Imagining Education: Teaching the Future with Dr. Peter Bishop S9E7 (127)
If the goal of education is to prepare students for the future, why are we not teaching them explicitly about the future?
In an age of rapid change and uncertainty, what might education look like if imagination was treated as essential as literacy or numeracy?
🎙️ Episode Summary
In this episode of The Learning Future Podcast, host Louka Parry speaks with Dr. Peter C. Bishop, executive director of Teach the Future and retired professor of strategic foresight from the University of Houston. Together, they explore why futures thinking is not only possible but essential in education. Dr. Bishop challenges conventional education models that overemphasize empirical certainty and neglect imagination, agency, and the capacity to navigate uncertainty. With stories from global classrooms and reflections on decades of foresight education, this episode is a compelling call to reimagine schooling as a place of skills-based learning, deep engagement, and preparation for an unpredictable future.
👤 About Dr. Peter C. Bishop
Dr. Peter C. Bishop is a leading futurist, educator, and executive director of Teach the Future, a global movement promoting futures thinking in education. He served as Associate Professor of Strategic Foresight and Director of the Graduate Program in Foresight at the University of Houston until his retirement in 2013. A passionate advocate for futures literacy, Dr. Bishop has authored key texts including Thinking About the Future and Teaching About the Future (with Andy Hines). His work focuses on helping educators and students develop the mindset and tools to navigate uncertainty, embrace imagination, and become agents of change in their own communities.
📘 Takeaways
Futures literacy is essential for understanding and shaping the future.
Imagination plays a crucial role in education and leadership.
Uncertainty should be embraced as a fact of life.
Young people have the potential to be leaders and visionaries.
Education should focus on skills in service of knowledge.
The current education system often prioritizes knowledge over skills.
Schools should be engaging and relevant to students' lives.
Innovative approaches to education are necessary for the future.
Teaching students how to learn is more important than what to learn.
Futures literacy should be integrated into the curriculum.
📘 Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Futures Literacy and Education
02:48 The Importance of Understanding the Future
05:21 Imagination vs. Empirical Data in Education
08:01 Navigating Uncertainty in Education
10:35 The Role of Skills in Modern Education
13:13 Challenges in the Education System
16:03 The Distinction Between Schooling, Education, and Learning
18:46 Imagining a Future Education System
21:23 Leadership and Change in Education
23:52 Advice for Educators and Change Makers
🔗 Connect and Resources Mentioned
🔗 Stay Connected with Louka Parry
For the latest learning innovation follow Louka on LinkedIn
Share your thoughts by visiting www.thelearningfuture.com
Tune in to be inspired, challenged, and reminded why love truly is at the heart of learning.
[Transcript Auto-generated]
Louka Parry (00:08)
Well, hello, dear friends and welcome to the Learning Future podcast. I am your host, Luca Parry, and I'm joining you from Melbourne, Australia today. And we are speaking with a fantastic change maker, researcher, communicator and leader as you'll hear. His name is Dr. Peter C. Bishop, and he's the executive director of Teach the Future, having retired as an associate professor of strategic foresight and Director of the Graduate Program in Foresight at the University of Houston in August 2013. Before establishing Teach the Future, he specialized in techniques for long-term forecasting and planning and published two books on the subject, Thinking About the Future and Teaching About the Future, both with co-author Andy Hines. He's delivered lots of keynote addresses. He has a fantastic energy about him, as you'll just hear in a moment.
And he really is somebody that cares deeply about futures literacy and their potential for us to think about the way that we co-create the environments, the experiences, the communities, and even the world around us. Peter, it's fantastic we could make the time. Thanks for being with us.
Peter Bishop (01:12)
it's my pleasure, Luca. It's a really delight to talk to you all the way from Australia.
Louka Parry (01:17)
First question, what is something you're learning right now that is bringing some interesting fabric into your life?
