Don't predict the future, build it!

HOW can we educate our children and prepare them for the upcoming decades of their lives when we can't predict how the world will look like in five years. Think of it in this way, someone who graduated from college in the year 1950 had prepared himself for a faster car at best. But he had to undergo the era of personal computers, mobile phones and maybe the internet as well. He couldn't learn about any of this while he was studying. And now, in the thirteenth year of this new century, technology is shaping our surroundings like never before. We don't know what new device may come along and change the way we do things forever. So, how do we prepare someone to work efficiently in a world after twenty years? He has to coupe up with the world in 2050 with the education acquired in 2013.

I suggest we prepare our children ahead of their time. In our textbooks, we don't see much about the future. We always discuss about existing things and things that happened in the past. I think we should teach them more about what may happen rather than what already happened. There should be a subject included in every school named "future studies." We teach our children about the great discoveries of the past, why don't we teach them about what discoveries are still to come? Share with them the ideas that may lead to a better future? Take out half an hour of their day to talk about the future.

Moreover, education should be a continuous process. We throw our hats in the sky on our graduation day thinking that we have learnt enough to fight the upcoming challenges of life. But the truth is, in a time like ours, when the world is changing at unimaginable pace, when new information is added to the database every second, there is no certain point of knowledge. There's no graduation until death.

Lastly, rather than knowing about the future from someone else, why not inspire our children to build their own future. You like something a certain way, make it. You see a problem, you try to solve it. "3D printers" are on our doorsteps. This is the time to do what no one could ever do before -- build the future in your palm and let the world know about it. An ocean of future knowledge is just a Google away. The truth is, we can never predict the future unless we are the ones building it our own way.

The writer is a contributor to The Daily Star.
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