3 - The Context for a New Purpose

Summary

The present and past are insufficient guides for designing learning: we must also make wise use of futures thinking. Today, we have tools available that give clear indications of future trends. These trends are certainly not immutable; they will change but they also can be shaped. Educators need to consider how to prepare learners to understand and shape the direction and impacts of these trends. What it means to thrive has to be filtered through the awareness of emerging challenges for our planet, our societies and ourselves. Current scholarship and analysis suggest that humanity stands at the cusp of three great pivot points in its history. First, the planetary emergency, encompassing the climate crisis, consequences of the anthropocene, and the Sixth Great Extinction. Second, the apotheosis of technology, through artificial intelligence. And third, the possibilities for human evolution as multiple biomedical technologies converge. Never in human history have such profound, literally unprecedented changes been in prospect. But nothing is immutable. The future is not a straight line; it can and will be shaped by how and what young people learn in schools.