Learning About the Future

The 11th key to learning. 

What is key in learning? This is the eleventh of a number of keys that are meant to bring understanding about what learning is and how leaning can be improved by understanding the message of those keys. This key is about how learning can be improved by other peoples guesses about what the future might be like. This key looks at the work of futurists and science fiction and any other future prediction, not in order to predict the future but rather to see how such works can help us both learn, choose wisely what to learn, and enable us to shape the future by striving to implement some posibilities while avoiding others.

"The trouble with the future is that is usually arrives before we're ready for it." Arnold H. Glasgow

"The future influences the present just as much as the past." Friedrich Nietzsche

Futurists believe that there is a case for having a special subject at school called futurism or future studies. There is some sense in this in that the future is what all learning is trying to apprehend. For learning is all about predicting the future. We understand this on a small scale in that we need to make sense of the world, we need to predict what will happen in terms of, if A then B etc. Without this there is nothing, no causality, no logic, no knowledge. Alvin Toffler in his book "Learning for Tomorrow" has this to say:

"It is perfectly astonishing, once we stop to consider it, that we are able, out of the stuff of everyday experience, to conjure up dreams, visions, forecasts and prophecies of events yet to come. Scientists marvel at the body's machinery for sensing the environment and for converting its impressions into concepts, ideas, symbols and logic. Yet our talent for projecting images of the future is even more remarkable. In fact, though educators have scarcely noticed it, this 'future scanning' talent is the basis for learning itself"

But the future is important on a much larger scale also. As the futurists like Toffler point out we need to prepare for the future. We need to make ourselves ready to be part of it. However, even more important than that, part of knowing about the future is also so we can create it. Each of us wishes to bend the future to our will, to shape it, to be in control of it, and to construct it into what we want it to be. It is only by perusing a vast array of future posibilities that we can begin to obtain some ability to partly determine some future shaping and control over the future. Some such exposure to this vast aray of possible futures is possible through direct learning of the subject matter.    

In schools where we are taught subjects it makes sense to have a special subject called futurism for the purpose focusing this exposure. In schools where subjects are not taught, we would not need a separate subject and the study of the future would be a part of all learning orientation. Alvin Toffler in his book "Learning for Tomorrow" puts it like this:

"For it is precisely this ability to visualize futures, to generate and discard thousands upon thousands of assumptions about events that have not yet - and may never become reality, that makes man the most adaptive of animals. It is a prime task of education to enhance this ability, to help make the individual more sensitively responsive to change. We must therefore, redefine learning itself. Put simply a significant part of education must be seen as the process by which we enlarge, enrich and improve the individuals image of the future."

Paul Valery

 A word of caution.  

It is important to understand that although the above may require the study of predicions that we should not draw from that that our purpose is to predict. That is the danger in preusing predictions. We must be aware that there is no posible way, the future on the large scale, can be predicted with even the remotest accuracy. This is because of the staggering number of variables involved. We should therefore keep in mind that such predictions are posabilities not probabilities and in no circumstances are they certain. Indeed becoming attached to a single prediction is a sure way of creating disasters. Perusing prections is not being suggested in order to predict. Utopias may sound or look absolutely right, but if we dare to bring them into existance they must be modified and we must be prepared to modify them, because they will be mired with flaws and bugs that are neither apparent nor presented. Learning about the future is not a matter of predicing it, it is rather a way of being prepared for a multitude of posibilities, which ulimately means being prepared for anything. Far from predicing an accurate future its purpose is tranforming one's self into into a flexable entity better able, to not just cope with any furure, but better able to thrive in any future.     

Preparing for the Future.

