Hope in a Turbulent Future

We appreciate your patience during our silence the last several weeks. We were working on the transition our new platform. It was a relatively easy move, and we hope that this new edition has found its way safely to your inbox.

While we were working on those logistics, two signals of change captured our attention, and caused us to reconnect with what is, at the core, the guiding aspiration for Learning Futures, and really all the work we do in The Futures Collaborative.

The first story highlighted the pervasive anxiety and disillusionment among American teenagers. Surveys reveal a generation clouded by the belief that they face a future less prosperous and secure than the generations before them. Their anxieties are not just confined to personal prosperity, but extend to a broader mistrust of political systems and educational structures. They doubt that those in charge are listening to, much less understanding and acting on their concerns.

The second story documented a troubling increase in violent assaults against public transit workers across the nation. While high transit fares may be an immediate catalyst for some attacks, Lindiwe Rennert of the Urban Institute, who conducted the research, sees a direct link between rising income inequality and the violence. "The more unequal our society feels, the more assaults we're seeing — there's a relationship there . . . I think it's this sense of dearth or loss, or of being deprived of something — this sense of feeling, 'I am powerless, I am furious, and I don't trust the institutions that are supposed to care for me.’"

For us, these two stories are symptoms of a broader societal condition. Young people growing up in a world they perceive as indifferent to their plight and commuters lashing out against the very people who facilitate their daily movement are manifestations of the same underlying issue: a deficit of hope.

Toward the end of his 2017 book, The New Leadership Literacies, Bob Johansen wrote that "Over the next decade, the biggest negative disruptors will be young people who are hopeless – and connected. The biggest positive disruptors will be young people who are hopeful – and connected. The key variable will be the degree of hope young people experience.”

 As much as anything, this assertion is the inspiration for this newsletter. We believe that, at its core and at its best, education nurtures hope. It not only gives people the skills they need to navigate a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, it builds confidence - in themselves and in others – that they can shape positive futures.

Exploring the various ways the world might change over next twelve years helps us understand the challenges and opportunities ahead. It also helps us imagine new possibilities for how we need to be as educators and leaders in a world fraught with complexity.

As we begin a new year of Learning Futures, we remain steadfast in our commitment to share signals from the emerging future, imagine what they might mean for the world today’s kindergartner’s will inherit, and consider their implications for education today. We invite you to share your stories, insights, and visions with us, as we collectively navigate the complexities of our times. Together, we can create learning environments that inspire hope, foster resilience, and cultivate the agency necessary for young people to be architects of a more equitable, just, and hopeful future.

Food for Thought

• What strategies might we employ to create a school culture that not only acknowledges the challenges students may face outside the classroom, but also actively works to build resilience and a sense of community?

• In what ways might schools provide mental health resources that address the anxiety and disillusionment prevalent among today's youth, and how might these resources be made equitable across different schools and districts?

• How might educators at all levels contribute to a curriculum that not only prepares students for academic and professional success, but also instills in them a belief that they can positively impact their world, despite its uncertainties?

• What measures might we take to ensure that educational technology platforms, which connect students beyond classroom walls, are used to foster constructive dialogue and collaboration instead of exacerbating feelings of hopelessness and disconnection?

Generative AI Disclosure and Reflections

For this issue we worked with a Beta version of ChatGPT 4.0 – 32K (accessed through Poe, an AI aggregator). We find that this version of ChatGPT is much more capable and coherent. We began by asking it to summarize and analyze each of the news stories in a What-So What format. Then we asked it to suggest ways the stories were interrelated. We took it’s thinking and drafted an article that connected these stories to Bob Johansen’s thinking about youth, hope, and connection. Draft in hand, we worked with the AI to iterate and revise.

Then we worked with PromptGenius – a bot inside Poe – to help us develop the prompts for an image that suggests hope in a complex world. This is the third time we’ve worked with PromptGenius, and find that it, too, is becoming more capable.