is likely to change radically in ways still hard to fathom. Students in 2030 are very likely to look back at us with sympathy, so crude, difficult, and incomplete might our ways of knowing seem to them. Theirs will be a world no longer beholden to natural evolutionary processes to boost intelligence but one in which humans and their IPAs may soar.
SUMMARY There are new buzzwords in K–12 education: improvement, accountability, investment, and impact. Conspicuous by their absence are the words educational futuristics. To get there from here, that is, to get to an overdue K–12 world strong in its use of EdF, is to take smarter-than-ever advantage of three easily overlooked tools: 1) community organizations, long with us; 2) social-cognitive neuroscience, coming along rapidly; and 3) IPAs, still a speck on the horizon but one that is getting larger all the time. We need to do more with community organizing because the heart of a quality public education system is a partnership among all the elements of its functioning, and to date we gain far too little from “people power” (that of parents and their offspring alike). We need to do more with the brainfocused sciences because we can be empowered as never before by bold new insights into the neurological roots of affect, behavior, and cognition. And we need to ponder ahead of the fact the implications of the likely availability soon of an electronic alter ego (IPA) lest we be blindsided by negative impacts or miss positive applications. EdF offers the framework and tools to get on with the job.
NOTES *Thomas Hine, What the Future Has Been, What the Future Can Be (New York: Knopf, 1991), xiii. 1. Paul E. Peterson, “What the Public Thinks of Public Schools,” Wall Street Journal, September 9, 2009, A-21. See also http://educationnext.org. Relevant here,
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even if quite harsh, is the contention that “we can’t put our people to work. We can’t educate the young. We can’t keep the infrastructure in good repair. It’s hard to believe that this nation could be so dysfunctional at the end of the first decade of the 21st century.” Bob Herbert, “Our Crumbling Foundation,” New York Times, May 26, 2009, A-17. 2. As quoted in Neil King Jr., “Schools Push Hits the Road,” Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2009, A-3. 3. On the math test, see Robert Tomsho, “U.S. Math Scores Hit a Wall,” Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2009, A-3; see also Sam Dillon, “Math Scores Falling Short of Goals Set by Law,” New York Times, October 15, 2009, A-18. The quotation is from Mark Schneider, Math in American High Schools: The Delusion of Rigor (Washington, DC: AEI Outlooks Series, 2009). On the dropout rate study, see Bob Herbert, “Peering at the Future,” New York Times, September 29, 2009, A-35; see also Editorial, “The Dropout Crisis,” New York Times, May 9, 2009, A-18. “The dropout crisis presents a clear danger to national prosperity.” See also Sam Dillon, “Study Finds That About 10 Percent of Young Male Dropouts Are in Jail or Detention,” New York Times, October 9, 2009, A-12. This compares with 1 in 35 young male high school graduates and 1 in 4 young black male dropouts as compared with about 1 in 14 young, male, white, Asian, or Hispanic dropouts. 4. Herbert, “Our Crumbling Foundation,” A-17. 5. Bob Herbert, “Peering at the Future,” New York Times, A-35. See also David Leonhardt, “At Colleges, Too Few Diplomas,” New York Times, September 9, 2009, B-1. In 2008, workers with bachelor’s degrees made 54 percent on average more than those who attended college but didn’t finish. 6. Debra Viadero, “Student-to-College ‘Mismatch’ Seen as Graduation-Rate Issue,” Education Week, September 23, 2009, 1. “One reason so many academically talented students leave college without a diploma may be that they enroll in schools for which they are overqualified.” 7. Richard Whitmere and Andrew J. Rotherham, “How Teachers Unions Lost the Media,” Wall Street Journal, October 2, 2009, W-13. 8. Susan Hockfield, “Immigrant Scientists Create Jobs and Win Nobels,” Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2009, A-19. 9. Paul Krugman, “The Uneducated American,” New York Times, October 9, 2009, A-25. See also Peter McPherson and David Shulenburger, “Yes, We Can Expand Access to Higher Ed,” Wall Street Journal, June 20–21, 2009, A-11. The United States has fallen to ninth among the world’s leading advanced nations (members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) in the proportion (41 percent) of young adults (ages 25 to 34) who have attained college degrees. 10. In this connection, see Lisa Maxwell, Lisa. “Community Organizing,” Education Week, October 14, 2009, 5. 11. Christopher L. Doyle, “Growing Up Scripted: And Losing Freedom Along the Way,” Education Week, October 14, 2009, 23. 12. John W. Myres, “Dropouts Happen,” Education Week, October 14, 2009, 22. 13. Davarai Aarons, “Outcry against Violence,” Education Week, October 14, 2009, 12. 14. Jorge Rivas, “Schools Are Safer without Metal Detectors,” Rethinking Schools, Fall 2009, 13.
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15. Kathlen Kennedy Manzo, “Students See Schools Inhibiting Their Use of New Technologies,” Education Week, April 1, 2009, 10. The research draws on responses from over 280,000 K–12 students in a 2008 poll (Speak Up national research project) for Project Tomorrow. 16. Thomas L. Friedman, “The Power in 11/9,” New York Times, October 18, 2009, WK-8. 17. David Brooks, “The Young and the Neuro,” New York Times, October 13, 2009, A-27. See also Jonah Lehrer, How We Decide (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009). 18. As cited in Patrick Tucker, “The Dawn of the Postliterate Age,” The Futurist, November–December 2009, 43. The research, by Steve Miller and Paula Talal, was first reported in a 2006 issue of School Administrator. 19. Anonymous, “World Trends and Forecasts,” The Futurist, January–February 2009, 9. 20. Patrick Tucker, “Reinventing Morality,” The Futurist, January–February 2009, 24. 21. In this connection, see Daniel T. Willingham, Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions about How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom (New York: Jossey-Bass, 2009). 22. Michelle Conlin, “Blinded by Optimism—From 9/11 to Subprime,” BusinessWeek, October 26, 2009, 76. 23. I draw here gratefully on Jamais Cascio, “Get Smart,” The Atlantic, July/August 2009, 94–100.
Neurons, Networks, and Learning: What Neuroscience Means for K–12 Education Daniel I. Shostak
It is embarrassing for futurists to revisit a forecast that was wrong. In the mid-1990s, I thought that neuroscience and cognitive psychology would revolutionize education. Instead, the education industry was sold “brainbased” programs that have little basis in either neuroscience or cognitive psychology. For their part, neuroscience and cognitive psychology did not reach out to educational researchers and practitioners until recently, preferring to focus on fundamental research on brain wiring and functioning. My new forecast is modest: in the next decade neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, and educators will successfully collaborate in developing a research agenda to explore human development and learning. Eventually, rigorous research will provide insights on how the educational system may improve human development. However, social institutions, let alone mass education, will never be as efficient at learning as individual Homo sapiens. Evolution has a long “head start.” Before continuing, I would like to resolve an ongoing terminology problem between neuroscience and educators. The word learning has very different meanings for these two points of view. For neuroscientists, learning is biological; it is about discovering how the neurological system adapts to input or internal processes. Cognitive psychologists and educators consider learning to be the communication, retention, and associated behavior of selected cultural, social, and factual information. This type of learning is likely to be a complex set of biological processes. Eventually, but not yet, the gap between these two views will be bridged, and we will understand the biology behind education. 183
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WHY WAS MY FORECAST WRONG? My forecast contained several critical failures. First, the forecast for the pace of discovery in neuroscience and cognitive psychology was too optimistic. Second, it was based on the logical fallacy that research and discovery at the neuroscience level could be associated with the complex social phenomena we call education. Third, what neuroscience did discover (discussed here) was at the developmental, neuroanatomical, and “wiring” level of brain function. This was essential work, though little of it can be applied to complex environments, such as classrooms and families, let alone to individual students. Finally, I underestimated the complicity between the educational establishment, educational industries, and the media. American education is under extreme scrutiny, and politicians, parents, and educators want answers. With the media hyping neuroscience, school leaders desperate, and billions of dollars sloshing around, “brain-based” education entrepreneurs and companies went about offering “new” products based on “the latest” science—no reason to look under the hood. This process became self-perpetuating as new scientific discoveries were transformed into new commodities. It is not a sin to misforecast, only to fail to learn from real outcomes. We do not have confirmed scientific knowledge of how humans biologically learn at high levels. We are increasing our understanding of human development. We are more aware that education as we know it is constrained more by political and cultural interests than by the ability of children to learn. Furthermore, neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, and educators are more appreciative of each other and the need for collaboration. Importantly, we need to integrate our appetite for further research with what we already know about human development and learning.
DEBUNKING OF BRAIN-BASED THEORY Neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists call much of “brain-based” methods neuromyths. Five of the most intransigent neuromyths are the following: 1. Closed windows: Past theory has proposed that the brain is tuned to learn differing tasks at differing times (windows of opportunity). Missing a window was once considered a grave error. There is no supportive evidence of closed windows. Brain development occurs over the first few decades of life, and adult humans can be lifelong learners. What is true is that healthy children begin to develop language skills
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almost immediately, that skills that are more complex require time for development, and that certain forms of memory become more effective during and after puberty. There may be sensitive periods (especially language learning), but these abilities are never “lost.” The divided brain: Early neuroscience research explored how the left and right sides of the brain differ. This led to the “theory” that the two sides of the brain handle information differently and that these differences affect learning. The science is that different areas of the brain more or less contribute to the brain’s many activities, but the brain works as a whole (possibly as a network of networks). There is no neuroscience evidence that in healthy individuals, brain hemispheres are a determinant of learning. Gender bias: Over the past generation, people have been exercised about whether American schools have a gender bias in their methods and whether gender bias reform is necessary. This is usually a derivative of the hemisphere argument. Neuroscientific evidence is that healthy children of both genders develop along a similar path. There is an interesting exception in that evidence indicates that women may develop their executive functions earlier than men. Executive functions are high-level organizing abilities (e.g., planning, coordinating, and multitasking). My conjecture is that this may make evolutionary sense, as women can become mothers just after puberty, and these abilities could improve child rearing. Teaching to learning styles: Cognitive sciences explore three learning styles (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic). Although individual students may have a preference, there is little evidence that teaching to these preferences improve learning or memory. It may be true that lessons combining all three styles may increase attention and retention. Early enrichment and overenrichment: This may be the most political of neuromyths. We know that we start learning almost immediately, and much of that learning starts with sensory perception and its processing. In addition, we know that parental figures have considerable control, if they wish, over the sensory environment. In America, a sizable portion of children are raised by conscientious parents/figures in rich and safe sensory environments. There is little need for further intervention, and there is little evidence of benefits of overenrichment at any age. The basis of early childhood interventions is to provide systematic stimulation in safe environments based on theories of human development. This should be unnecessary if parents and neighborhoods are up to the task of nurturing. The challenges of poor parenting and unsafe neighborhoods are quite separate from K–12 education policy.
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To be clear, we neither understand nor have the tools yet to make the links between brain activities and the complex learning we expect educational institutions to provide.