Peter Bishop (01:23)
I've been doing Teach the Future for quite some time. We just had a great meeting with an outstanding educator at a private boys school in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
colleague and I, we're going to be teaching one of the first full-time foresight courses in the United States with him beginning in August for the fall semester here, August, December. And we had a great meeting. We're just beginning to introduce him to our platform. So I am learning what this really looks like on the ground, particularly we've had a few other schools around the world, but I'm delighted to say that the United States is finally catching up.
Louka Parry (01:58)
That's great to hear. Because the future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed, as we would say in futures work, Peter. So tell us about the main thesis, really of your, not just teach the future. And this, think is probably a bit of a joke that you retired in 2013. I'm sure you're busier than ever. when we met at South by Southwest a few months ago, yeah, well, that should be celebrated. you definitely...
Peter Bishop (02:05)
Have
Retired from the university. can't figure out how to. I can't figure out how to retire
from life, or work.
Louka Parry (02:24)
No, there's
no such thing is there that's just to re-inspire and reorient. But so tell us a bit about the thesis that you've been, you kind of have been working with at two levels, if I could be so bold. One for why futures? Why does it matter? You know, of course, in our work here in Australia, we have a thesis to this. But then secondly, teach the future itself, especially the work with young people. What do you, why so passionate about that? And what are you seeing take place?
Peter Bishop (02:48)
Well, let me answer the first question with a question. Why? I'm a professor. I can't help it. I apologize. Why? Let me ask you why the past? Why do we study history? And. To learn from right? OK, and.
Louka Parry (02:51)
I wouldn't have expected anything less, Peter.
Ha ha!
To learn from it. To create the future. Potentially. Yeah.
Peter Bishop (03:04)
and therefore we study history, we study the past. Actually a futurist I like to think is almost more a student of change.
than a student of just the future. I ⁓ had a pretty good education and did my time in history classes, not all pleasant, I have to tell you, but I learned a lot. And I have become much more interested in the past since becoming a futurist because this is the story of human evolution. This is the story of human society. And if we are interested in the past, then why ought not we be interested in the future?
Louka Parry (03:16)
Fantastic.
Peter Bishop (03:40)
That's item number one. Item number two is that people say, and I had a guy just ask me this last week, well, how can you study something that doesn't exist? And I come back with another question to him. Well, guess what? The past doesn't exist either.
Louka Parry (03:55)
Hahaha
Peter Bishop (03:56)
We think it did at one time, but if you look around, you know, 1890, it's a gone, it's a long time gone. But we do have a difference. The difference is that the past has left us the breadcrumbs, if you will, the documents, the photographs, so that we have a way of analyzing and understanding and what is most important, imagining.
what life was like then. And that's where I bring in what our purpose is in future studies. It is not just, oh, this is what this document said in 1925, or this is what this battle was in 1940. No, it wasn't just knowing it. It's understanding what it was like.
What was it like to be there? What were they experiencing and how were they going about things? That's a product of imagination. Imagination is one of our most important qualities. We believe that other species may have some degree of imagination, but it's a superpower in our view. We can imagine things that either don't exist today and were in the past. We can imagine what it's like. I can imagine where my grandkids are right now, what they're doing at this time.
Louka Parry (04:57)
Hmm.
Peter Bishop (05:06)
of the day and that's that's a purpose of a faculty which unfortunately and I will you know get a little bit critical here in our empirically based scientifically cultured school system we do not promote.
We do not exercise. So it's not that we're going to be fantasizing. It's not we're going to be creative artists, but a combination of empirical data and analysis. And I was a quote, scientific sociologist before I was a futurist. So I have a great respect. The history of science is interesting in terms of an intellectual journey to use our minds and use data to come to conclusions, which are much more lasting and much more useful than the conclusion.
were in previous civilizations and past times. But we have, I believe, so overreached that everything has to be provable, everything has to generic, you know, they say in business, if you don't have a spreadsheet for it, then it doesn't exist. Well, that's really a shame because yes, we should use spreadsheets, we should use data, but we should also use imagination.
