Forward Thinking and the Support Needed
In watching Ari Wallach's, 3 Ways to Plan TED Talk video, I was very encouraged by the way he thought about the future. His view of the current reality we live in hit the nail on the head for me. Currently our society sees a lot of "short termism" thinking. We worry about the here and now. I myself am extremely guilty of this, and I talk many times with my wife and children about how out of control the problem has become for us and our kids. This could not be more prevalent than when we are driving. My children want to hear a specific song, and they want to hear it RIGHT NOW. As a technology driven parent, having the ability to quiet them by quickly asking siri to play a song has become second nature. But what is that teaching my children? They are quickly learning that no matter their wants or desires, they can have it in a matter of moments. This is a lesson that should not be taught to children at the age of 3, 4, or 5, but this is the lesson that I believe shapes our children's futures.
Recently our car trips have become much less tech infused. We listen to the radio, and we play games looking out the windows of the cars. My children are learning patience and that they don't always get what they want. This is one of the most important lessons we can teach the future. We have to start teaching the youth that we can't always have what we want and we especially cannot have it right away, because that is the thinking that is killing our country. We have to start thinking about the future, and the implications of our choices. By taking something that we want RIGHT NOW, how does that affect others?
Futures thinking isn't something that we just want to focus on with our children. Our schools right now are facing an epidemic where we look at test scores, look at how to improve them, and look at how to improve them RIGHT NOW. We look at what fits into a budget, what we know, and make decisions in the immediate future because it makes our district look good RIGHT NOW. We are able to say "I tried to purchase this to fix this problem" and then move forward feeling good about what we've done. However, I think this leads to bigger problems. We've all seen where we purchase a new program or series only to see it replaced by something else 3 years later. The money we sink into these programs is astronomical, but we always try to do something bigger and better when it comes out instead of taking some time to see the long term effects. Has anyone ever purchased an anthology without piloting it in there specific buildings? Or purchased a program based off of data that the program itself provides? This is the type of right now thinking that I think has led to issues in many schools across our nation.
We need to look at what we can do to teach our kids to think about future generations, to think about how they can help the Earth even after they are no longer here, which is a scary thought. I believe we have people like this in our world. In fact, many of us could name five or ten people without issue who think about the future of our world (we are in fact teachers, so hopefully we are teaching with the thought of bettering the future world), but we also can name ten to fifteen people who only care about the here and now. This is the thinking we need to eliminate as we move forward.
Our world is currently being run by people who think about the here and now. Ari Wallach said it best when he stated that "short termism" thinking gets people re-elected to the next term. Our world is run by politicians who depend on here and now, but we need to move past that thinking if we truly want the world to turn into a better place.