On the large scale, knowledge of the future prepares us and desensitizes us to the impact of the future on us. There is a confusion and disorientation caused by too much change too quickly when we are not prepared for it, and this is what Alvin Toffler has labeled future shock. By being aware of many posibilities in the future, by imagining many possible future worlds we are able to choose among them and select those that are the most probable and then make an effort to see how those future worlds might be of most benefit to ourselves. In this way various posibilities of large scale knowledge about the future enables us to be better prepared to deal with the small scale of our personal life in the future. It is how we will work out how to survive and live a comfortable existence in tomorrow's world. To do this we need a lot of information about the future. We need to be able to construct many scenarios about what day to day living will be like in the future. We need to then select from among them the most likely and then make preparations to deal with those, whatever they are, to prepare to welcome and embrace that future. Alvin Toffler continues in his book "Learning for Tomorrow" as follows:

"The ultimate purpose of futurism in education is not to create elegantly complex, well-ordered, accurate images of the future, but rather to help learners cope with real-life crises, opportunities and perils. It is to strengthen the individual's ability to anticipate and adapt to change, whether through invention, informed acquiescence, or through intelligent resistance."

 Creating or Building the Future. 

On the large scale knowledge of the future also allows us to see what is possible in the future. This is not just what is more probable, but what might be preferable so we can select the most valuable and then activly work to bring it into being. We can also choose what seems unpleasent and undesirable and activly work to prevent it being able to to come into existance. Although human beings do not have absolute control over what the future will be like, we do have a very large influence over what is going to happen in response to what we do. Some people are pivotal in this. These people make the discoveries, implement fashions, change social and cultural norms, make laws and enforce all of the above. Others make the future by agitating, arguing, making known their opinions and supporting all of the above. Some people work for a better future for all people and some work for a better future for themselves only. Some change the world by complying or doing nothing, by letting it role over them like a wave. These people are just as responsible for the future as those who were active in creating the future. For if they had stood up and resisted a dark future might have been averted or if they had stood up and helped a bright future might have come into being. In any case the future would have been different and most likely much better. Toffler continues:

"To function well in a fast-shifting environment, the learner must have the opportunity to do more than receive and store data; she or he must have an opportunity to make change or fail in the attempt. This implies a basic modification of the relationship between educational theory and practice."

Forging a better Future.

Those who actively forge the future even when they do it for purely selfish reasons must surely be in every way superior and healthier than those who do not. For the greatest most important need we have is to learn how to satisfy our own needs. If we do not learn how to do this we are only partly human. We are like tame animals. We rely on humans, other humans (the independent, self sufficient, accomplished, 'wild animal' humans) to provide for our existence. Without the help of those other humans we would curl up and die. To be fully human is to be able to survive and flourish by means of our own efforts. The point is that by speculating about the future, especially by reading or watching the speculations of others, we have a chance to guide the future to be safer, to be where all our needs can be met, and be just better than it is now. 

Materials for Preparation. 

Preparing the young to be the creators of the future involves two very different types of learning. 

Extrapolating the future from the now. 

One is learning about the future through interacting with the future in the now. 

Learning and the imaginative speculations of others. 

The other is, as already mentioned, about speculating about the future and enlarging this by the absorbing of what others have speculated about the future. This material includes the speculations of scientists, the writings of futurists and of course science fiction.

The futurists. 

The writings of scientists and other futurists that speculate about the future are important because such special people have deep knowledge of their domains and thus their predictions are likely to have greater predictive value. Even if only one in ten of those predictions turns out to be correct that one is important in preparing us to cope with that future. The other predictions also may have been very important as well in that they alerted us to the possibility and thus enabled us to choose not to go down that path and to actively work against the possibility of that future. The more people (students) that are exposed to such works the more everybody can be involved in designing a future that we would all like to live in. Its hard to know what to work toward if we are unconversent with of most of the possibilities. 

There are, however, two problems with futurist writings. Futurists are a very small group of very specialized people. Not only do futurists have to be deeply familiar with their domain of knowledge but they also have to be good as extrapolating that knowledge into logical future scenarios. This makes the number of futurist writings very small. Secondly futurist writing can be very dry and dull reducing the the amount of readable futurist material even further.  

Science Fiction. 