Louka Parry (06:00)
Hmm.
Peter Bishop (06:12)
And we think about the heroes, the people in the past whom we admire. Yes, I hope, and I don't know them specifically, they were well-grounded in their realities, in facts, in the intentions that they had, but they also had an incredible imagination.
And shouldn't we emulate them both in terms of their steadfast dedication to truth and to values, but also to their ability to imagine a world that was a lot different. And I'm thinking of the Mahatma Gandhi's and Martin Luther King Jr's and people like that.
who have Nelson Mandela who said, this can be better. And that's our definition, that's my definition of leadership in future studies. It's not always being in charge. Leaders, people who are in charge ought to have that vision as well, but many of them don't. In fact, I don't think most of them don't.
Louka Parry (06:50)
Yeah.
Peter Bishop (07:02)
But what we're trying to teach young people is that they can be leaders, they can be visionaries, that in their own small way, none of us are going to stop climate change, none of us are going to stop the wars and the cruelty going on in the world, which are awful today. But we can change our own little world, and we can make revolution there.
Louka Parry (07:20)
Hmm.
Peter Bishop (07:21)
So using imagination to us is a balance against the overly scientific, overly empirical, overly numeric approach that culture and schools therefore take to our world.
Louka Parry (07:22)
Beautiful.
Gosh, Peter, that is a beautiful narrative put forward. This idea of being a good student of change, I really love that. I think that's just super.
Peter Bishop (07:43)
And the other question then is what do we know about young people? That is that they are anxious. And frankly, I have to say that's not a new phenomenon. I don't know if you had a fun in seventh grade, but I didn't. And if I could have skipped middle school, I would have been a lot happier in my whole total life.
Louka Parry (08:01)
Hmm.
Peter Bishop (08:01)
So young people being anxious about an unknown future is a fact. And yet I do believe that is increasing because the speed of change is increasing. Therefore, the number of disruptions that we can expect in our lifetimes is increasing and the severity of those disruptions. And therefore, the key difference between future studies and traditional forecasting is to recognize uncertainty as a fact of life.
Louka Parry (08:16)
Hmm
Peter Bishop (08:27)
Science is against uncertainty. We are taught that you can only say something if you are certain, which of course you can't say very much at all. Two plus two is four. I'm certain about that if I define the terms correctly. And I'm certain that the earth goes around the sun. But I'm certain about anything having to do with human affairs, with government, with the environment, even with science itself. And so we, in the desire
Louka Parry (08:30)
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Peter Bishop (08:53)
to use our scientific and empirical thinking, we basically put uncertainty as a taboo, as something to be beaten down. And it's a waste of time, number one, and it also creates this sense that we're only secure when we know for sure. Which, guess what? Never will happen.
Louka Parry (09:03)
Yes.
Peter Bishop (09:14)
We're uncertain. Okay, let's deal with that. In fact, it's not just deal with it. Let's embrace it. Because unless we're uncertain, then we have no influence. If we were part of a deterministic, a truly deterministic universe where we knew what the future was going to be and, boy, do I feel better now. I'm really good. And what are you going to do about that? Well, I can't do anything about it because it's already determined.
Louka Parry (09:22)
Yeah.
Yes.
you
Yes.
Peter Bishop (09:39)
So uncertainty not only is a fact that we deal with, but it's also an advantage that now we can make players, we can have agency, we can change the future to some extent. And that gives students and young people a counterbalance to this doom scrolling, dreading, my gosh, what's the world going? The world is challenged in enormous ways and I'm the first to admit that. But doing something about it in whatever way we can, and I do it by
monitoring and creating Teach the Future.
is it gives one a sense of purpose and not that I'm not uncertain and not that I'm not concerned, but at least I have a direction and I have some meaning in my life as a result. And I would love to share that with young people. But the schools, unfortunately, and you teachers and administrators listening, I hate to be critical, allow them to learn something that's not just in the curriculum, not in the state standards, that are not in the math and the science and the STEM and all of that.
