History or Future for our youth?

By Bart Brouwers

In our Sunday newsletter, we, as editors, reflect on the past seven days. We do this on the initiative of our cartoonist Albert Jan Rasker. He chooses a subject, draws a picture, and we take it from there.

Psychologist and marketing researcher Eveline van Zeeland’s smart lessons for our schools inspired Albert Jan to create a picture in which history and the future beg for the attention of our youngest generation. To what extent they will allow themselves to be influenced at all is questionable, but apart from that, according to Eveline, it is worth considering creating space for the subject of Future in addition to History. If only because the emphasis in futures research is shifting more and more from forecasting to backcasting. A nice development, she says:

“Choices we make now influence the future. Every day. To make those choices well, we must not only learn from the past, but also learn to build the future. The future is not something that happens to fall from the sky, but something we shape ourselves. The future is like an oil tanker, which, decision by decision, does push you in a certain direction. Every person should learn the skills you need to do that.”

She wonders what could be more important than learning at school together to explore the future and discover how to take steps toward a desired future. It’s just like Peter Drucker once remarked: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” In short, we need to teach young people not just to understand the past but rather to create the future.

We at Innovation Origins try to stick to that mission every day. This resulted again last week in a series of stories that try to unravel, one by one, a small part of that sometimes complicated future. Not for nothing do we call ourselves “your sneak preview of the future”.