WHAT DOES CURRENT NEUROSCIENCE KNOW ABOUT LEARNING? Neuroscience and cognitive psychology has made strides in exploring the biology of human development. Four of the most exciting findings are the following: 1. Neuroplasticity: This concept dates back to the nineteenth century, but new research indicates that thinking, learning, acting, and other cognitive functions continuously change both the brain’s physical structure and its functional organization. An extreme oversimplification is that sensory input creates one or more networks of brain cells (“circuits”). These circuits can be reinforced by further stimulation. Furthermore, circuits face competition from other circuits. Throughout life—but particularly during development—the brain prunes circuits, presumably retaining the most valuable. The theory is that our neurosystems are in constant flux as they learn and adjust to the environment. 2. Neural mirroring system: This may be the most controversial and unsettled recent discovery in neuroscience. One of the great debates is over how Homo sapiens learn to learn. Recent research proposes that we possess specialized neurosystems that activate when we observe actions by others and “light up” again when we attempt these actions ourselves. Thus, the thinking is that we inherit this mirror system, which is activated by observations that are reinforced by mimicry, which reinforces the circuits, and so forth. Some mirror theorists propose that the neural mirroring system can also differentiate expected outcomes from observed actions; that is, we will continue to mimic actions until we achieve an anticipated outcome or reward, even if the only observed actions failed to achieve the outcome. 3. Diagnostic capabilities: Neuroscience’s most immediate contribution may be its diagnostic capabilities of certain brain dysfunctions that can be observed using various brain imaging and activity measurement technologies. It is likely that certain developmental challenges and other neurological conditions may be associated with abnormalities in either brain physiology or brain functioning. Ongoing research into autism, dyscalculia, dyslexia, and epilepsy continue to explore the linkage between these challenges and the brain’s physical form and function. Several interventions based on this research are proving successful.
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4. Complex systems: Evidence continues to mount that our neurological system is a complex, self-organizing, adaptive system that is optimized to exist near critical states. In plain English, our 100 billion neurons are organized in a way that maximizes communication between cells, circuits, and subsystems. These links can be developed, changed, or pruned on an ongoing basis (self-organizing). Moreover, the brain and all its cells, circuits, networks, and subsystems are continuously prepared to adapt to new stimulus by reorganizing itself (criticality). If this thesis is true, then the emerging study of complex systems may be able to shed light on the brain, and neuroscience will contribute to complexity theory.
THE POSSIBLE BASIS OF A NEUROSCIENCE THEORY OF LEARNING If neuroplasticity and neural mirroring systems are substantiated by further research, then a basis of neuroscience learning theory could be established on the following premises. Most human learning starts from social interactions. Healthy humans start the learning and the neuroplasticity process immediately. The initial basis of learning is mimicking observed human behavior (especially the facial expressions of human providers). This mimicking process reflects the mirroring system. Early learning/development is initiated by face-to-face interactions. Learning expands beyond face-to-face imitation to shared attention. Infants will follow the gaze of other humans and respond to that object or person.
NEUROSCIENCE’S COLLABORATION WITH EDUCATION WILL BE CONTROVERSIAL In the near term, the collaboration between neuroscience, cognitive psychologists, and education will produce controversies, involving at least six issues: 1. Smart pills and technologies: Understanding of the neurochemical basis of learning and cognitive skills will lead to proposals and products for augmentation. It will be difficult to regulate and manage the development and commercialization of these and other enhancement technologies. Systematic and prudent research of the safety and effectiveness of these interventions must be a priority of governments. 2. Robots and thinking machines: Cognitive scientists and computer scientists have a long association. Computer scientists would like to
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advance learning machines through better understanding of neuroscience. Others would like to develop thinking machines that can become teacher extenders. Efforts are now under way to design and test robots that may be able to stimulate social learning among children. It is unclear whether healthy human development can extend social learning to include nonhumans. If there is progress in human–robot relationships, K–12 leaders will need to grapple with resource allocation decisions of investing in teachers or robots. Research ethics: Obtaining more neuroscience data requires research on children. Current research tools, largely imaging and neuroelectric monitoring, are not evasive, but more evasive technologies are possible. Furthermore, obtaining sound baseline population data of human development will mean subjecting hundreds if not thousands of children to tests with no direct benefits. Committees overseeing research will need to examine questions of informed consent, health information privacy, direct risks and benefits, and costs. Parental evaluation: It is inevitable that neuroscience and cognitive psychology will develop new parenting recommendations to optimize child development. This will challenge concepts of child welfare and raise the difficult questions of monitoring and evaluating parents. These issues could be explosive. New media in education: For decades, well-meaning individuals and corporate interests have pushed for new and more sophisticated media in schools. New media do have benefits, including access to knowledge and engagement with students from other cultures. Computer programs and games have proven to be able to teach skills, particularly communication and executive skills. Despite these achievements, the question of limited resources remains. Investing in teachers, the ultimate “teaching technology,” continues to have a large return. Mandated brain scanning: Eventually, there will enough data to develop neurological parameters about child development. This will lead first to private testing. The greater challenge is whether there should be mandated, periodical brain testing of all children and, if so, what should be done with the results.
WHAT WE DON’T NEED NEUROSCIENCE TO TELL US Advanced technological societies have a bias toward discovery and innovation. Formal education is a social technology associated with advanced societies. It is not a surprise that many interested parties wish to encourage paid research and subsidized innovation in education. However, we already
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know a lot about development and learning that does not require further neuroscience research. In the United States, we lack the political will to build education around commonsense theory, which includes these five principles: 1. Homo sapiens has evolved to comprise learning organisms. We begin learning immediately after birth and can continue to learn throughout life. Social systems that create learning-adverse individuals should be abhorrent to modern society. 2. We are naturally curious and adept at exploring our environment. There is no essential need for cutting-edge technology to stimulate learning. Evolution has made human learning more sophisticated than any foreseeable technology. The requirements for child development are well established: provide children with engaging and safe environments, encourage curiosity and learning, and pay attention and provide appropriate feedback. 3. Proper human development requires maintaining the health of children. The evidence is clear that proper nutrition, adequate rest, physical activity, and physical safety can put children in a position to optimally develop and learn. Research also indicates that children who are under stress or who feel unsafe do not learn well. Child health and safety is as important to learning as proper education. 4. The optimal education environment is one-on-one tutelage by a talented educator. Our mass education system is a “second-best” solution for learning. Mass education will never be optimal for learning, though it may be economical and politically expedient. It would be a valuable breakthrough if technology provided an effective substitute for one-on-one tutelage. 5. Given that parental figures are our first teachers, interventions to train parents are appropriate. However, this should not be the role of K–12 educators. Other social welfare systems should address parenting issues. Globally, neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, educational researchers, and education professionals are building a closer collaboration to explore human development and learning. Eventually, neuroscience will discover how the brain performs high-level learning and provide guidance to educators. Until then, educational institutions need to be more critical and thorough in evaluating new educational concepts and products. Humans are born to socially learn through interacting with a safe environment. Our educational institutions need to put this principle at the core of its mission.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Byron, T. “Safer Children in a Digital World: The Report of the Byron Review,” 2008, http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview, September 10, 2009. Chudler, E. H. Neuroscience and education web site: http://faculty.washington.edu/ chudler/ehceduc.html. This is a good source for teaching materials. Goswami, U. “Annual Review: Neuroscience and Education.” British Journal of Educational Psychology 74 (2004): 1–14. ———. “Neuroscience and Education: The Brain in the Classroom.” Psychology of Education Review 29, no. 2 (2005): 2–8. ———. “Neuroscience in Education.” In The Jossey-Bass Reader on the Brain and Learning. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2007. ———. Cognitive Development: The Learning Brain. London: Psychology Press, Taylor & Francis, 2008. Howard-Jones, P. “Neuroscience and Education: Issues and Opportunities,” http:// www.tlrp.org/pub/documents/Neuroscience%20Commentary%20FINAL.pdf, September 5, 2009 (a nice overview of several issues). ———, ed. Education and Neuroscience: Evidence, Theory and Practical Application. London: Routledge, 2009. Johnson, M. H. “Brain Development in Childhood: A Literature Review and Synthesis,” 2008, http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview, September 10, 2009 (an excellent presentation of brain development). Meltzoff. A. N., et al. “Foundations for a New Science of Learning.” Science 325 (2009): 284–88. This is the article that started a new global round of discussion. Seo, H., and D. Lee. “Persistent Feedback.” Nature 461, no. 3 (2009): 50–51; Society for Neuroscience: Neuroscience Education Resources,” http://www.ndgo.net/sfn/ nerve, September 10, 2009 (another website with good teaching materials but may be slightly dated). Sylwester, Robert. “Cognitive Neuroscience Discoveries and Educational Practices: Seven Areas of Brain Research That Will Shift the Current Behavioral Orientation of Teaching and Learning,” December 1, 2006. http://www.thefreelibrary. com/Cognitive neuroscience discoveries and educational practices: seven ...a0156417563, September 20, 2009. Teacher and Learning Research Programme, “Special Issue: Education and Neuroscience: Evidence, Theory and Practical Application.” Educational Research 50, no. 2 (2008), http://www.tlrp.org/dspace/retrieve/3279/TLRP+Special+Issue -Educational+Research-50.2-2008.pdf, September 5, 2009.
Beyond Rote Learning: Online Education Moves Schools to Higher Consciousness William E. Halal
Learning is clearly moving online, as many of the essays in this volume demonstrate, raising profound questions of how education will change in a high-tech world. My central thesis in this short essay is that the automation of rote learning will likely cause the same result that occurs as we automate any human activity—attention shifts to higher-level functions. Various forms of artificial intelligence (AI) are now automating routine human thought. The logical conclusion is that life will generally move beyond today’s focus on knowledge to the next step in this progression—to consciousness itself. Schools will increasingly focus on all those more complex, messy, and crucial aspects of life that are generally slighted—collaborative learning communities, electronic games and simulations, experiential education, internships, consulting work, public projects, personal values and career goals, and living in a difficult world. K–12 education will never again be the same.
