Marc - You've submitted a very nice essay: clear, concise and practical (and therefore quite different from most - including my own). Two thoughts - I like the outline of the Futurocentric agenda, but think it might need to be re-prioritized. Question of looking at value and meaning should come first - followed by the understanding of limits to empirical enterprise (statistics, uncertainty ...), and THEN to the practical issues of energy, food, technology. Although in teaching to the agenda (I am not a teacher) you probably need to start with the practical just to keep people interested - and then hopefully get into the limits of analysis and questions of value. Unfortunately current debates are mostly stuck in the former.

The second point - while the pursuit of an agenda is important, it is also important to consider behaviors - how do we treat each other as we explore the Futurocentric agenda? This was the point of my essay (The Tip of the Spear - please excuse the pun) - and I would appreciate any comments you might offer.

Thanks - George

    Georgina,

    Thank you for reading my essay and for your comments. I agree that public information broadcasts could be helpful.

    I have read your essay and will comment on your forum.

    Marc

    Don,

    Thank you for commenting on my essay. I have replied in your own forum.

    Marc

    George,

    Thank you for commenting on my essay. I agree with you that proper behavior, and the questions of value and meaning, are key. At the same time, as you say, they are much harder to teach than the practical issues related to energy, food and technology.

    In my rough draft for a futurocentric curriculum, I already have a point where some of the issues that you raise can be addressed (Point 12: The Good Life in an ever-evolving technological world). This point certainly needs to be expanded: issues of value and meaning should be discussed whenever we have the chance if we want the futurocentric education initiative to truly help humanity to steer the future better.

    I have read your essay and will comment on it in your forum.

    Marc

    By the way, George, you have mentioned that my essay was more practical than most... thank you, but I believe my essay is still not practical enough! It is easier to say that we need "more relevant education" than to propose actual ways to make education more relevant!

    I have read a lot of the essays in this contest, and I find that it is easier to find well constructed analyses of the problems that we will face in the future than proposals of actual implementable ways to steer the future better...

    But I am an optimist at heart, and I believe that, via collaboration (a key factor that you emphasize well in your essay), we will succeed!

    Marc

    Dear Marc,

    We share the same goal and idea.

    "If humanity is to successfully steer the future, its citizens will need to rise to the challenge and become future-literate. Let us bet that knowledge is a good thing, and that the more numerous are the citizens of the world who have a sound basic understanding of the way the world is and evolves, the more happy, prosperous and secure the future of humanity will be.

    Let the Futurocentric Education Initiative begin. Educators of the world, the future is in your hands!"

    I give you a full mark 10.

    Best of luck,

    Leo KoGuan

    Marc,

    Thanks for that rousing call to action! I also view free lifelong education as an entitlement and collective priority. I am reminded that when U.S. President Kennedy called for an all-out space effort, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon less than 10 years later. Would that we do the same for education.

    Deserved high score from me.

    All best,

    Tom

    P.S. -- in looking for the best introductory physics text, have you an opinion on Susskind/Hrabovsky, The Theoretical Minimum? I found it well done.

      Thomas,

      Thank you for reading my essay, and for your belief in the importance of education. I have both volumes of "The Theoretical Minimum": I haven't had the time yet to read them thoroughly, but I read some sections here and there, and they seem to be very well done, at an "intermediate" level that is not often found in pedagogical works.

      I will read your essay and comment on it in your forum.

      Marc

      Marc,

      Excellent essay! You make an important point that I believe many educators would agree with. In a world like ours with constantly growing complexity, it is important to teach a certain portfolio of skills that will allow everyone to make a realistic assessment of how her or his choices will affect the future. As you also point out, there are already encouraging initiatives in this direction (MOOCs, YouTube tutorials, etc.). It will be interesting to see how these will evolve in the next few years. The debate you are calling for would be extremely helpful to support and focus this development.

      I was about to recommend David MacKay's and Richard Muller's books when I saw that you already mentioned them in one of your footnotes. Great choice!

