Our current education system needs to evolve if we are to adequately address the complex world we live in. The mission of formal education, going back centuries, has been to transmit the knowledge and experience of past generations to the next.
In addition to spending time on facts, we need to equip students with the skills they need to be successful in the future, a future that we all know is full of uncertainties. Our vision is to focus on and practice skills, like the 4Cs (collaboration, communication critical and creative thinking) and many others. Skills are perennially useful; they apply to every way of life and to every occupation in ways that facts alone do not.
One way to emphasize skills in school is to include the future in the curriculum. We have to recognize that the future, and indeed almost every real question or problem that students will face as adults, is uncertain.
Teaching the future is a strategy for putting primary emphasis on skills, such as investigation, curiosity, creativity and resilience that students can use every day as they both learn from the past and prepare for the future.
Read more in "A Case for the Future in the Gifted and Talented Classroom."
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