Celebrating 50 years in Singapore this year means celebrating the past while also looking to the future, as reflected in the title of our recent spectacular 50th Forum Learning to Shape the Future (videos of all sessions here). There were two contrasting themes, which underlie a lot of what educators and parents think and feel about for our children:
- Celebration of what we have achieved and learnt over 50 years
- Dialogue about what learning is needed for the next 50 years.
We can think of these options as approaching the future with one of two attitudes; one of nostalgia or one of imagination. The nostalgia attitude is one we feel when we look to our own (remembered) childhoods, and perhaps feel angst about the possibility of radically different things ahead for our children. There’s love and care and desire for continuity here; but an attitude of nostalgia implies few expectations, aside from the hope of preserving the status quo or even reverting to less technological or less globalised times (often while forgetting the benefits these things have brought). The imagination option arises when we see possibility and promise, and yearn for things to be better for our children. It stresses optimism and more meaningful opportunities than we can imagine. Again, there’s love and care behind this approach, but also perhaps an assumption of progress and development towards for something probably not exactly specified.
This is not just a debate playing out in education; life today differs a great deal from life 50 years ago in so many ways that it’s hard not to think there will be further rapid change ahead. At the same time it’s also hard not to question the very foundations on which this change has been built; we can no longer confidently rely on technologies as an unqualified good; nor unquestioningly assume confidence in the processes and leaders of our public institutions; nor take for granted infinite natural resources, a stable climate, or social change that benefits all.
The choice, therefore, cannot be between fearlessly marching into the future or backing into it with the same tools and ideas we have today. This was made crystal clear by Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills at the OECD, when he drew parallels between the industrial and information revolutions (here at 26:06, but the whole thing is well worth watching), and his point is echoed by historian Stephen Toulmin who wrote: The task of shaping the future is open only to those who are ready to adopt imaginative attitudes, while deeply understanding the directions in which we are already moving.
We must not, therefore, jettison either imagination or nostalgia, for they both have things to teach us.
This notion of looking in two directions at once struck me forcibly when I came across the New Map of Life from the Stanford Longevity Centre. Today’s conceptions of old-age, and the reality of life for many elderly folk, rightly give us reason to look back (nostalgically) at multi-generational living and lament a loss. Drawing on this, and with a profound understanding of demographic realities, the report (imaginatively) outlines a compelling vision for the future whereby rather than dwelling so anxiously on the costs incurred by an ‘ageing’ society, we should reframe the conversation around measuring and reaping the remarkable dividends of a society that is, in fact, age-diverse. It is this type of approach that we seek in education – not one that dismisses the past, that seeks to wipe the slate clean and start again in technological utopia, but one that honours and builds from where we are, even though we cannot be sure of the exact destination. As Antoine St Expury said as for the future, [our] task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.
Finding the golden mean between nostalgia and imagination in education will determine the way the shaping of the thoughts, values and capabilities of today’s children, will create what is to come. Civil rights activist and Baptist minister Ralph Abernathy stresses our responsibilities when he writes I don’t know what the future may hold, but I know who holds the future.