Not all science fiction has good science, nor is it always about the future, nor is the section that is about the future always reasonable prediction. What science fiction has in spades is a very large niche market. Be that as it may a huge section of science fiction is indeed reasonable prediction. This sort of science fiction has partly the same purpose as futurist writings in that it helps us prepare for the future by letting us know what it may be, and enables us to work toward those futures we find attractive.

On the other hand much of what is written in science fiction does not come true and will never come true. One reason that these predictions do not come true is because they have alerted us to that possible future. It does not come true because our awareness of its possibility enables us to move heaven and earth to prevent its coming into existence. Indeed some science fiction in the subcategory of distopian fiction, such as "1984", is written for the express purpose of giving warning, and the prevention of its own emergence. 

Science fiction has the advantage, however, of being stories and stories have a much wider appeal and are more enjoyable and memorable than the dry scientific projective speculation. Stories are about human emotion that draw us in and make us eager to learn what happens next. They make any kind of learning easier, more memorable and more enjoyable. Stories delight our senses and stir our imaginations so that we are sucked into these possible worlds and thus experience them more directly. Science fiction turns dry speculation into a feast of wonder and euphoric mental delights that can deeply impress its readers. Also in other mediums such as movies, science fiction has been shown to have wide appeal and indeed when done well seems to appeal to almost everybody.

The general public gets its understanding of science fiction mostly from movies which leaves them with the impression that science fiction and thus the predictive value of science fiction concerns probable directions for advances in technology. While this was true about a lot of the early science fiction this is no longer the case. Science fiction has gradually grown in its story elements to embrace every domain of science and much of many other branches of learning. Science fiction now deals with predicting future politics, history, sociology, geology, biology and psychology not just physics and technical innovations.

Knowledge of possible futures and effective general learning.

The speculations of scientists, futurist writings, and science fiction have the power to help us learn how to forge a better future, but that is not its only benefit to learning. It has many benefits. Not least among those benefits is that those speculations help change us so that we learn ordinary day to day knowledge more deeply and thus understand all that we learn better. Understanding is all about connections and strangely speculation about the future trains in the art of making those connections.

The most important part of learning is understanding. Understanding is is how what we have just learned connects to everything else that we 'know'? No thing that is properly learned can stand alone. Anything that does has no meaning and therefore cannot be understood. It is nonsense. Of all the ways we make connections the most prevalent and easy to use is what we call consequences. 

Some consequences are immediate and thus easy to spot. If a change is made that change has many consequences. If the consequences are immediate we quickly notice them. But many consequences are not immediate. They will only become visible after some time. They are in the future. Such consequences are often delayed because they are not a direct consequence but are rather the consequence of a consequence. Indeed consequences have consequences which have consequence and so on. These may form a long chain fanning out into the future. This is chaos theory where a butterfly can flap its wings in one part of the world and has consequence, through a chain of consequences, of producing a hurricane in some other part of the world. The small change has consequences which have consequences which have consequences etc. etc.

A change in one thing causes a change in something else which causes a change in something else. One small change can have five consequences each of which can also have five consequence which can also have five consequences etc. Obviously these connections can get massive very fast. This can be understood as each change producing a ripple of consequences emanating out from it and which never stop but simple flow on forever. 

Writers and all media creators illuminating the future attempt in part to extrapolate from what we already know. They take fairly recent changes and try to follow their chains of consequence for some distance. They also construct "what if" scenarios and imagine chains of consequence emanating from them. The speculations of these scientists, futurists, and science fiction writers give us practice in seeing along these infinite chains of consequence before they occur. In doing this they help us be able to to see along these chains of consequence by ourselves. The more we familiarize ourselves with these speculations of others, the more practice we get at following chains of consequence. Understanding is 'connections' and consequences provide us with an infinite amount of connections if we develop the ability to follow chains of consequence into the future. The more practiced we are at following these chains the more connections we make in our learning and thus the more deeply we understand what we have learned. This ability once learned is applicable not just for possible futures but is equally applicable to ideas. Ideas also have consequences, and chains of consequences, and our understanding of them is dependent on how far along those chains we are able to imagine.       