Louka Parry (10:21)
Mmm.
Peter Bishop (10:35)
allow them to be full human beings where we use our intelligence and our logic and our numerical capabilities for good, but we also use our values, our imagination, and our teamwork and working together also for good. It's a combination. It's not either or. It's a combination.
Louka Parry (10:52)
Yes.
Peter, that's so compelling. I'm just listening to you here and, and a few things come to my mind. One is the fractal of a system. And so I've, my belief has become that as we teach young people, it's difficult to teach them what we ourselves do not embody or understand, be that social emotional skills, or be that futures literacy, ourself. And so, you know, I find it interesting that for
it, you know, some educators or some of us as human beings have just found a way and I'd love your reflection on this, found a way to navigate uncertainty with not an absence of, I doubt that, but certainly less anxiety. And so in this age of anxiety, as Alan Watts put it some decades ago, you know, and all the anxious generation as Jonathan Haidt would put it with social media at all. And it's, and its impacts on cognition and connectedness.
What is it about the mindset or the mental model that underpins some of this work? That means as a student in a school or a teacher or a school leader or even just a change agent in whatever, you know, with all the challenges around us, like what's the orientation that makes it less terrifying? This idea of certainty, you know, is that the egoic structure that seeks certainty. So should we just
move towards clarity, not certainty? I mean, what is your work over many decades in this professional future space?
Peter Bishop (12:08)
Well, as a teacher, let me tell you a story about a school in Istanbul, Turkey, which has adopted Teach the Future and its playbook, Teach the Future's Thinking playbook, as a course text for fifth and ninth graders. It was a few years ago, and I did very informal, wasn't very formal, wasn't very good actually, training for the teachers in the late part of the fall in the Northern Hemisphere, I always correct myself there.
They were going to teach this in the spring semester. They did teach in the spring semester and the school after the first semester did a little survey among the students and the teachers and how did it go? This is the first time we've done this. What do you think? And the students loved it.
got a chance to talk about important things. We got a chance to create things to talk about and subjects that were intrinsically interesting. Not to say that the past can't be interesting, but frankly, as we teach it, oftentimes it's not. And the students loved it. They asked the teachers, nope, didn't like it. You had the opportunity to be in a class where students were engaged, were dealing, and they felt like they were not doing their job.
Louka Parry (13:04)
You
interesting.
Peter Bishop (13:13)
Because
when students said, well, Ms. Smith, what do you think is going to happen? They didn't have a good answer.
And they felt like, a teacher. I'm supposed to tell them. I can tell them what a calculus integral is. I can tell them what DNA is. I can tell them what the constitution of the country is. But I can't tell them what's going to happen in the future. And once we corrected that and said, this is not something you know the answer to and the right answer to that question, what do you think is going to happen? The right answer is, I don't know. Let's see what we can do to figure it out together.
Louka Parry (13:22)
Hmm.
Peter Bishop (13:47)
And once I, yeah, this is a skill. It's not a knowledge. I had a fairly significant engagement with the OECD about 10 years ago. They wanted, they were going around trying to create a curriculum of skills. And I said, foresight, it's a skill, futures literacy, it's a skill, all of those things. And in the end of the day, they said, no, it's not.
and I was not able to get to the right people to have the conversation that we needed. What they were saying is the history is not a skill, so futures is not a skill. No, wrong, but nevertheless. So once we start getting out of the fact base, you have to know this, know this stuff. You also have to do something with this stuff, and that's the skills. And we know how to teach skills. We teach reading and writing.
Louka Parry (14:17)
Right.
Peter Bishop (14:33)
But most of the skills at the secondary level, at least, are actually taught outside the classroom, in the theater program, on the football pitch.