CONSCIOUSNESS RISING Consciousness is the next great frontier in civilization’s progress because AI is moving life beyond information, knowledge, and other forms of “rational” logic. The world of culture, values, goals, purpose, choice, spirituality, and other aspects of subjective experience may soon take center stage for the same reason the information age emerged and the industrial age before 191
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that—because a shift in consciousness is needed to solve the challenges ahead. Globalization is driving a fivefold increase in industrialization, with a commensurate leap in environmental stress, climate change, energy shortages, conflict among nations armed with weapons of mass destruction, controlling the revolutionary powers of bio-/nano-/AI technologies, and other challenges that cannot be resolved within our existing state of mind. The relentless pace of information technology (IT) and AI driving this upheaval is likely to pose an existential dilemma. Intelligent systems are encroaching on life as androids replace humans, intelligent agents act as assistants, smart computers talk, discoveries in neuroscience are able to model the brain, and so on. This “automation of mental work” poses one of the most intriguing scientific issues of our time, namely, is there a fundamental difference between machine intelligence and human intelligence? In other words, can the essence of human consciousness be reduced to machines, or is something else involved? There is much compelling evidence that behavior is governed by rational logic, genetic inheritance, brain chemistry, emotions, and a host of other physical factors. Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, codiscoverer of DNA, carries this logic to its conclusion: “Your joys, your sorrows, your sense of personal identity and free will, are no more than a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”1 Despite the fact that most people are convinced that human thought surpasses sheer information, could we all be wrong? After all, everybody accepted the flat-Earth view for millennia. The evidence also suggests that spiritual practices, social relationships, beliefs, and a host of other forms of “human spirit” also play a crucial role in our behavior. For instance, health is affected by beliefs, friendships, and optimism. Prayer, meditation, and other spiritual practices seem to improve personal well-being and communities. There are even some indications of telepathic communication, universal life forces, the special nature of creativity, and lifeafter-death experiences, although many doubt the studies are valid.2 David Gelernter, professor of computer science at Yale, disagrees with the prevailing scientific view that all human thought is a product of the “wet computer” in our heads: “All we can discuss scientifically is objective knowledge,” says Gelernter. “Consciousness is subjective . . . [a machine] has no inner mental life, no ‘I,’ no “sense of self.”3 That is the mystery. Where do subjectivity and that vibrant sense of self come from? There must be a decision maker selecting things to focus on, choosing goals, and exercising free will to make deliberate choices. Most adults are preoccupied with subjective matters that transcend formal knowledge. The crucial actions of life—succeeding in a career, keeping a marriage alive, raising children, and so on—require drawing on mental strength, wisdom, and willpower. Tell executives, parents, the devout, and others that their actions are an automatic response to environmental
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stimuli, and you are likely to get a blank stare. To most people, there is no need for proof—free will and human spirit are self-evident. In surveys with audiences, I find that about 90 percent agree that “there is a fundamental difference between humans and computers.” They think that there is something about the human mind that will always make us superior to the most intelligent artificial system. People may not be able to put their finger on it, and they could be proven wrong, but the scientific view does not seem to coincide with everyday experience. The Dalai Lama has made a point of integrating his long tradition of studies in consciousness with modern neuroscience and argues that this “luminous nature of awareness” transcends the brain.4 Daniel Batson, a University of Kansas psychologist, said that “the brain is the hardware through which [consciousness] is experienced. To say the brain produces consciousness is like saying a piano produces music.”5 There is a long and growing tradition of explaining the human spirit as a distinctive phenomenon acting under our control with profound consequences.6 This higher-order consciousness can be thought of as spiritual energy, constantly adapting in the struggle to find a trustworthy island of consciousness able to see us through the sea of life. Each organism is imbued somehow with this energy, and these islands of consciousness aggregate into larger islands as groups, organizations, and entire national cultures develop a spirit all their own. David Chalmers at the Australian National University said that “we are likely to discover that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, like space, time, and gravity.”7 The accelerating advances in AI lead directly to this mysterious phenomenon we take for granted. Computer power should match that of the brain by around 2020, roughly the same time that AI is likely to become widely used. Honda released the second generation of its android, Asimo, who can run, climb stairs, carry on conversations, escort visitors, and serve coffee. The Japanese and Koreans plan to be selling robots to families around 2010, and forecasts suggest that they will be commonly used in homes by around 2015. These trends suggest that advanced societies will increasingly replace routine human intelligence with reasonably good AI over the next decade. IBM and others are simulating parts of the brain, and it is conceivable that we could produce computer simulations of the entire brain in a decade or two. After all, does it make a difference to replace a neuron with a transistor? The brain contains 100 billion neurons interacting in a network of 100 trillion synapses, which seems impossibly complex. But that’s just a technical barrier, like deciphering the 3 billion bits of information in DNA. If science can break the DNA code, why not the brain? Some seem convinced that this means that humans will be reduced to mere information systems that are uploaded, stored, and downloaded at will. Computer scientist Marvin Minsky suggests that we can eventually
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solve the population problem by uploading the minds of the world’s 9 billion people onto a computer that occupies a few cubic meters and costs a few hundred dollars to run.8 Vernor Vinge, who coined the term “singularity,” thinks that “[intelligent machines] would use [people] the way we’ve used oxen and donkeys.”9 The rise of AI follows the well-worn historic path in which technology steadily replaced farming and manufacturing and now promises to automate services and knowledge. But recall that the automation of factories did not produce rampant unemployment as feared. In fact, the reverse occurred as better jobs became plentiful. What we have learned is that automation eliminates routine tasks that can be relegated to machines, freeing people to focus on more creative tasks that can be handled only by humans. I suspect that the same will prove true for the automation of thought. Here’s how David Brooks of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) experienced it: “I quickly established a romantic attachment to my GPS [Global Positioning System]. I could no longer go anywhere without her, and I found comfort in her tranquil and slightly anglophilic voice: ‘Make a U-turn if possible.’ Since the dawn of humanity, people have had to worry about how to get from here to there. My GPS liberated me from this drudgery. You know how it felt? It felt like Nirvana.” Consciousness, in short, is a huge and formidable challenge that we have examined only briefly here (for a fuller exploration of this fascinating issue, see Halal, Technology’s Promise, cited in note 2).
TECHNOLOGIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION The realization that we are heading toward a rise of consciousness then begs the question, what can be done to alter consciousness? I don’t think any of us can really understand much about this new frontier anymore than we could have known 30 years ago that we would spend half our time today staring into and interacting with a personal computer. But I have come to think in terms of “technologies of consciousness”— practices that change our state of mind. That’s why we are increasingly using prayer, meditation, exercise and sports, art and music, ceremonies and rituals, dance, humor, nature, relationships, love, sex, family, community, and a variety of other interventions for mastering inner life. MIT geneticist Eric Lander, for example, said that after working with the Dalai Lama, “we should regard [Buddhism] as a refined technology.” The seriousness of such practices is attested to by the fact that spiritual practices are entering the workplace because they produce bottom-lineaiding results. Lawrence Perlman, chief executive officer of Ceridian, said that “ultimately, the combination of head and heart is a competitive advantage.”
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Executives at Aetna, Monsanto, McKinsey, Medtronic, America Online, Raytheon, and Silicon Graphics meditate daily. At Lotus, a “Soul Committee” was established to shape values. One organization starts meetings with a minute of silence, and I know an executive who lights a candle when a visitor comes to talk. A “spiritual audit” of 200 corporate leaders found that “spirituality is one of the most important determinants of performance.”10 To be sure, some of this could be done using “hard” technologies, such as the increasing use of brain prostheses to add memory or alleviate the erratic signals that cause illnesses such as Parkinson’s, the use of virtual reality and other powerful new forms of IT, the use of cutting-edge drugs, and the exotic like. The most common and most “affordable” technologies of consciousness, however, include the many social processes we engage in daily, such as the use of strategic planning and vision to make crucial choices that people commit to, diplomacy and conflict resolution to resolve differences and gain consensus, collaborative problem solving to work out new solutions, and an endless stream of everyday actions. As online texts, teaching machines, computerized tutorial programs, and who knows what else increasingly provide the rote learning of well-structured subjects, teachers should be freed from this mental drudgery to focus on the really tough but crucial aspects of learning that engage students at the experiential level. I can easily imagine schools at all levels from K–12 to graduate courses increasingly engaged in highly personalized learning experiences: using computer games and simulations that are becoming so exciting and absorbing, case studies that involve students in actual problem-solving situations, internships and consulting work, projects that give students opportunities to tackle challenging public problems, and others that help them discover the values they want to build a life on. With the focus on active engagement in this variety of socially involved learning, courses might require only a few meetings a year, while most work would be done by students working on their own with the advice of faculty acting as coaches. It’s going to be hard for some teachers to give up lecturing in classrooms, but it’s hard to relinquish all outmoded tasks. The huge gain for tackling the tougher challenges described here, of course, is a richer learning environment for students, teachers, administrators, and the entire educational system, to say nothing of a finer life for us all.
SUMMARY The next step in social evolution is likely to involve the inner world of consciousness. The most powerful and the most intelligent information system
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may never replace the human spirit, forcing us to recognize that there really is a transcendent dimension governing life. I can vividly imagine complaining as we correct dumb mistakes of “smart” robots. We are likely to treat them as if they were backward children, as in Steven Spielberg’s movie AI. The powers of human spirit could gain ascendancy as it becomes increasingly clear that good health, strong communities, global order, and other aspects of life can be explained and cultivated as higher-order mental functions. Widely recognizing this high-order logic of spirit could prove even more revolutionary than any scientific revolution that would result from proving that all behavior is reducible to information networks in the brain. By clarifying these limits to formal knowledge, the unforeseen consequence may be to magnify our need for higher-order qualities we have long resisted. Rather than struggle to eliminate these foibles of the human spirit, we might do well to accept the apparent reality that human behavior is intrinsically subjective and even spiritual.
NOTES 1. Steven Pinker, a psychologist at MIT, concludes that human behavior “will increasingly be explained by neuroscience, genetic inheritance, and evolution. . . . The soul is the information processing of the brain.” See Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Viking, 2002). 2. See chapter 9 of William Halal, Technology’s Promise (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 3. “Gelertner, Kurzweil Debate Machine Consciousness,” Kurzweilai.net, December 11, 2006. 4. Anonymous, “On the Luminosity of Being,” New Scientist, May 24, 2003: 42-43. 5. As quoted in Shankar Vedantam, “Tracing the Synapses of Spirituality,” Washington Post, June 17, 2001. 6. See Willis Harman, Global Mind Change (Indianapolis: Knowledge Systems, 1988). 7. As quoted in Shankar Vedantam, “A New Thinking Emerges about Consciousness,” Washington Post, May 20, 2002. 8. As quoted in Roland Bailey, “Would You Give Up Your Immortality to Ensure the Success of a Post-Human World?” http://www.reason.com, July 27, 2007. 9. As quoted in Glenn Zorpette, “Waiting for the Rapture,” IEEE Spectrum, July 10, 2008: 32-35. 10. Peter Pruzan and Kirsten Pruzan Mikkelsen, Leading with Wisdom: Spiritual-Based Leadership in Business (Sheffield: Greenleaf Publishing, 2007). See also Michelle Conlin, “Religion in the Workplace,” BusinessWeek, November 1, 1999: 151–58.
Epilogue
Anything less than educating for the future is indefensible, antieducational. —James M. Oswald*
President Barack Obama spoke as if he were himself an educational futuristics (EdF) supporter when he made this point on September 8, 2009, in an inspiring address to the nation’s schoolchildren: “[Schooling] isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you are learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges.”1 Progress here hinges in large part on infusing K–12 schooling with EdF, and that would seem to first require appreciation of EdF by key politicians and the leadership of the teacher unions, along with many charter school entrepreneurs, edu-wonks, teacher recruitment programs, influential nongovernmental organizations, parent activists, mass media pundits, and venture philanthropists. Still more significant yet is appreciation by dedicated professionals—like the readers of this book—who are intent on helping young people succeed. Why EdF now? Because, as a Dutch futurist explains, we should have been employing it all along: “I would welcome the idea to give thinking about the future a fixed place in the curricula of lower forms of education. Why do children of, say, five years ‘know’ what they would like to be when they have grown up, and why is it that children of say, 15 years have difficulties to decide on what courses in school to follow because they haven’t a 197
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clue about what professions to take up in the future? Why do we teach our children history, and why not futures research?”2 What, then, is the takeaway message? K–12 schooling—aided by EdF—can and must make a strategic contribution to the well-being of our planet (“to be really American has always meant to see something beyond America”).3 It can help youngsters and their teachers improve what they expect of tomorrow—and clarify their part in making the most of it.4 It can help them learn to listen, imagine, and learn to love lifelong learning. Above all, it can help us reassess what kind of citizens and human beings we want to nurture.5 While EdF cannot alone make K–12 education everything we wish for, progress cannot be achieved without it. In turn, it needs educators to step forward as its “champion”—a call that you just might take up for the good of the K–12 youngsters whom you presently care about and those who will come after, here and everywhere.
