What about foresight literacy? Equipping students to engage in unknown futures

In education, there is much rhetoric about a school\u27s capacity to prepare learners for \u27the future\u27. For example, there have been \u27Schools of the future\u27, \u27Lighthouse schools of the future\u27 and many claims from schools around the world that their roles encompass \u27educating students for the future\u27 and developing \u27citizens of the future\u27. However, as \u27futures educators\u27, the questions must be asked: \u27whose future?\u27 and \u27what future?\u27. Considering texts which promote this educational premise require tools and philosophical understandings, in order to deconstruct and articulate the future for which we prepare our young. This paper describes the way in which foresight literacy can be developed through engagement with explicit futures education tools and concepts. It highlights a number of futures texts indiscriminately presented within culture and society, and exposes some of the ways in which foresight (futures) understandings can be achieved. This reading, writing and articulation of a multiplicity of futures is referred to as foresight literacy. This paper does not address the \u27future of literacy\u27, but rather the way in which futures education equips students to engage with texts assuming, and describing a future.