Louka Parry (14:40)
Hmm.
Co-curriculum. Yeah.
Peter Bishop (14:43)
in the
student correct and there are teachers doing that too and they know how to teach skills. It's just that when they get in the classroom, this fact-based orientation that we have to know these things and I always ask, I asked the history department one time, so you teach them all the facts about the past, what are you teaching them to do with those facts? And they looked at it.
Louka Parry (15:07)
What was the answer?
Peter Bishop (15:07)
I was crazy. What do you mean do it? There's nothing you do. You just gotta know them. really? Okay, well I knew the conversation was over at that point. I mean, they were good people and we did have a little conversation after that. I wasn't going to change their teaching paradigm, nor were they going to convince me that their paradigm was useful. But that's the problem is that we can in school, if we choose if we choose school as primarily about skills.
Louka Parry (15:11)
Yeah.
Mm.
Peter Bishop (15:32)
not primarily about knowledge. Knowledge in the service of skill is absolutely necessary. But knowledge for its own sake? Come on, who's gonna defend that? And that's where I would say, that gives me the confidence that we will have a generation of people who realize that this orientation towards education is not wrong.
But it's incomplete and it's misguided with the emphasis that we put on the textbook facts rather than the skills to use those facts for good, for good for ourselves, for our families, for our communities, and the world as a whole. So I really wish we could swift, and I think there are many inspiring educators that have said that.
Louka Parry (16:03)
Mmm.
Peter Bishop (16:14)
that John Dewey said school is not preparation for life, it is life at 13, at 10, at 18.
Live the life. The school should be a fundamentally enjoyable, not enjoyable, yes, but certainly challenging and engaging place to be a learner and to learn skills and to practice. Students flock to the sports programs. They want to be in the orchestra. They want to be on stage. They flock to those things. They don't flock to math class. They don't flock to history class. Does that teach us? Does that tell us something? Are we missing the point of what real education? Not that they're in charge.
Louka Parry (16:31)
Mm-hmm.
Peter Bishop (16:51)
of education, we're still in charge, but we should be offering something that's engaging rather than, well, you're not going to like this, but you got to do it because you got to do it. Because the state says we got to do it.
Louka Parry (16:56)
Mmm.
Peter, fantastic. So many things. Kind of my mind is like a fireworks show at the moment. A few things first. It's usually that, but it's even more so now. What is this distinction between schooling, education and learning? It's one I find really important to talk to because I feel schooling is a construct that came out of a particular era that has served, re-cultured entire societies, our entire world as it's globalized and industrialized. And it's, you know, it's
Peter Bishop (17:07)
Ha ha!
much.
Louka Parry (17:30)
In some ways, it was fit for purpose at that singular moment when the committee of 10 and others and the influence of the Prussian army and replaceable parts and kind of mass production, these were the main paradigm of that moment. And so now, of course, we're in this space where we're being called in some ways to individuate as much as possible to create new value uniquely.
So it's not a ranking exercise anymore. It's a matching exercise. It's what do you care about young person? So your point about what young people flock to, it's the transfer. That's the good stuff. And I think Charlie Charles Fidel, who's at the center for curriculum redesign is that yeah, he's fantastic. He's been on this podcast recently and you know, I love his point that he makes it's, you know, knowledge acquisition itself is beside it's a pre-req necessary prerequisite, but incredibly incomplete.
Peter Bishop (18:07)
I know Charles, yes I have.
Exactly. But
pre-emphasis on the pre and what's the post?
Louka Parry (18:20)
It's what do we do with what we know? What's that precisely? Like the transfer
seems to be where all of the shift will come. If we are to create experiences and environments where young people really feel like they are emerging, they are in their life fully. They are developing skills. are world building. They are scenario plan. They're having those conversations, they're understanding history and then analyzing that and bringing that knowledge through.
And so I think we're seeing a real challenge to that kind of knowledge-based education model. I think it's fraying around the edges in a significant way, as I think universities are also challenged.