NOTES *“The Future as a School Subject,” in The Potential of Educational Futures, ed. Marien Michael and Warren L. Ziegler (Worthington, OH: Charles A. Jones, 1972), 110. 1. Barack Obama, “Obama to Students: ‘No Excuse for Not Trying,’” USA Today, September 8, 2009, 23-A. 2. W. B. H. J. van de Donk, “About the WRR,” In Knowing Tomorrow? How Science Deals with the Future, ed. Patrick van der Duin (Delft: Eburon, 2009), 210. 3. Andrew Delbanco, The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 117. 4. In this connection, see Tom Lombardo, “Understanding and Teaching Future Consciousness,” On the Horizon 17, no 2 (2009): 95. 5. In this connection, see the 2009 documentary film The War on Kids, which likens too many schools to prison and questions what kind of Americans we are producing. A reviewer concludes, “Parent or child-free, we all have a dog in that particular fight.” Jeannette Catsoulis, “What Ails Public Schools? Better Ask, What Doesn’t?” New York Times, November 18, 2009, C-7.
Vision 2021 Proposes Great Possibilities and Capabilities for Learning Marsha Rhea
I served as the lead futurist on the project cited in this essay. This synthesis of my insights from this project as well as my ongoing research on the future of learning led to this conception of the possibilities and capabilities ahead for our schools. To prepare students to be global citizens in a complex and interdependent world, we need learning that is more collaborative and individualized, more globalized and community focused, highly accountable, and yet more equitable and holistic. Advances in technology make this multifaceted vision for our schools possible. Elementary and middle school principals see technology playing an essential supporting role in transforming the role of schools, how students learn, and what principals can do as they lead these learning communities of the future. In 2006–2008, the Institute for Alternative Futures led a futures project titled Vision 2021 to help the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) study the future of schools and the principalship between now and 2021. NAESP chose to engage hundreds of principals and other educators in an open process of anticipatory learning. NAESP also used this project to inform a new vision for the profession and a strategic framework for the association. Vision 2021 was a significant exploration of the aspirations that elementary and middle school principals have for their schools and students. The 2021 vision for the profession states that principals have the vision, courage, wisdom, and professional knowledge to lead learning communities that create opportunities for all children to achieve their highest potential. The leaders of NAESP dared to dream of this potential to serve all 199
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children because they expect to have powerful new technological capabilities. This essay summarizes the great possibilities and capabilities ahead for learning and what they could mean to schools and principals. More collaborative learning will boost our collective intelligence. In 2021, we will use hyperlinked-learning technologies to access the collective intelligence of people around the globe. People of all ages will join collaborative learning communities to create new knowledge drawn from different disciplines, cultures, and generations. Today’s social networking with Web 2.0 capacities to share learner-generated content are just a preview of the collaborative capabilities we will find common in 2021. Today, these collaborative tools supplement a structure based on courses in specific disciplines and classrooms. In 2021, the learning community and its goals will replace classrooms as the defining structure for learning experiences that are more group directed and multidisciplinary and may even be multigenerational. Schools that are designed for this future emphasize flexible work spaces for small learning communities, maximize technology accessibility, and colocate educational facilities in town centers to encourage high degrees of school and community interaction. State-of-the-art school design in 2021 will integrate students into a work world that relies on project-based learning, team building, and communication technologies. Today, people are just beginning to discover the power of virtual worlds and other collaborative technologies to work together on common problems. Many companies and organizations today share knowledge and engage in open-source innovation. Citizen organizations routinely use the power of the Web to mobilize people around common interests. We are just a few moves away from eliminating the physical and social barriers that remain between companies and the schools that educate their workers and between citizens in communities at great distances around the globe. Schools will become the portals to this global community for their students and will be expected to prepare them to succeed in this very interconnected and collaborative world. It is not difficult to imagine adults gaining fresh perspectives from dialogues with children or children learning through real and virtual connections to the tasks that working adults perform. Already today, many K–12 students are active participants with scientists and researchers in global field observations. With increasing bandwidth, the Web is supporting interactive learning environments that respect multiple forms of intelligence and different preferences for learning. This hyperlinked learning provides a multimedia context that connects facts and skills into deeper understanding. Thousands of students today are regularly participating in learning environments beyond traditional schools. Students are using social networking sites like MySpace to form communities around their interests and talents.
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As these file-sharing technologies enable more collaborative and accelerated learning, they will redefine the boundaries of place, curriculum, and grade. A Michigan elementary school principal joined with a Chinese elementary school principal whom he met on a study tour in 2006, and their students were soon teaching one another English and Chinese, respectively, as they shared videos about their daily experiences. By 2021, his story will be common as students discover how much fun it can be to learn with students with different worldviews and interests than their own. More individualized learning will develop human potential. The ability to do continuous assessment of student performance will enable educators to move beyond individualized learning plans to a more adaptive approach to individualized learning. A better phrase for the future of individualized learning could be a “dynamic learning system.” In this dynamic learning system, students will move through their own learning continuum at their personal pace. Multiage instruction will be the norm, and even very young students will be assigned to a team of teachers and learning assistants who are more precisely matched to their learning needs and preferences. This will not seem as disruptive for children who are becoming increasingly accustomed to a fast-paced and stimulating culture. Older elementary school students will even be encouraged to understand and participate in these assignment decisions. Today’s school administrators find this forecast daunting using today’s limited databases, but future systems will employ intelligent agents to monitor and interpret vast and changing data fields in the real time needed for results. Rather than a static plan, this system for individualized learning would incorporate multiple sources of student progress data. Assessment data will come from continuous testing, feedback from simulations and games, and analysis of classroom video. As these data are aggregated and analyzed through powerful data management systems that teachers can access at any time, they will find it easier to continuously monitor incremental progress toward specific learning goals. Learning will be held accountable for outcomes. Today, most learning standards and achievement tests measure school and student performance in select grades once or twice a year. By 2021, basic skills performance measures will give way to multiple measures of individual achievement. Instead of a “massified” population-based view of students on a bell-shaped curve, educators will have subpopulation-based views of different dimensions. Students will be assigned and compared with appropriate subpopulations using data on matched cohorts for any given measure. Tomorrow’s technologies may track and propose strategies dynamically as students learn in new ways. Advances in imaging science and genomics will deepen and extend our understanding of brain function and development. New advances in
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systems and molecular biology will improve our knowledge of the genetic basis of learning disabilities and disorders. These advances, combined with a better understanding of how the external environment influences brain development, will create new approaches to address learning disabilities and disorders. Advances in molecular and brain imaging will expand our knowledge of critical learning periods in child development and may lead to attempts to identify individual variations in these periods. Learning capabilities that we can characterize only broadly today will be better understood as subgroups of learning styles, abilities, and developmental stages. Those committed to equity will advocate aggressively for the environmental and developmental conditions that give all children a fair chance to succeed. By 2021, educators and policymakers will have the knowledge and tools to understand what it truly takes to bring all students to even a basic proficiency level. Our quality standards for schools will become more holistic and reflect multiple aspects of human potential. Schools will be expected to demonstrate that they are meeting the needs of the whole child. Prekindergarten students will be evaluated against readiness indicators. After-school programs will be evaluated for their quality and effectiveness in enriching student learning. Students will be evaluated against measures of physical and mental health. When students need help, they will be referred to an array of health and social services to get back on track. Schools will surround students with a network of support to meet multiple indicators of human learning and well-being. A student’s health and mental capacity are influenced by a variety of factors from nutrition to toxins in the environment to the physical activity of parents. Once medical and social science clearly establish the role that these life conditions play in academic success, schools will face pressure to intervene early. Schools will become far more effective as an early warning system that interventions are needed. They will connect families to parenting classes and coach parents in how to effectively team with children and their teachers in learning. For some parents, this may well mean helping close the gap in their own schooling. Elementary schools may become a major catalyst for learning for a generation of parents who grew up when society could afford to overlook learning disparities. Today, schools that can secure the resources are already responding to the needs of poor and disadvantaged populations with in-school social workers, parenting and English-language classes, and preschool and afterschool programs. By 2021, policymakers and parents will recognize that all schools need to be hubs for these networks of support for learning. In the Vision 2021 project, principals embraced this vision of a preferred future where society values educating the whole child, and they recognize that
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they will need to be powerful advocates for the policy and financial support to help all children succeed. Learning will be global to sustain our world. At first, the Vision 2021 participants were puzzled by what to prepare students for in a world that is changing faster than they can imagine and that will feature jobs that do not even exist today. Today’s children will live in a world where population will grow quickly from 6.6 billion to nearly 8 billion by 2021. This population growth creates complex challenges to life on Earth. Studying this challenge, they found an answer: students must be prepared to learn and work together in a global community to create mutual sustainability through peace, care of the environment, and economic opportunity. In a time when public debate is focused on how well U.S. schools are preparing students to be globally competitive workers, elementary and middle school principals said that the real priority is to prepare them to be global citizens. Schools will become learning portals to a global society. They are the logical laboratory for learning together how to face challenges at a scale and complexity the world has never seen before. We live in a time of splitsecond opportunities and threats. We could just as easily fall into a feared future as stay on track for an expected future. For a preferred future, we need anticipatory learning that gives us the learning and skills to shape our future in complex and interdependent times. Just as the best companies are excelling at collaborating within and between companies, the best schools will find inspiration for their students in collaborating with students around the world. With knowledge sharing so critical to a healthy global economy, we need to create information communication platforms that connect students everywhere. There are already exciting examples of schools using the Internet through sites to connect students across international and cultural boundaries.
PRINCIPALS USE TECHNOLOGIES TO LEAD LEARNING COMMUNITIES By 2021, principals expect that schools will be defined not as buildings where students are assigned but as learning communities. Their role will change from administrator to one more akin to a chief learning officer. They will lead with vision and use knowledge and data to create dynamic learning systems that can help students, teachers, and even the larger community achieve their learning goals. To meet the expectations of this expanded role, principals will need an array of supporting technologies, including databases that help track individualized learning goals, immediate access to knowledge resources that
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address specific learning challenges, and real-time monitoring of school operations. They will need sophisticated knowledge sharing systems and Webbased intranets that will support a future of sophisticated, mobile devices. These systems must facilitate open and accessible communication among students, teachers, parents, and other learning partners and resources in the community. Some schools today are making great use of Web-based communication portals and e-mail mass distribution to keep students, faculty, and parents informed about key events. Some school districts are making school and student performance data, such as grade books and test results, accessible through virtual private networks and utilizing data analytics that help administrators and teachers interpret key results. Another critical component in this vision is wireless mobility, as principals need to be continually in touch and able to stay in touch with their learning communities wherever they may be physically or virtually located. Today, schools use networks to support the learners within their walls, but tomorrow these networks will connect learners with similar needs and interests wherever they might be. Whatever advances in communication, knowledge sharing, and learning technologies come after Web 2.0, principals hope that these technologies support a world that can learn, work, and live together and help them prepare their students to be global citizens.