Learning about the future by participating in a now that requires making plans and clarifying values. 

The second type of learning is that of going out into the world of group projects, work and responsibility and taking part in it. In doing this the young can learn that they can have power and influence in the world and they can learn how to clarify what they really want the future to be like and in doing so clarify their own values as to what is good and right. For it is not until we make plans and decisions affecting the lives of others that we are truly confronted with the notion that our personal values will make an impact on the world. Alvin Toffler points out that values clarification is essential to the building of the future in "Learning for Tomorrow" as follows:

"...the development of group or personal plans, however tentative, immediately forces the question of values into the foreground. For plans have to do with our images of preferred futures, as distinct from those that are merely possible or probable. No problem in education has been more disgracefully neglected in recent years. The attempt to avoid ancient orthodoxies having led to the myth of a value-free education, we now find millions of young people moving through the educational sausage-grinder who have never once been encouraged to question their own personal values or to make them explicit. In the face of a rapidly shifting, choice filled environment, one which demands decision after adaptive decision from the individual, this neglect of values questions is crippling."

The need to test reality as a guide to the future. 

Rapid change has many unfortunate side effects. The most unfortunate of these side effects is that it causes learners to distrust what they are learning. Schools, which are themselves notorious as being resistant to change, and unresponsive to societies essential learning needs, are not only sluggish in keeping up with changes in the subjects taught in them, but are fast becoming irrelevant. If they are to remain relevant and useful they must transform themselves into places of more student directed learning and on the job work experience. Alvin Toffler in an essay in his book "Learning for Tomorrow" puts it like this:

"High-speed change means that the reality described by the teacher in the classroom is, even as the lesson proceeds, undergoing transformation. Generalizations uttered by the textbook or the teacher may be accurate at the beginning of a lesson, but incorrect or irrelevant by the end. Insights, highly useful at one time, become invalid under new conditions."

"The instinctive recognition of this by young people has been one of the key factors behind the collapse of teacher authority.

In the past, one assumed that one's elders 'knew' how things were. Yet if reality is changing, then their knowledge of it is not necessarily trustworthy any longer, and significantly, they too, must again become learners.

When we introduce change and, therefore, higher levels of novelty into the environment, we create a totally new relationship between the limited reality of the classroom and the larger reality of life. Because abstractions are symbolic reflections of aspects of reality they tend to quickly change in meaning in a fast changing world. As the rate of change alters technology, social and moral realities, we are compelled to do more than revise our abstractions: we are also forced to test them more frequently against the realities they are supposed to represent.

Those who conduct opinion surveys know that, the more variation there is in a population to be sampled, the larger the sampler required to get an information rich result. The same is true with respect to variation through time. The more rapid the pace of change, the more novelty-filled our environment, the more often it becomes necessary to 'sample reality' - to check our abstractions.

Thus learning under conditions of high novelty requires us to move back and forth between theory and practice, between between the classroom and community, faster and more frequently than ever before. Failure to measure our abstractions often against reality increases the likelihood that they will be false. But the university and the lower schools, as organized today, are designed to construct or transmit abstractions, not to test them. They test what we have retained of what has been transmitted to us. It does not inform us how to test the truth of what has been transmitted to us nor does it encourage us to do so.

This is why we need to accelerate the trend in many colleges and universities to offer credit for action-learning done off-campus through participation in real work, in business, in community political organizing, in pollution control projects, or other activities. The importance of this type of learning cannot be overestimated and we would be wise to extend it to high schools and other early learning facilities. Clearly the aims of the futurists and the humanists are one on this point. There is no substitute for work experience, and only the learner can truly have any idea what she or he needs to learn in order to actualize his/her potential.

The elite verses everybody contributing.

