Educating for the future: the position of school geography

Abstract

Documents about “skills for the twenty-first century” envisage an increasingly competitive, globalized and technologically advanced world that schools should prepare for by focusing on a range of “skills”. Policy documents and position papers about geographical education mainly assume that the world of the near future will be highly problematic, with many pressing issues, which is presented as legitimation for the importance of geographical knowledge and skills. Both types of future images are taken for fact and lack reflection in the documents. Futures education takes a very different approach to the future. Futures – plural since many different futures are imaginable – should be the object of teaching and learning, using powerful knowledge as well as envisioning and reflective practice. It will be argued in this article that geographical education would be enriched – and could move beyond unreflective rhetoric about “the future” – by taking the suggestions from futures education seriously. Futures-oriented school geography requires the use of powerful knowledge and an awareness of the situatedness of all knowledge. It is also a natural setting for pedagogical innovation. And finally, future orientation in geography will help in taking a critical position with regard to sense and nonsense of the “twenty-first century skills” movement.

Keywords:

• twenty-first century skills
• futures studies
• futures education
• geography education
• geographical imagination

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.