A BOLD VISION FOR CHANGE IN SCHOOLS AND THE PRINCIPALSHIP The Vision 2021 project outlines a bold vision for change in schools and the principalship. This vision proposes organizing schools as learning communities that feature dynamic learning systems linking students to the knowledge and resources to support individualized learning. These schools will feature collaborative learning and share a common purpose of preparing students to be global citizens prepared to learn and work together to create mutual sustainability. The potential structural, operational, and policy changes outlined in this vision are significant. The leaders of NAESP dared to dream of this potential to serve all children because they expect to have powerful new technological capabilities. The technologies to support these changes are not only feasible, but today’s early adopters are already piloting the basic elements: • Hyperlinked and multimedia learning technologies that connect students and teachers to vast knowledge resources • Social networking capabilities that make collaborative learning possible
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• More real-time student assessment that enables educators to identify specific interventions • Greater knowledge of what it takes to help different students succeed and the ability to use more flexible learning strategies to meet those needs • Communication technologies that make schools more inclusive and accessible and that foster greater accountability for all children It is always wise to remember that just because we have the technological capability to do something does not mean we will choose to do so. This vision of a preferred future will require tremendous leadership and learning by principals and all other educators to achieve it. Vision 2021 helps generate a public dialogue to move us from a narrow view of what is possible today to an expansive view of what schools can be if we use these capabilities to create effective systems of learning that serve all children.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Institute for Alternative Futures for the National Association of Elementary School Principals. Anticipating the Future of Schools and the Principalship and Provocative Forecasts of Uncertainty and Opportunity (both reports and other information are available at http://www.Vision2021.org). National Association of Elementary School Principals. Leading Learning Communities: Standards for What Principals Should Know and Do. 2nd ed. Alexandria, VA: National Association of Elementary School Principals, 2008. Partnership for 21st Century Skills. See especially the Framework for 21st Century Learning. Available at http://www.21stcenturyskills.org. Rhea, M. Anticipate the World You Want: Learning for Alternative Futures. Lanham, MD: ScarecrowEducation, 2005.
K–12 Learning at the World Future Society: We See Farther and Better When We Look Together Timothy C. Mack
BACKGROUND Founded in 1966 in Washington, D.C., the World Future Society (WFS) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan scientific and educational association of people interested in how social and technological developments are shaping the future. The WFS strives to serve as a neutral clearinghouse for ideas about the future. These ideas include forecasts, recommendations, and alternative scenarios. They help people anticipate what may happen in the next five, ten, or more years ahead. When people can visualize a better future for themselves, their communities, or their students, they can begin to create it. This means that the future doesn’t just happen: people shape it through their action—or inaction—today. Opportunity as well as danger lie ahead, so people need to make farsighted decisions. The process of change is inevitable; it’s up to everyone to work to make sure that the changes are positive and constructive. New technologies and evolving social structures alter the way we live. People’s values, attitudes, and beliefs are changing, and the pace of change is accelerating, making it challenging to prepare for tomorrow. By studying the future, people can better anticipate what lies ahead. More important, they can actively decide how they want to respond to and even change the future by making choices today and experiencing the consequences of their decisions. The WFS provides information tools and resources to its members through a number of publications, both print and digital, and as part of an annual conference with over 150 speakers on a wide range of foresight-related 207
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issues. These conferences draw attendees from over 35 countries worldwide. More information on the World Future Society and its program is available at http://www.wfs.org. Membership is open to anyone who would like to know more about what the future will hold. The programs and publications of the WFS involve over 25,000 people in more than 80 countries—from Argentina to Zimbabwe. Members come from all walks of life. They include educators, students, sociologists, scientists, corporate planners, and retirees. They are thinking people who seek a better future for themselves, their families, and their communities. One of the most critical areas of interest among WFS members is education. The WFS supports a Learning Section within the membership and several publications that include education-themed articles. The Learning Section draws its membership from K–12 teachers all over the United States and around the world. Each year, a daylong education summit is held as part of the annual WFS conference, highlighting trends and coming innovations in education and learning. The 2009 summit was titled “Innovation and Creativity in Learning.” There are two central areas of focus in thinking about future education, whether in foresight publications, academic work, presentations at conferences, or the consulting arena. The first involves the potential future of all types of education in the coming decades, and the second involves the tools, methods, and strategies that enable students to understand and respond to possible futures, that is, the building of foresight skills. While the WFS regularly publishes a wide range of articles on the future of education, this essay focuses largely on the benefits to students of the latter: what are the positive results of teaching students to use foresight skills and tools?
GOALS AND RESULTS One main goal of foresight education is to teach students to analyze a situation by focusing on important problems while ignoring distractions. The goal is to enable them to use problem-solving skills to devise responses and creative solutions and then to implement the solutions they have developed. Futures training can produce students who can work with the tools of logical reasoning. This leads to improved self-esteem and self-confidence and the ability to work well in teams. The study of the future is often connected with improved scores in other areas, such as reading, mathematics, and social studies. In other words, developing futuring skills enhances both STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) skills and social studies competency.
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One of the most effective pathways to reaching an understanding of the foresight process is to work with “real” issues that will affect the future performance of companies, organizations, and governments. For example, the human resources issue concerns the future quality of STEM-area students and teachers in secondary schools. This issue affects national competitiveness, individual quality of life, and economic and social health. Issues of this sort will have to be addressed in the political, educational, and technological arenas that influence them, including new virtual training and computer literacy programs. The effective responses to problems like STEM education adequacy will need to be innovative, cross disciplinary, and creative, both leveraging existing resources and developing new ones. Over the past 40-plus years, a good deal of experience relating to secondary education has been collected from academics and practitioners within the WFS as well as its staff and volunteers. The lessons learned are substantial, and they are summarized here: • The skills of thoughtful decision making and creative imagination are enhanced by the demands of forward thinking. This is the most fundamental of the futuring skills: the power to think. The building of scenarios and manipulation of alternatives definitely qualifies as mental” heavy lifting,” requiring both patience and cognitive ability. Like any muscle, the brain gains strength with use. • One outcome of the consideration of just and sustainable futures is responsible citizenship. This is an ideal result for any education program: the building of a better society. • Anticipatory skills can allow students to deal with uncertainty and to manage change more effectively. One of the primary issues around secondary school children and youth is career and higher-education choices, as there is value in starting early on those decisions. • Reflective thinking helps students identify trends and weigh alternatives. This is the basis of logical thought and is similar to the skills learned from activities such as chess and mathematics. Essentially, the insight here is that critical futures thinking helps build intelligence. • Examining value judgments that underpin possible alternatives assists students in understanding society and human nature. Both empathy and intuitive thinking are the basic skills of a civilized society. • Foresight students are stimulated to be involved and concerned with what goes on around them. Self-esteem and social connection are primary antidotes to what has been called the “Columbine syndrome” of anger, alienation, and violence in school and society. • Thinking of the future can affect behavior in the present, and clear personal goals can stimulate motivation and achievement. This has been called maturity, socialization, or character building. It has been
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neglected of late but needs a reemphasis if modern culture is to prosper and endure. Stated in another way, futures training accomplishes the following: • It develops useful mental patterns utilized throughout life, including concentration, self-control, critical thinking, abstract reasoning, problem solving, memory, pattern recognition, strategic planning, decisionmaking skills, creativity, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. • It allows teachers to gain experience in teaching creatively and to see students in new settings, working “above the levels expected.” • It allows technology and other private-sector firms to get more involved in the training and development of future workers and citizens. • It can include a range of activities, including identifying possible future scenarios, understanding and utilizing new and emerging technologies, responding flexibly to change locally and globally, and working as individuals or as members of teams. • It includes website development (e.g., to track emerging technologies) that students can maintain and enhance. The WFS has participated for years in global secondary school competitions centered around the building of community websites. One of the largest roadblocks to expanding the use of Web 2.0 tools in the classroom are administrators who tend to see the social versus educational aspects, largely because of unfamiliarity with the educational potential. The extreme in this case is a secondary school ban on the use of cell phones and laptops during school hours. In those schools where use is encouraged, student laptops are being utilized in almost every subject area. Unresolved conflicts among administrators and teachers on this issue must be resolved so that students get a clear message on the value of learning. While the ideal of students becoming subject-area experts through interdisciplinary projects is not always realized, that goal is being pursued in a number of settings. This is a beginning. A growing culture of Internet access to information is encouraging for the future of education, but in practice it is often approached from a twentiethcentury attitude of passive reception. For example, although the concept of Wikipedia includes active development and refining of content by its users, only 0.2% of its 32 million U.S. users are active ones, and 0.003% of those users contribute two-thirds of the edits. Of course, this falls far short of participative learning, which can result in higher retention and deeper understanding of the material. The central challenge we continue to face is how to maximize participation in evolving forms of twenty-first-century education. Some suggestions include the following:
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• Increase the ease of participation in the content development process by making it part of the learning process • Encourage response from the beginning instead of facing the often paralyzing responsibility of content creation from scratch • Provide recognition for participation and promote a culture of quality One successful tool that demonstrates the educational potential of Internet learning tools is the Virtual Literary Trip. Anchored by a reading assignment, students collect geographic references to those locations included in the assigned literature, using tools such as Google Earth. This can include images, URLs, or other materials that enhance the historical, political, and social understanding of the places in question. These resources then enrich group discussion of the relevant questions raised by the assignment. The use of personal mobile devices by students will grow in the future. If properly managed, they have the potential to accelerate, customize, and organize learning by providing access to enriching content. Accordingly, improvements in writing, research, and problem solving can be expected to enhance student academic achievement. Beyond the baseline skills of collecting, organizing, and analyzing information, foresight students are often being encouraged to use their findings not only to solve real world problems but also to present their findings and conclusions and defend them among their peers.
STRATEGIC PARTNERS As the WFS has moved forward in the education arena, it has negotiated strategic partnerships with a network of programs that support a range of pedagogic goals. One such partner is the Future City Competition (http://www .futurecity.org), an educational outreach program of the National Engineer’s Week Foundation. A secondary school program started in 1992 in five cities in the United States; it has expanded over the years to 40 U.S. regions and three international pilots, plus one spin-off program in Delhi, India. This program has impacted over 500,000 students during its existence as well as the teachers, engineer mentors, judges, parents, and sponsors involved. The Future City program involves four major steps. The student teams design a city of the future using SimCity4 software and then build a tabletop model of that city on a budget, using recycled materials. They research and write an abstract of the city design and functions and an essay discussing the specific engineering challenge designated for that year’s competition, such as the utilization of nanotechnology. Finally, they orally present their city design and issues before a panel of judges as they proceed from the local level to regional and finally to a national finals.
