"Futurists Wanted." This intriguing headline invited my community to come together and talk about schools of the future. School leaders urged anyone interested in children and in learning to take part in this planning process that would guide their decisions through the coming years. Since education and kids are the fuels that light my fire, I signed up for the long haul. Besides, they were serving cookies.
Most of us attending the event were surprised to learn about the modern trends that will require us to educate children in new and better ways. For example, we learned that we are moving out of an industrial age and into one where global knowledge and information will rule.
This means that our children will need to keep learning all their lives if they want to keep up. In fact, futurists say that 20 percent of what we know today will be obsolete in one year. It follows, then, that our children will have to relearn just about everything they know every five years!
So it's more important than ever to teach our children bahaviors that promote learning, and to awaken in them the kind of curiosity and drive that will help them learn more and do it faster than ever before.
The demands of the future also make it more important than ever that schools leave no child behind. Basically, we need to expect more of all our kids, because we live in a world that will expect more of them. We must challenge all our children to read well, do difficult math, learn history and understand science. More importantly, we need to give them the problem solving skills and confidence to deal with an ever-changing world.
I left my school-planning meeting armed with lots of facts and a heavy sense of responsibility that not even my sugar high could chase away. I began to understand what Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "Education is learning what you didn't know you didn't know."
Ralph must have been a futurist.