Peter Bishop (18:59)
Let's say it's stressed, and we are challenging it by this conversation and other conversations that you're having, that Charles and I and all the other enlightened educators are these days. The system itself, though, I started going and trying to intervene in the education system literally 10 years ago.
and it has been almost impossible. And I will be, I'll take full responsibility for the fact that I do not know how to do it. I don't know how to be a business person. I don't know how to be a change agent, but I also know that the schools are immensely insulated from change. So you say that it's fraying, maybe it is. That's a hopeful aspiration. Boy, on my world, I go to schools and I went around Texas in...
2017 with a book and a process for doing summer camps on the future. I went to 20 school districts. I taught to the mid-level administrator in that school district who's in charge of advanced academics. know, gifted and talented, AP, things like that.
I said, let's do this. And they said, this would be great, particularly in middle school. This would be really great. Middle school students would take this. One of them picked it up. And I saw it in their eyes.
that if you innovate in a rigid system like public education is, at least in the United States, you're taking a great risk. And some people are prepared to take that risk, but most are not. They like their job, they've got to pay the mortgage, and they're thinking, even if this thing works...
Louka Parry (20:22)
Yeah.
Peter Bishop (20:25)
and a parent or a principal or a board member or a parent says, why are you doing this? This is a waste of time. I'm going to be in trouble. I could see it in their face. They didn't ever see it. But in that kind of an environment that is so self insulated, insulated from the world, you can challenge it all you want. It's a gigantic ship that's moving down the stream.
Louka Parry (20:35)
That's so interesting.
Mm.
Peter Bishop (20:48)
I do hope that we someday, but the problem is in order to create change in that kind of an environment, it takes something near or at a catastrophe. We're not there yet.
Peter Bishop (21:01)
We're not to the point where people have finally have to jettison those values, those assumptions about learning, about what you just said, schooling. One thing I always say is that if you are going to create an innovative school from one that's a traditional school, you'll get resistance, of course. Like the teachers in Istanbul said, I'm not doing my job if I don't tell them what to learn. You're doing your job if you teach them how to learn. Okay.
Peter Bishop (21:28)
And they got that and they're doing that now and it's really wonderful. Schooling the people who will resist the change most are the best students because they know how to play school.
They know how to succeed in the school environment. said, what do you mean there's no test? What do you mean I have to do this over and over again until I get it right? Well, you're doing that on the football pitch. You're doing that on the baseball field. Why shouldn't we do it in a math class? Why shouldn't we do it in writing class? Why shouldn't we do it in history class until you're getting, and the problem is that we don't, we just have,
based on the textbook. And though it be right, came out of 150 years ago because in those days we had answers and we had to teach them answers. Those answers, as you pointed out, are no longer valid and there are no fixed answers anymore. We're swimming in a world of change and uncertainty, conflict, polarization, in which we don't have one answer, we have at least two answers.
Peter Bishop (22:29)
And in that sense, what's a person to do? We can't teach them. We're teaching them what the textbook says. But believe it or not, that's one answer. And at least in the United States, we have a whole population that elected our president who doesn't believe in the textbook.
Maybe that's the catastrophe that we're headed towards is that when you stop believing what you're learning, then what's the point? And we'll have to go back to ground zero and create a system of education that is fit for the purpose of the 21st century, not for the 18th or the 19th century.
Louka Parry (23:02)
Hmm. Hmm.
Tell me, Peter, I've got so many questions, but we're have to do a part two on this because you might not be, you you're like, I'm not, I'm not sure how to do this. I'm you're a fantastic communicator. have to say I'm just riveted. I'm, I'm curious if you were to world build an education system for 2025, let's call it 2035 in 10 years time, what elements would that education system have?
Peter Bishop (23:08)
I'm not being happy.
Thank you.