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Besides combining the physical and social sciences interactively, this program offers a much-needed focus on STEM skills. This is a positive aspect in a time of global economic downturn, especially relating to such areas a health care, information technology, environmental (green) industries, and manufacturing. In addition, the experience provides an experiential learning opportunity in better understanding the critical twenty-first-century issues surrounding energy, water, transportation, and other infrastructure challenges, which every individual needs to better understand. Another supplementary model for the foresight learning process in secondary school showcased at WFS conferences each year is the Future Problem Solvers Program International (FPSPI) (http://www.fpspi.org), which involves over 250,000 students annually from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, and the United States. In addition, the FPSPI is a strategic partner in the WFS’s annual high school essay contest on the future. The FPSPI approach to developing dynamic, creative students is through a six-step approach: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Identification of challenges Selection of a specific underlying problem to address Development of possible solutions Generation and selection of criteria to evaluate solutions Evaluation of possible solutions Development of an action plan for the future
Another WFS partner, operating at the high school level, is the de Bono program, named after education pioneer Edward de Bono (http://www. edwdebono.com), which moves through the idea assessment process using input and decision tools: consequences, goals, planning priorities, and alternative thinking (including creativity, clear thinking, and other people’s assumptions in the planning exercise).
STUDENT SELF-ASSESSMENTS One of the most interesting sources of insight on the benefits of the study of foresight are the following self-observations from postsecondary students around the world: • Fresher ways of thinking, that is, learning more about how to think than what to think.
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• Allows students to explore adding value to their community and the greater society. • Added ability to work in greater depth, with more clarity and increased detail. • I explored how to tie together the how, what, and why of human actions in more critical and enlightening ways. • I can now focus more on the right questions to be asking as opposed to memorizing the right answers. • Provided a rich and vibrant network of people and thought that opened up new possibilities and opportunities. • It expands your thinking with a rich mix of theory, models, and practical experience on emerging ideas and organizational strategies. • I am learning how to apply a wide range of knowledge in the context of action and change. • It allowed me to move into new areas of technology and the arts with fresh thinking and expertise. • My existing skills and approaches were challenged and enriched.
CHALLENGES The ongoing development of twenty-first-century educational tools and technologies is not the only challenge facing the foresight community over the coming decades. Five additional complexities follow: 1. Financial shortfalls in education, both public and private, driven by the global recession 2. Implementing national initiatives focused on increased college readiness, expanded community colleges, online training, and best practice development 3. Growth of the for-profit education sector: mergers and conversions of nonprofits plus joint ventures with industry 4. Globalization of education, including joint degrees and cross-border offerings 5. Increasing influence of accountability, sustainability, and foresight in education processes
CONCLUSION Foresight skills have been seen to be of pedagogic utility in secondary school programs and even at the elementary school level, where the content medium
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is graphic. Not only are students interested in the future, but the inclusion of foresight issues and exercises in curricula or enrichment programs enhances a range of cognitive and research skills in students. Foresight nonprofits such as the WFS can provide content resources, learning networks, and interactive experiences that can further improve learning and student interest as well as provide teaching tools and benchmarks for education professionals.
Annotated Resources: Print and Internet
No matter how much you study the future, it will always surprise you. But you needn’t be dumbfounded. —Kenneth Boulding* A sound beginning here starts with the always timely 42-page annotated bibliography of futures books in the 2004 seminal work Futuring: The Exploration of the Future by Ed Cornish, founder of the World Future Society and a longtime mentor to many of us. I cite here additional material I have come across or have been referred to since the publication in 2008 of Anticipate the School You Want: Futurizing K–12 Education. In that book, you will find my annotated citations to 25 post-2004 futuristic books, 23 educational futuristics books, six magazines, three articles, and 24 websites—all of which remain rewarding. Every issue of The Futurist, the magazine of the World Future Society, contains both book reviews and cogent annotations of excellent new books. I cannot recommend this highly enough. If you could read just one of the many books cited here, I would recommend Lessons for the Future: The Missing Dimension in Education by David Hicks (New York: Routledge, 2002). If you could read only one of the cited articles, I recommend “Full Immersion 2025: How Will 10-Year-Olds Learn” in the magazine Education Next, Summer 2009, 79–82 (“An education system such as we have envisioned here is closer than you might think”). As I look forward to your helping me produce successor volumes over the years ahead, I earnestly now solicit your recommendations for this part of those volumes (
[email protected] and/or http://www.educationalfuturistics.com).
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JOURNALS AND MAGAZINES (NINE OTHER CITATIONS CAN BE FOUND IN THE 2008 BOOK) Cetron, Marvin J. “Timeline for the Future: Potential Developments and Likely Impacts.” The Futurist, March/April 2009, 33–37. Draws on six notable forecasters to help identify emerging opportunities and their potential impacts through 2046. Crossman, William. “The Arrival of Talking Computers and the End of Literacy—A 20 Year Forecast.” In TNTY Futures (publication of the Next 20 Years Series). September 11, 2001. ———. “Voice-In/Voice-Out Computers and the Postliterate Age.” In “The New Media Age: End of the Written Word?” (special section edited by Patrick Tucker). The Futurist, March–April 2007, 41–45. Dator, Jim. “The Unholy Trinity, plus One.” Journal of Futures Studies 13, no. 3 (February 2009): 33–48. Explores implications of the end of cheap and abundant oil, multiple environmental challenges, global economic and fiscal collapse, and “the lack of government in the sense of any kind of formal, communal system that can help us solve any of these three challenges.” Urges us to “embrace the unholy trinity as a positive enabling force for our common good.” Goldstein, Dana. “The Education Wars: Teachers’ Unions and Reform Advocates Are Locked in a Fight over the Future of Schools. Now the Battle Lines Have Started to Blur.” The American Prospect, April 2009, 18–22. An insightful and fair analysis of consequential squabbling that just may soon allow for major reform gains. Offers a sound foundation for a better understanding of K–12 politics. Hargreaves, Andy, and Dennis Shirley. “From Fear Factor to Peer Factor.” Education Week, September 16, 2009, 30–31. Outstanding example of cross-national focus on four reforms (one in Finland, one in England, and two in Canada) that suggest that “the inspiring future of school reform lies in less bureaucracy and more democracy; in collaboration more than competition; in innovation and inspiration, more than data-driven intervention; in the fear factor giving way to the peer factor as the driver of reform” (31). Kohn, Alfie. “When 21st Century Schooling Just Isn’t Good Enough: A Modest Proposal.” Rethinking Schools, Spring 2009, 16–17. A rare exercise in satire that skewers conventional educational policies that serve Mammon more than the best interests of children. Leal, Jim. “E-Learning and Online Education: Implications for the Future of Law Enforcement Training.” World Future Review, June–July 2009, 22–28. “With over 100 million Americans taking continuing education . . . all indications suggest a healthy and growing market for online education. In fact, virtual education is expected to be the main form of education by 2015” (27). Marien, Michael. “Futures Thinking and Macro-Systems: Illuminating Our Era of Mal-Adaptive, Non-Adaptive, and Semi-Adaptive Systems.” World Future Review, April–May 2009, 5–13. “One needs to go sector by sector, country by country, to ask whether adaptive progress is being made or is likely to be made, bringing together the key positives, the key negatives, and the many contested core questions” (13). Richter, Jonathan, ed. “Future Consciousness and Transformations in Learning.” On the Horizon 17, no. 2 (2009): 81–170. Seven essays that explore visions of
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the future of higher education; the place of emerging social networks; literacy for learning in a connected world; online personal learning environments; the need to promote creativity, the long view, and systems thinking; and valuing the longterm systemic future. Saniotis, Arthur. “Future Brains: An Exploration of Human Evolution in the 21st Century and Beyond.” World Future Review, June–July 2009, 5–11. “The human species is the first and only species which is now capable of tinkering with its own evolution. . . . The growth in new biotechnologies will potentially have a transformative effect on the human species. However, where this evolution will take us is still unknown” (8). Shostak, Arthur B. “The Coming Systems Break: Technology and Schools of the Future.” Phi Delta Kappan, January 1981, 356–59. Explores who will be helped or hurt by information technology’s new form for shaping language, thought, and reality. ———. “High Schools for Futurism: A Leap Frog Advantage.” Journal of Future Studies, October 2005, 105–12. A blueprint for creating many high schools with futurism at their core: “Any educational status quo—especially in our high schools—that neglects futuristics costs society too much and demands redress” (112). ———. “High Schools for Futurism: Nurturing the Next Generation.” The Futurist, November–December 2004, 23–27. A call for development of the nation’s first high school to help youngsters test their suitability to become long-range forecasters and so on. Tucker, Patrick. “The Dawn of the Postliterate Age.” The Futurist, November–December 2009, 41–45. Explores the possibility that information technology, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence may render written language “functionally obsolete” by 2050. Van Gelder, Sarah, ed. “13 Radical Acts of Education.” YES! Magazine, Fall 2009, 19–45. Field reports of ongoing efforts to correct “the mismatch of what is taught in schools and what common sense tells us we need to know.”
BOOKS (54 OTHER CITATIONS CAN BE FOUND IN THE 2008 BOOK) American Association of School Librarians. Standards for the 21st-Century Learner in Action. Chicago: American Association of School Librarians, 2009. Expands the definition of information literacy to include digital, technological, textual, and visual, even as it also focuses on an inquiry-learning process. Lays out underlying common beliefs as well as standards and indicators for essential skills, dispositions, responsibilities, and self-assessment strategies. Provides benchmarks for grades 2, 5, 8, 10, and 12, along with action examples based on real-world scenarios. Atwood, Margaret. The Year of the Flood. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2009. “It is a tale of survivors in a violent future society after a catastrophic pandemic, with genetically engineered humans and animals, an environment in tatters, and a cult dedicated to merging science, nature, and religion” (Felicia R. Lee, “Back to the Scary Future and the Best-Seller List,” New York Times, September 22, 2009, C-1).
