ABSTRACT
If there is anything that we can say with confidence about the future, it is that we can say very little with confidence. Over 20 years ago, Toffler (1971) suggested that the world was changing at a rate never previously experienced and that if we did not learn to both control and cope with such changes it could lead to the breakdown of society as we know it. More recently, Levin and Riffel (1997) have argued that,
It is a truism to say that we live in a world of change. Indeed we are bombarded with messages about the pervasiveness and importance of changes in our natural, social, economic and technological environments. (p. 6)
If this is true then schools have an even more important role than in the past to prepare children for this world of uncertainty. How far the primary school currently does this, and how far it might be able to do this for future generations is the subject of this chapter. It opens with a discussion of the primary school of the recent past, considers the situation at present and attempts to predict what might be appropriate for the future. Like Ebeneezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, primary education is influenced by the past and the present and this is likely to have a considerable impact on how primary schools respond to the future.