This site holds as a philosophical maxim that all humans should be able to (have the right to) stand on their own two feet. This site holds that humans all need to feel they have power in the world. To be at least partly in control of the world and not be entirely at its mercy. They need to leave their mark. If they cannot leave a constructive mark they may leave a destructive mark. All of us need to help create a constructive future.

Today the future is being shaped by a tiny elite minority and most of them have no idea where they are taking us. They are stumbling along in the dark. This site holds that everybody should take a hand in building the future. To do this we all need to be as well informed as is possible as to where it might be best to go in the future. We need to then decide where would be best to go in the future and then make every effort to take us there. We not only need many many creative people to solve the problems of the future, but also we need many more who are able to anticipate problems and lead us along a path that avoids those problems. In other words we need people who will curb problems before they are problems, who will never let those problems eventuate. Clearly the only way to produce such talented people in the huge numbers required is to prevent the young from becoming de-motivated and enable them to maintain a continuing and growing interest in learning throughout their lives. Again the futurist's and humanist's positions come together as Toffler shows in his essay in "Learning for Tomorrow" as follows:

"Students learn best when they are highly motivated to do so, and despite a great deal of mythology to the contrary, this motivation rarely comes from 'inspired teachers' or 'well designed texts' alone. So long as students are cut off from the productive work of the surrounding society and kept in an interminably prolonged adolescence, many - if not most - are de-motivated. Teachers, parents and other adults may shower them with flowery rhetoric about how today's youth will be the leaders and decision makers of tomorrow. But the rhetoric is contradicted by a reality that actively deprives the young of participation either in significant community decision making or in socially approved productive work. Beneath the rhetoric lies a contempt summarized in the twin terms 'parasite' and 'investments.' Conservatives tend to look upon students as parasites, eating up community resources without contributing anything productive in return. Liberals leap to defend the youth by terming them 'investments' in the future. Both notions are insulting.

The secret message communicated to most young people today by society around them is that they are not needed, That the society will run itself quite nicely until they - at some distant point in the future - take over the reins. Yet the fact is that the society is not running itself nicely, and, indeed, there may be little of value left for them to take over in the future, unless we re-conceptualize the roll of youth in the social order. Not because young people will necessarily tear down the social order, but because the rest of us need all that energy, brains, imagination and talent that young people can bring to bear on our difficulties. For the society to attempt to solve its problems without the full participation of even very young people is imbecile."

Trusting the young to build the future, practice makes perfect.

The fact is we don't trust young people. The elite have brain washed us not to trust our children and in the process have brainwashed themselves so that they do not trust their own children. Why, because they were afraid of losing their power. However, this has caused a great problem, in that children are being prevented from making decisions (having had them made for them), they are unable to use their imagination, to solve problems, to be creative, to participate and feel capable of making a difference, of being responsible, in short of being able to be in charge. Yet at some future point, however long we delay it, they will be in charge. Suddenly after years of atrophy, these, the most important of human skills, will be expected to suddenly blossom forth in the young who have come of age and enable them to lead us forward. The skills of responsibility and leadership require, like any skill, years of practice. Thus the current situation is not a realistic expectation!

The future lies before you, like paths of pure white snow. Be careful how you tread it, for every step will show. source Unknown

Learning about the future and life long learning.

All learning is preparing us to speculate about the future and thus allowing us to be competent in dealing with the future by giving us some small amount of control over that future. In order to obtain this competence, what students need is a positive image of themselves projected into various possible future scenarios. This idea is what the futurists call a 'Future Focused Role Image'. Both futurist predictive essays and science fiction stories allow people to try out personal futures for themselves and in doing so provide themselves with extraordinary pleasure that stirs their imagination and motivates them to indulge themselves in acquiring knowledge of the future. It also enables us to more deeply understand all that we learn by training to follow hidden chains of consequence. Ultimately though life long learning is all about changing the now into the future that we want. This we can do if we have a clearer picture of a future to work toward. The future is going to be different to now, and it's our job to make sure that difference is better not worse. Life long learning is what we do so that we can build a better brighter future for our descendants.