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Brockman, Max, ed. What’s Next? Dispatches on the Future of Science. New York: Vintage, 2009. Eighteen new researchers grapple with perplexing questions and offer forecasts grounded in cautious optimism. Christensen, Linda. Teaching for Joy and Justice: Reimagining the Language Arts Classroom. Williston, VT: Rethinking Schools, 2009. Strong in hope and possibilities, the book draws on lessons from 30-plus years as a teacher, a telling critique of standardized mandates, practical ideas for curriculum enhancement, and writings by other teachers and students. Crossman, William. VIVO [Voice-In/Voice-Out]: The Coming Age of Talking Computers. Oakland, CA: Regent Press, 2004. Pathbreaking exploration of a future where a revived oral tradition has replaced our current reliance on writing. VIVO computers may replace all text/written languages in the electronically developed countries by 2050. Raises the possibility that we might be far better off for the transition (http://www.compspeak2050.org). Darling-Hammond, Linda. The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future. New York: Teachers College Press, 2009. Shares a vision of overdue changes if schools are to respond to twentyfirst-century learning needs. Hailed as a road map for educational excellence in today’s flat world. Downes, Larry. The Laws of Disruption: Harnessing the New Forces That Govern Life and Business in the Digital Age. New York: Basic Books, 2009. Explores how history has been pushed in surprising directions by major technological innovations. Forecasts that the Internet’s long-term effects on society will be greater than imagined. Glen, Jerome C., et al. 2009 State of the Future. Washington, DC: The Millennium Project, 2009. Global futures intelligence on technology, economics, environment, governance, education, ethics, and human and international development. Goldberg, Steven H. Billions of Drops in Millions of Buckets. New York: Wiley, 2009. An account of what America’s nonprofit sector is achieving—or failing to achieve—with its huge outlay of charitable dollars. The author faults the haphazard and fragmented way with which their problem-solving force is diluted, especially as it concerns the effort to help rescue public education. While many small pilot projects show desired results, no solid future gain is possible unless and until a major (now missing) commitment vaults a particular program or approach into nationwide system-altering status. Halal, William E. Technology’s Promise: Expert Knowledge on the Transformation of Business and Society. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Draws on the work of the TechCast Project (http://www.TechCast.org), a virtual think tank that pools the knowledge of 100 experts worldwide to forecast breakthroughs in all fields. It is an authoritative and fascinating forecast of science and technology, showing that relentless technological progress is driving the creative transformation of business, society, the entire world, and even what it means to be human. Hicks, David. Lessons for the Future: The Missing Dimension in Education. New York: Routledge, 2002. A thoroughly engrossing, sage, and wide-ranging discussion of where we are at in educational futuristics, why we are there, and how we can— and must—rapidly improve the scene. Global in coverage, realistic in its examples
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from actual classroom-based research, and finally optimistic about the academic field of futures studies and futures education in schools, the book is a “must read” and, more than that, a seminal contribution. Krepinevich, Andrew. 7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century. New York: Random House, 2009. A timely and often chilling exploration of military threats to our security in the near future. Lightman, Alex, and William Rojas. Brave New Unwired World: The Digital Big Bang and the Infinite Internet. New York: Wiley, 2002. A pioneering exploration of the transformational nature of the wireless Internet, a future to which they “hope to give momentum.” Lynas, Mark. Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2008. A thoroughgoing, alarming, and finally hopeful account of what the writer contends is the key question facing humanity—whether in the seven years still open to us, we act efficiently and effectively to hold the rise in average global temperature to only 2ºC or, having not done so, live with extraordinarily dark consequences (escalating dangers of runaway, uncontrollable global heating). A program of reforms is detailed: “The poor [nations] would get equality, while all (including the rich) would get survival” (281). Marien, Michael, and Warren L. Ziegler, eds. The Potential of Educational Futures. Worthington, OH: Charles A. Jones, 1972. Fifteen original essays by James Dator, Willis W. Harmon, Billy Rojas, Harold G. Shane, and others explore the tension between “real human concern about the future and a commitment and capacity to do anything about it” (xi). The book offers a “rather rapid survey of the increasing number of attempts to relate the futures-perspective to educational planning and policy-making, to pedagogy and curriculum, to the restructuring and revitalization of education institutions” (xii). McFarland, David. Guilty Robots, Happy Dogs: The Question of Alien Minds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Tackles the question of whether minds other than our own can have emotions, thoughts, and possibly even a soul. Contends that it is in our interest for a robot to feel accountable as well as to be accountable, “as that way we can think of it as one of us” (211). Moe, Terry, and John E. Chubb. Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009. An optimistic sequel to the two writers’ 1990 book Politics, Markets, and American Schools, a screed that pointed to special-interest groups, especially teacher unions, as unreasonable opponents of the educational reforms called for in the seminal 1983 government report “A Nation at Risk.” This 2009 volume, while also very critical of teacher unions, expects educational technology, especially in the form of online schools, to soon sweep the scene (and overcome opposition from the unions). The writers make much evidence of the seeming superiority of this Internet mode of instruction over yesterday’s brick-and-mortar alternatives (it boasts better test scores, more completion on time data, a reduced need for teachers, and so on). Nisbett, Richard E. Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count. New York: Norton, 2009. Explains why key claims of the hereditarian camp are wrong, as IQ can be improved with better preschool care, medical help, and finer schooling. Also recommends computer-aided education, eye exams, peer-to-peer schooling, smaller classes, and reductions in parental stress.
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Osit, Michael. Generation Text: Raising Well-Adjusted Kids in an Age of Instant Everything. New York: AMACON, 2008. A guide to helping the “Access and Excess Generation” make finer use of information technology, including learning to appreciate the value of a “no-screen day a week.” Paul, Anthea. Girlosophy: A Soul Survival Kit. London: Allen & Unwin, 2000. Designed to help young women take charge of their lives and fulfill their potential: “Face the future, the best is yet to come” (306–7). Peschard-Sverdrup, Armand B., ed. 2025: The Future of North America—Outlook and Recommendations. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic International Studies, 2008. Examines how “the three governments can best position themselves to hand future generations a better world—be it as a nation, as a region, as a hemisphere, or as a part of the global community.” Explores six areas: competitiveness, energy, the environment, infrastructure, labor mobility, and security. In each, the writers “identify areas that warrant the formulation of a complementary set of trilateral public policies to more effectively address future transnational challenges and opportunities. . . . How we capitalize on the opportunities and challenges of a changing global environment will help determine the kind of future that lies ahead for North America” (back cover). Reinhart, Carmen M., and Kenneth S. Rogoff. This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. Makes the compelling case that the current recession should have been foreseen, as such frequently occurring events are identifiable and even controllable if we know what to look for. We can reduce the risk of future crises and do better at handling catastrophes when they happen. Rhea, Marsha Lynne. Anticipate the World You Want: Learning for Alternative Futures. Lanham, MD: ScarecrowEducation, 2005. Pioneering effort at expanding the awareness of K–12 educators of the possibilities inherent in applied futuristics to help solve many pressing social problems in the United States and elsewhere. Rubens, Michael. The Sheriff of Yrbameer. New York: Pantheon, 2009. Fine example of a genre—funny science fiction—of considerable appeal to high schoolers. This book contends that technology is out of control, business and marketing moguls have invaded all aspects of our lives, violence is random, and aliens come in all sizes and shapes. Samet, Robert H. Long-Range Futures Research: An Application of Complexity Science. North Charleston, SC: BookSurge Publishing, 2008. Explores how the science of evolution and complexity provides guidance for understanding the next 150 years, especially as this concerns the growth of a world system of cities. Schlesinger, Andrea B. The Death of Why? The Decline of Questioning and the Future of Democracy. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2009. A unique counterbalance to the dangerous American preference for simple answers over challenging questions. Warns that ours is a nation that “prized projections of certainty over the wisdom gained from questioning and questioning again” (2). Valuable for making the case for inquiry as the arch value of a genuine democracy. Steves, Rick. Travel as a Political Act. New York: Nation Books, 2009. Reframes the goal of travel to include bringing home relevant creative lessons with which to help share a finer future for your homeland. Provides many examples from years of focused travel in Europe.
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Tiffin, John, and Lalita Rajasingham. In Search of the Virtual Class: Education in an Information Society. New York: Routledge, 1995. A pioneering work in anticipating impacts of telelearning, this never-out-of-date book helps plot tomorrow’s optimum balance between it and conventional classroom learning. Especially valuable for its call for global partnerships and its nuanced explanation of how to achieve it. Van der Duin, Patrick, ed. Knowing Tomorrow? How Science Deals with the Future. Delft: Eburon Academic Publishers, 2007. The book “dives into how different sciences deal and have dealt with the concept of the future. In doing this it provides knowledge about the science of futures research and an interesting and relevant context in which futures research is taking place” (2). Urges futurists to “transcend their original academic upbringing, to develop an eager curiosity for what goes on in other academic and scientific quarters . . . a passion for public policy and a form of ideational imagination are a sine qua non for future studies, next to sound research competencies” (219).
WEBSITES (24 OTHER CITATIONS CAN BE FOUND IN THE 2008 BOOK) CK-12 Foundation (
[email protected]). A nonprofit group that develops a free opencontent, Web-based collaborative model called a “flexbook” that can be customized to meet state standards and added to by K–12 teachers. They can be used online, downloaded onto a disk, printed out, or embedded in video. Competes with textbooks that can cost $100. Crossman, William. “The End of the Written Word.” Inttranews Special Report, http://www.translationdictionary.com/article525.htm. ———. “You Talkin’ to Me?” SETI radio program, February 4, 2008, http://radio.seti .org:80/episodes/You Talkin to Me. Futures Research Methodology Version 3.0 (Edited by Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon). The largest, most comprehensive collection of internationally peerreviewed methods and tools to explore the future ever assembled in one handbook. Over half the chapters were written by the inventor of the method or by a significant contributor to the method’s evolution. Games for Change (http://www.gamesforchange.org/toolkit). A national hub that promotes the use of video games for education and social change; it features a tool kit for making social issue games. Mid-continent Education for Research and Learning (McREL). A research, development, and service organization headquartered in Denver, Colorado, that offers an array of resources for scenario planners on its website at http://www.mcrel.org/ future. Here you will find scenarios created by other organizations in narrative and DVD versions (click on “Scenarios”), a bibliography of books related to the future of education (click on “Resources”), and policy briefs and monthly updates on trends of the future in the Trend Tracker Catalog (click on “Trends”). New Media Literacies (http://www.newmedialiteracies.org). “Project New Media Literacies (NML), a research initiative based within MIT’s Comparative Media
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Studies program, explores how we might best equip young people with the social skills and cultural competencies required to become full participants in an emergent media landscape and raise public understanding about what it means to be literate in a globally interconnected, multicultural world.” Offers a white paper, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, that identifies the three core challenges—the participation gap, the transparency problem, and the ethics challenge—and shares a provisionary list of skills needed for full engagement in today’s participatory culture. Project Tomorrow (http://www.tomorrow.org). A national educational nonprofit organization. “Our vision is to ensure that today’s students are well-prepared to be tomorrow’s innovators, leaders, and engaged students in the world. We believe that by supporting the innovative uses of science, math, and technology resources in K12 schools and communities students will develop the critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity skills needed to compete and thrive in the 21st century.” SCRATCH (http://scratch.mit.edu). “A vibrant community has developed around SCRATCH, with users presenting more than a 1,000 new projects each day. Some 250,000 people participate in the community, most of them ages 8–16” (Mitchel Resnick, “Kindergarten for Life,” Edutopia, June/July 2009, 10). Sputnik Observatory (http://www.sptnk.org). A not-for-profit collaborative educational organization dedicated to the study of contemporary culture. The Notebook (http://www.thenotebook.org). For the past 15 years, this site has provided an incisive look from a grassroots perspective at urban education nationwide and Philadelphia specifically. Has separate sections for parents, teachers, and students. As the site of a leading progressive education journal, it offers hundreds of articles and a blog updated daily with education news, commentary, and discussion. The 2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning. Can be accessed online at http:// www.futureofed.org. Developed in partnership by the KnowledgeWorks Foundation and the Institute for the Future, this online tool helps users think about, prepare for, and shape the future. It outlines key forces of change that will shape the landscape of learning over the next decade. Working together with KnowledgeWorks, McREL has helped to bring the forecast to life through its scenario planning process. Check out the scenario planning tools offered on the Taking Action page of the 2020 Forecast website at http://www.futureofed.org/taking -action/scenario-planning. ThinkQuest.org (http://www.thinkquest.org). Developed and maintained by the Oracle Education Foundation, this site helps users create online learning projects: “We inspire students globally to think, connect, create, and share—using technology to help them dissolve boundaries, fulfill their potentials, and create a better society.”