Louka Parry (23:28)
How would it be distinct from what is currently happening? And this is an opportunity to be a speculative designer, as I'm sure you're very, very capable of doing. You know, like, take us into the imaginary realm. What is the kind of, what is one articulation of a future that you might want?
Peter Bishop (23:42)
Well, I've already said it, if it were primarily skills-based. And there are educational systems that are that. I know particularly at colleges and professional levels. Medicine is a skill-based learning. Law is a skill-based learning. There's a lot to learn in law, but it's the practice of law. It's not the knowing the laws, it's using them for your client, for your good. Architecture.
Peter Bishop (24:06)
and design are skill based and notice what's happening. If you go to a school of architecture, you've got all of these studios and students around, they're drawing, the professors are with them, they're doing stuff, they're not sitting watching PowerPoints or taking multiple choice tests. So if I had, if I, now that's certain disciplines that because of what they need and because of what they should do, medicine, law, architecture, they are offering skills. What's interesting, let's take a business school.
Louka Parry (24:06)
Mmm. Great examples.
Peter Bishop (24:36)
A business school should also be that. How many professors in a business school have actually ever been in business?
Louka Parry (24:43)
Hahaha!
Peter Bishop (24:44)
You've got PhDs in business and they're great researchers and they know a lot. No, listen to the word. They know a lot about business. A lot of times if I'm talking to a business audience, said, how many of you would like to turn your company for a week over to a couple of professors in the business school? People go, oh my God, they don't know what to do. They would have been terrible. This should be also skills-based.
Louka Parry (25:06)
Interesting.
Yes.
Peter Bishop (25:08)
And all of the, so if I had a visionary vision of the school, all of the disciplines would be skills, knowledge in service of skills, but skills as the, and that's frankly what we built in the University of Houston. It was the first degree ever in future studies, founded in 1975. I didn't have anything to do with that, but I took it over in the early 80s. And I said, this is a preparation for a brand new career.
Peter Bishop (25:36)
for a brand new way of thinking about the future. So, and I was criticized by other members of the university, you're not reading the classics, you're not reading the academic literature. No, students are doing scenarios, they're doing plans, they're doing research to be able to see what's going on and where it might end up. And that, I believe, was, along with architecture medicine, a skill-based preparation for a career. And it's been very successful, bigger than it ever was, doing very
well under Indy's supervision and leadership. So that would be my vision of a school.
Louka Parry (26:08)
That's beautiful Peter. Two final questions. One is really about leadership itself. I mean I know I've just turned 40 and I really only came across Futures Work five years ago. And I would at least at some ways like to consider myself pretty nerdy and curious and a couple of post-grad degrees, a bunch of languages, traveled a lot of the world.
Peter Bishop (26:11)
Please.
I'm ⁓
But where did you get those degrees?
Louka Parry (26:30)
Well, the University of Melbourne and the University of New England. Well, do you know, you know, it's interesting, Peter, most of it was when I actually went to the Stanford D school and spent some time there as a micro resident and fellow that I, I met Lisa K Solomon and I just was like, she's fantastic. And as enthusiastic as you know, it is not futurist, but this is the point, right?
Peter Bishop (26:32)
Exactly, because they were teaching you about the future, right?
I know he's done very well, yes. She is. Notice that it's a skill-based education, which
everybody, all the education we got was not skill-based.
Louka Parry (26:58)
Yeah, that's beautifully put. so for me, that was just a, I've had a few of these moments. One was when I realized, I encountered the world of social and emotional learning and the research behind that, which is very skills based. And so how to, how to human well, how to live, how to engage, how to disagree, how to self-regulate all these, these beautiful pieces, how to know oneself.
Peter Bishop (27:10)
It is. How to live. How to live. to handle oneself. to improve oneself.
And why we're not teaching our students, mean, SEI is around, but it's a backwater in departments of education, in state departments of it. yeah, well, you can do all that touchy feely stuff, but we're doing science, we're doing STEM, we're getting all the, know, creating all the engineers of the future. You're right. It does not get the credit and it should not, it doesn't get the primacy that it should have. Absolutely.
