Educators and the Future

Besides raising future consciousness among the reading public, Future Shock encouraged many professors and teachers to think about futurizing their courses so that young people would be better prepared to live and work in the world of the future.

Educators made up about a third of the attendance at the Society’s first conference in 1971. Our meeting gave them an opportunity to get to know each other, share their frustration with backward-looking institutions, and collaborate on future-oriented projects.

My wife, Sally, took a special interest in these forward-thinking teachers, so after the conference, she teamed up with a young educator named James Stirewalt who was collecting information about future-oriented courses being given in high schools in the United States and elsewhere.

In 1974, Sally and Jim Stirewalt organized a workshop for teachers interested in giving future-oriented courses for their students. I helped them arrange for meeting space at a hotel in Bethesda, Maryland, close to the Society’s headquarters, but other than that they did almost everything by themselves.

Some 200 teachers attended the workshop and heard talks by experienced futurists as well as other educators who were involved in futuring. Each teacher got a copy of Teaching Futures, a 150-page collection of articles and syllabuses that could be used in informing students about the world of tomorrow.

As a further service for educators, we published the Society’s first catalog of books, audiotapes, and other materials that might help teachers to equip students for the future. All told, the workshop was, I believe, of great practical benefit to the teachers, and it also stimulated a lot of new interest among educators in teaching their students about likely developments in the world they would be living in.