ADDENDUM FROM STEPHEN F. STEELE Looking for a place where teaching the futures is central to its mission? Stop by the Institute for the Future @ Anne Arundel Community College at http://www.aacc .edu/future.
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Here’s a free download for students (and faculty) who want to chart the course toward their own personal futures: Personal Futures Workbook by Dr. Verne Wheelwright. Free download at http://www.aacc.edu/future/vernewheelwrift.cfm. Has anyone else created futures exercises that I can use? Here’s a great list of exercises from the futures faculty at the Institute for the Future @ Anne Arundel Community College. These are most likely useful for middle school and high school but may be adapted for K–5: http://ola4.aacc.edu/soc/TeachingFuture/ futuresexercisesIFaacc.htm. If you’d like a brief futures article to stimulate thought and drive critical thinking in my classes, you can find some here: http://www.aacc.edu/future/qandaarchives .cfm. You might want high schoolers to read the first chapter of the key text Futuring by Ed Cornish, “Welcome to the Future,” a good assignment for students and free of charge (send your students to this link; a PDF reader, such as Adobe Acrobat, is necessary): http://www.aacc.edu/future/file/Futuring%20chap%201.pdf. If you need a set of PowerPoint slides to use in support of this chapter, get the PDF version of the slides at http://www.aacc.edu/future/file/futuringchapter1design draft2_101005.pdf. Looking for an overview of foresight and futuring? “The Art of Foresight” is another great introductory article. Free if downloaded from the IF @ AACC website at http://www.wfs.org/Art%20of%20Foresight.pdf.
NOTE *As cited in Joel A. Barker, Discovering the Future: The Business of Paradigms (St. Paul, MN: ILI Press, 1989), 119.
Acknowledgments
Among the scores who helped ensure that this book would materialize, I want to especially thank Michael Marien, arguably the contemporary American most familiar these many years with the futures’ literature (founder and editor of Future Survey). I learned much about the Educational Futuristics void here in contemporary schools from Charles and Linda, two high school seniors who shared frank thoughts about how little they had learned about the future in each of their middle-class New Jersey high schools. Charles Ivory and Sandy Lowe, both preeminent educational consultants with New Jersey’s EIRC organization, were informative boosters from the start—and remain so today. An afternoon in May 2009, spent in conversation with Joe Coates, one of America’s outstanding futurists and a contributor to this book, added much realism to my thinking about Educational Futuristics; I have had the good fortune to feel mentored by Joe over many recent years and am in his debt. Robert Frantz, another contributor to this volume, first suggested the development of a website to enable us to create an “electronic community” of shared interest: he and I hope you will take advantage of it and boost this campaign (http://www.educationalfuturistics.com). Matt Seng, my stepson, information technology adviser, and good friend, constructed the website, and I am deeply appreciative. Likewise, I owe much to the book’s 13 contributors, all of whom were tolerant of my editorial feedback and generous in sharing their time, effort, and ideas. 225
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Invaluable help came from the book’s publishing house: Thomas F. Koerner, Vice President and Editorial Director of the education division, not only contracted to bring it out, but also established a new series to host other such volumes. Maera Stratton, assistant editor, acquisitions, stayed on top of critical details, as did a most gracious and diligent associate editor, Melissa McNitt. Copyeditor Bruce Owens did a very competent job, and any remaining errors are entirely mine. Finally, as always before, I would acknowledge my appreciation for the support of my lovely wife, Lynn Seng. Lynn is my best friend, a keen adviser, an astute editor, and a wonderful companion in our shared effort to leave places a little better for our having been there—body, mind, heart, and soul.
About the Editor and Contributors
ABOUT THE EDITOR Arthur B. Shostak earned a BS at Cornell University (1954–1958) and a PhD in sociology at Princeton University (1958–1961). After teaching sociology at the University of Pennsylvania (1961–1967), he joined the faculty of Drexel University. There he developed its first courses in futuristics and in social issues. A member of the World Future Society since 1970, Shostak has shared forecasts with major teacher unions and organizations of school superintendents. With invaluable help from his wife, Lynn Seng, he has authored or edited 34 books—including four for high school students about the future—and over 160 articles. He can be reached at
[email protected].
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS Mary Austin is the district coordinator for International Baccalaureate (IB) Programmes in the Anne Arundel County public school system in Annapolis, Maryland. She has been involved with the IB for 10 years at the IB Diploma, Middle Years, and Primary Years Programme levels. She holds a master’s degree in international studies and curriculum development and has worked as a classroom teacher in the United States and abroad. She received a Fulbright Award to teach in Helsinki, Finland, and is involved with the Interchange Institute, Families in Global Transition, and the Center for International Educational Exchange. 227
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Tsvi Bisk is an American Israeli futurist. He is the director of the Center for Strategic Futurist Thinking and contributing editor for strategic thinking for The Futurist magazine, for which he has written extensively on energy policy. He is also the author of The Optimistic Jew: A Positive Vision for the Jewish People in the 21st Century. He can be reached at bisk@futurist-thinking .co.il. Joe Coates has one of the broadest scopes of any American futurists in exploring the next decades. His primary clientele are Fortune 100 corporations, trade associations, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies. He has written over 300 articles since 1990 and is the author or coauthor of five books, the most recent of which is A Bill of Rights for 21st Century America. He taught courses about the future as an adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at George Washington University, Washington, DC. He is widely recognized as an outstanding speaker. His website is http://www.josephcoates.com. He can be reached at
[email protected]. William Crossman is a philosopher, futurist-consultant, professor, human rights activist, jazz pianist-composer-educator, author, and poet. Founder/ director of the CompSpeak 2050 Institute for the Study of Talking Computers and Oral Cultures, he is the author of VIVO [Voice-In/Voice-Out]: The Coming Age of Talking Computers and many articles. He has spoken at conferences around the world and has appeared on TV and radio and online. A consultant for governmental and nongovernmental agencies, think tanks, educational institutions, research and development centers, and corporations, he is on the Teaching Faculties at Berkeley (California) City College and Oakland (California) Public Conservatory of Music. His website is http:// www.compspeak2050.org. Robert L. Frantz retired from the U.S. Marine Corps as a lieutenant colonel and then from United Airlines as a captain. He is nearing completion of his doctoral degree in business administration and specializes in distancelearning education. Currently, he serves as the chief executive officer for a new futuristic institution called Kepler Space University, which has a focus on Earth/space science and where he serves as the dean for management sciences and the dean for distance learning. Govil Gupta, a high school junior at Northwood High School (2009– 2010), founded the not-for-profit organization and website Wonder Writers (http://www.wonderwriters.com) as a freshman. He has successfully led Wonder Writers, completing four contests, publishing over 400 young writers in four books, and donating nearly $500 to charity. He has been rec-
About the Editor and Contributors
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ognized as a Nestlé Very Best in Youth, Project Tomorrow Emerging Student Innovator, and ABC7 Cool Kid. He also maintains a high level of academics (perfect grade-point average) and is enrolled in all honors/advanced placement classes at school. He has also volunteered over 300 hours in various organizations aside from Wonder Writers. William Halal is Professor Emeritus of science, technology, and innovation at George Washington University, Washington, DC, and an authority on emerging technologies, strategy, knowledge, and institutional change. He has worked with General Motors, AT&T, SAIC, MCI, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, International Data Corporation, the Department of Defense, the Asian Development Bank, and many other organizations. He has published six books and hundreds of articles. He is the founder of TechCast. He also cofounded the Institute for Knowledge and Innovation as a collaborative effort between the George Washington School of Business and the School of Engineering. Laura Lefkowits speaks across the nation on trends impacting education now and in the future and helps educators anticipate and prepare for a changing world. Prior to joining McREL, for which she served as vice president of policy and planning services, she served as the K–12 program director for the Colorado Institute of Technology; executive director of the Colorado Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education Coalition; and an at-large member of the Denver Public Schools Board of Education. She holds an MPA from the University of Colorado at Denver and a BA from Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts. She can be reached at laura@ lefkowits.com. Timothy C. Mack, since 1985, has edited Futures Research Quarterly. In June 2004, he assumed the presidency of the World Future Society. After holding research positions at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, he joined the Budget Policy Task Force at the U.S. General Accounting Office. He served as a vice president at WPP Ltd and on the board of the MIT Enterprise Forum. He also worked with the U.S. General Services Agency and the U.S. Department of Defense and assisted the Institute for Global Chinese Affairs. Marsha Rhea, president of Signature i, LLC, shares a framework for anticipatory learning in Anticipate the World You Want: Learning for Alternative Futures, which proposes orienting learning in pre-K–12 schools around the future. She has led projects for national associations and governments in understanding the future, creating vision and strategy, and planning and leading significant change. A frequent facilitator and speaker, she has a
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master’s degree in public administration from George Mason University and is a certified association executive. She is a member of the Association for Professional Futurists, the World Future Society, and the American Society of Association Executives. Daniel I. Shostak is president of Strategic Affairs Forecasting (SAF) and has been an international issues manager for a Fortune Global 100 company, interim chief executive officer of an international nongovernmental organization, and futurist with a leading think tank. He holds both a master of public health and a master of public policy degree from the University of California, Berkeley. He monitors both neuroscience and education trends as part of SAF’s daily environmental scan of English-language electronic reports and forecasts. SAF writes a regular blog presenting the best of these reports and will publish think-tank summaries. His blog is at http://www .strategicaffairs.net. He can be reached at
[email protected]. David Pearce Snyder is a consulting futurist who began his career in forecasting with the U.S. Census Bureau in 1959; he later served with the RAND Corporation and directed long-range planning at the Internal Revenue Service. For the past 35 years, he and his network of scanners have monitored long-term trends and forecasts reflecting future changes in society, the economy, and technology. Since 1979, he has been contributing editor of The Futurist magazine. He also serves on the editorial board of the Trend Letter and on the boards of On the Horizon and Innovate.com, two journals devoted to the future of education. Marianne Solomon, executive director of Future Problem Solving Program International (FPSPI), has been part of the program since 1985. A graduate of the University of Central Florida with her master’s degree in gifted education, she fell in love with FPSPI while teaching gifted English when she noted all that the program offered for the students. Her passion is providing fulfilling and creative curricula for students so that they will be prepared for their future—and no better way exists than through FPSPI. Stephen F. Steele is professor of sociology and futures studies and former founder and director of the Institute for the Future @ Anne Arundel Community College, Arnold, Maryland (http://www.aacc.edu/future). He was adjunct professor in the graduate program in organizational development and human resources at Johns Hopkins University. His writing includes Solution-Centered Sociology: Addressing Problems through Applied Sociology with Annie Scarisbrick-Hauser and Bill Hauser (1999) and Applied Sociology: Topics, Terms, Tools and Tasks (2nd ed.) with Jammie Price (2008). He can be reached at
[email protected].