Louka Parry (27:42)
Yes. Beautifully put. Yeah. And so that's been part of my, my work and my initiative now really is to take educators and leaders on this journey to effectively cultivate their futures literacy in a way where they become more capable of navigating through uncertainty. And so that I'm pretty bullish on that as you know, there's a few things I've grabbed in my career. So if I'm like, well, that's, that's, this is a big thing and it still strikes me that innovation in some education sectors is a dirty word.
Peter Bishop (28:10)
It's not dirty, it's dangerous.
Louka Parry (28:11)
a nice distinction.
Peter Bishop (28:12)
Because every innovation challenges the paradigm, system that it is. That's what I saw across the desk of those administrators. Good people, good hardworking educators, but if I adopt this thing, then I'm putting myself in harm's way. And so that's the resistance that I can't do this because somebody above me or around me or somebody who's important in the educational system has veto power and says,
Louka Parry (28:38)
Yeah.
Peter Bishop (28:39)
now, stripe one, you better watch out for yourself.
Louka Parry (28:42)
So if you were to offer us, I don't know, pieces of advice, wisdom, dare I say, or mantras, you know, what are the things, because people listening to this podcast, and if you're still listening, thank you so much for the gift of your attention. I hope you've enjoyed this chat with Peter. What would you say to them? Because they might be nested in a system. They may still have a fear-based system response or be in a school where, you know, everyone's trying to keep their heads down.
Or they might be in a space that's very progressive and innovative. Who knows? What would you offer Peter, you know, at the level of change maker or individual ⁓ to navigate from this point?
Peter Bishop (29:11)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Well, first of all, as I said, be careful. This is not storming the walls. This is asking a question.
If the purpose,
Louka Parry (29:24)
Interesting.
Peter Bishop (29:25)
you ask most teachers, the purpose of education, and school board members and parents, the purpose of education is preparing students for the future. Ask your colleagues who you think are halfway reasonable, if you have any, and you surely do, why are we not telling them about the future? Why are we not, it's like sending a group of students on a field trip. Well, Ms. Adams, where are we gonna go? Well, no, I can't tell you that.
What we're going on a field trip and you're not preparing us with this lower now Can you predict exactly what's going to happen on a school field trip? Of course not, but you have some idea of and my you know it might rain and therefore we're gonna end you know their contingencies and their uncertainties and yet we deal with this is a human We do this all the time when you plan to go on a trip you think of all you know I know the right clothes What if it rains what if the traffic on the freeway you better setter setter setter we do this all the time, but when we get into school we are not allowed to think contingently. We're only allowed to think empirically and affirmatively. And ask your colleagues, why are we not, I mean, we're talking a lot about the past. Why are we not explicitly bringing the future into our classroom? the good answer is, I don't know how to do that ,that's where futures literacy comes in. We do know how to do it. 50 years ago we created a degree. There are now a half a dozen degrees. Actually you all had it at Swinburne Tech and one of the leading future degrees in the world there with Richard Slaughter and the others and I was there a number of times but did it ever get in the schools? No. So that's the first step. Ask that question.
and ask people to really consider if we were preparing for them for the future, if we could, now that's a big if, if we could rigorously teach them the skills of how to think about, prepare for, and influence the future, wouldn't we make that part of the school curriculum? See what happens.
Peter Bishop (31:20)
Contact Teach the Future, we'll have a conversation further. Teachthefuture.org.
Louka Parry (31:25)
Peter Bishop, thank you so much just for your honesty. It's been such a refreshing conversation and
Peter Bishop (31:29)
I have left conference to you, Luca. Thank you very much. You do it again if you're interested. All right. Sure enough.
Louka Parry (31:33)
We'll definitely need a part two on this. Thank you so much for being with us today.