      Jens

      Dear Marc,

      I generally agree with your premise that "Big Government" has lost much authority, and that any action will have to be based on collective will and understanding of the citizens.

      This does seem to imply the need for broader and more effective education. Although you focus on future-centric, I note that you have a degree in history, and I do believe that only history can provide the perspective we need for some understanding. But your point about current "deficit of meaning" in schools is well taken.

      I hope you read my essay and comment. We agree in the central place of education, and the need for bottom-up government, not top-down.

      My best regards,

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

        Edwin,

        Thank you for commenting on my essay. In my years of teaching, I have found (unfortunately) that history, for most students, is not high on their "interest" list: maybe it's because they are already 100% occupied in discovering the present world, in all its mind-boggling complexity. That's why I hold some hope in a futurocentric approach: trying to motivate them by talking about issues that are key for our survival in the future... and, of course, in discussing them, history will necessary enter by the back door, so to speak!

        I had already read your essay: I will rate it and comment on it on your forum later tonight.

        Marc

        Hi Marc,

        Fantastic essay! You provided great arguments about the importance of future education, and your solution "the Futurocentric Education Initiative" is, I believe, applicable and important. I strongly agree with you.

        There are some similarities between our essays. In my essay, I discussed the importance of raising the public understanding of science and improving education to accelerate the progress of science. I would be glad to receive your opinion.

        Best regards,

        Mohammed

          Peter,

          Thank you for commenting on my essay. I like your suggestion that we should learn how to teach science better from the way architecture is taught. Architecture and science both have restraints (architecture must produce structures that can be built, science must produce theories whose predictions fit with observations), but they also leave an important part for creativity, imagination and "thinking outside the box"... as your own essay spectacularly illustrates. We should keep that in mind if we want to build an optimal futurocentric curriculum!

          Good luck in the contest!

          Marc

          Mohammed,

          Thank you for commenting on my essay. I have read yours, and I agree that there are similarities between our ideas. I will grade your essay and comment on it on your forum.

          Marc

          Marc,

          Finally got to your essay and was pleasantly surprised. I am in complete agreement with your statements that "citizens will need to rise", "knowledge is a good thing", and "people around the world have lost faith in figures of authority and Big Government".

          Our biggest agreement is on any action must "lead to positive outcomes for the greatest number of humans".

          I also totally agree with every item on your '"futurecentric" curriculum.

          Where I think we may have a bit of difference (my essay is here) is that:

          - While you have 13 "Topics" I am not restricting the curriculum in any way and saying everything we know in science should be shared, especially the result-cause relationships and, not necessarily the 'why of cause-effect relationships' to hedge risk.

          - I am not sure who decides what to do (who is responsible for action) in your case. In my view, every citizen is independently responsible for improving their individual future.

          Please read my essay and let me know if you agree, or not, with how close our thoughts really are.

          -- Ajay

            As anyone who knows me will attest, I am essentially unteachable; I must learn my own way. So I read your essay as a total outsider, and then I did what any sensible outsider would do in 2014: I googled "future oriented education". You probably know all about the following initiatives already, but just in case, and as an opportunity to comment on how they might fit in with your own, here are a few things I found worthy of note:

            - Marc Prensky is currently creating a Global Future Education Foundation and Institution (and writing two books about it, including one proposing "a new, future world curriculum") with goals which look similar to yours.

            - New Zealand wins the search engine placement battle, with entries like Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching - a New Zealand perspective and Shifting to 21st Century Thinking in education and learning. Apparently the New Zealand Council for Educational Research has been thinking about this for more than a decade.

            - Marco Rieckmann has thought about Future-Oriented Higher Education: Which Key Competencies Should Be Fostered Through University Teaching and Learning?, and Derek Hodson about Science education for an alternative future.

            - 2014 is the last year of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, proclaimed in December 2002 by the United Nations General Assembly. I had no idea. The issues emphasized by EDS seem to partially overlap with your curriculum, and UNESCO's International Implementation Scheme may contain some applicable wisdom. Or not. As I said, I had no idea...

              Hello Marc,

              Your essay is clearly written and makes a very good case for improving education by emphasizing critical, numerical, probabilistic and statistical thinking. I agree with most of your individual proposals, although I think you place too much faith in humans to execute your plan. After all, these options have been available to people for many decades, and people of generations past (at least in the U.S.) were probably better versed in these many areas than they are today. Education isn't the primary culprit; it is people's evolutionary baggage that makes them biased, or inattentive, or lazy, or distracted, or immersed in instant gratification, or more likely, all of the above.

              To guide long-term decisions, your proposal places trust in current human priorities, and thus current levels of rationality. Substantial research by Kahneman and Tversky, Keith Stanovich, Tom Gilovich, Dan Ariely, and many others convince us that people are neither rational nor good forecasters, even when they are focused on the future.

              People have great difficulties with large data sets and thinking about long-distance and long-term consequences of our actions, and as we and others in this competition (see Sabine Hossenfelder's essay) have pointed out, what limited understanding we have is prone to cognitive biases and statistical errors. We agree with you that a focus on the future is essential, but these intrinsic limits to our current thinking abilities present an impassable obstacle.

              We think our proposal is the only truly efficient (albeit, long-term) approach and, while our proposed solution is not as specific as yours, we want people to engage in a serious conversation about the issues we raise and how to create better brains and other thinking machines - especially the best scientists and engineers who typically have little motivation to consider these issues because they are comfortable with their own intellects. The most rational and intelligent people only feel satisfied with their present mental status because human perceptions are selected to be relativistic about abilities, but the problems highlighted by both of our essays apply to everyone.

              I hope your essay does well. I also hope that you read our essay and that we persuade you to some degree of the soundness of our proposal. Whatever the outcome, we wish you all the best,

              Preston Estep (and Alex Hoekstra)

                Hi Preston and Alex,

                Thank you for commenting on my essay. I have read your essay and I agree with a lot of what you are saying, although, most of the time, my own views are a little less "pessimistic" about the current level of human minds. I will comment on your essay in your forum.

                Marc

                An educational initiative specifically--rather than incidentally--aimed at improving our long-run decision-making is a fantastic idea, Marc. I think you are right that important issues like these can be taught if put into context, even to students who have little interest in memorizing the order of the planets.

                The development of such curriculum will not always go smoothly, as you say. In fact, I'm sure curriculum development would be very contentious. We still need to reach scientific consensus on many of these issues. And people whose fundamental beliefs are challenged by the science--or who have a stake in the path we're already on--will fight hard to shape the curriculum to their own liking. But as you say,just the conversation about the curriculum would be well worth having.

                In my opinion, this is one of the best essays in the contest. I hope it does very well--it deserves to.

                Best,

                Robert

                Ajay,

                Thanks for your comments on my essay. Here are my thoughts on the two "differences" between our proposals that you have mentioned.

                1) My list of 13 topics is only a rough draft for a futurocentric curriculum, so there is room for many things that I did not mention. However, if we want to teach anything concrete, it is important that we define and optimize the "core curriculum". What you propose is different: you want all potentially useful scientific knowledge to be accessible to anyone, so they can "play" with it and find local solutions to improve their lives. This can take place in parallel with a Futurocentric Education Initiative. In fact, one measure of a successful education initiative would be that the "average" citizen would have a good enough basic education to be able to successfully play with the scientific knowledge made available -- to have fun playing, you need some basic skills!

                2) The questions "Who decides" and "Who acts" are, of course, particularly tricky. To determine the content of the futurocentric curriculum, we will need a potentially difficult worldwide conversation between all major actors - governments, educators, industry leaders, scientists, scholars, artists, spiritual "leaders", etc. To implement the education initiative, we will need the help of the teachers, the writers, the artists, in fact, of anyone who wants to help educate other people. And the "average" citizen needs to want to learn what is being proposed, so, in the end, every citizen is responsible for improving their individual future, like in your approach.

                In conclusion, I think our ideas are quite complementary.

                Marc