A Fork in the Road to the Future

How should children be prepared to handle the next 70 or 80 years of their lives? Or 40-year-olds to handle their next 40 years?

The trendwatching.com site, that has spotters all over the world, found people have looked at current conditions:

• immigration
• refugee crisis
• job automation
• depressed wages
• uneven recovery
• generational divide
• racial divide
• fear of terrorism

and sorted themselves into two groups:

• Global citizens open to an interconnected world, where people learn to understand their changing relationships to neighborhoods, cities, and nations
• Nation nurturers who seek comfort in the familiar

Dealing with change, especially rapid change, is not easy. It is understandable that some want to wall themselves off from foreigners; to pretend technology is going to slow down and manufacturing jobs, as we have known them, are going to return; to listen only to broadcasts that agree with them; and to cling to traditional families where a man works and an uneducated woman stays at home with the children.  But you only need look at one example of the future -  shopping malls and stores empty of consumers of all kinds who have switched over to ordering their needs and wants online - to see change is impossible to escape. (Could these empty stores be converted to on-going world fairs where "shoppers" could go to experience and learn new technologies?)

Like it or not, children are going to live in a world of global citizens. Parents and teachers need to prepare to help them feel at home there. 

Idea Transfer

French artist, Junior Fritz Jacquet, used Japanese origami-like folds to create expressive faces out of toilet paper rolls, according to a report in thisiscolossal.com. Despite criticism, globalization presents the opportunity to discover something, like a new art form, in one country that can be duplicated in another by an artist or

a school's art teachers. (See similar ideas in the earlier blog post, "It Takes A World to Raise a Child.")

Globalization fosters what Baptiste Barbot, a researcher at Yale's Child Study Center, calls the "synergistic interaction" of factors that permit a person to spot associations, take risks, and entertain alternative thoughts. In short, globalization might be considered a creative shortcut that enables people around the world to think outside the box.The German company, ThyssenKrupp, for example, adapted the Japanese idea of propelling trains over tracks by magnets to propel multiple elevators up and down in magnet propelled, cable-free shafts.

By signing up for free at trendwatching.com, subscribers, without leaving home, can scan the world for ideas that can be used where they live. The following examples from recent trendwatching reports provide an idea of the valuable information this site provides:

• Seeing how consumers respond to tender loving care, a French cafe began giving polite patrons a discount
• Ready made, microwavable food is as popular in Malaysia as in Manhattan
• Indonesian temporary tatoos are printed in eco-friendly ink and last three to four days
• Japan's solar lanterns in a variety of designs can light up the darkness where there is no electricity, such as on a camping trip
• Korea's Samsung NX Mini camera and a metal clamp that holds a mobile phone are innovations that facilitate group selfies, called "wefies" or "massfies"
• In Romania, people could submit a photo of racist graffiti on a building and Unilever would send a team that used its Cif brand of cleaning products to remove it
• By using an app to rate the temperature in a building or on a public vehicle, occupants and passengers can create an aggregate measure that enables CrowdComfort to adjust the thermostat to please the majority
• In Singapore, customers can set a smartphone app for a McDonald's Surprise Alarm that gives them a special deal every time their alarm goes off
•  A Brazilian publisher prints stories and poems in the pockets of jeans sold by FreeSurf
• No matter where someone is in Mexico, he or she can receive a government warning of an earthquake on a small Alerta Sismica Grillo, crowdfunded by the Fondeadora platform
• In India, The Good Road campaign developed a smart helmet with sensors that tell your motorcycle to start. Take off your helmet and your motorcycle's engine turns off.
• Plastic Coca-Cola bottles in Vietnam reduce pollution, because they come with 16 different caps that convert empties into new uses, such as squirt guns, pencil sharpeners, and soap dispensers.

Teachers also have an opportunity to go to the site, ePals.com, to find a classroom somewhere in the world that would like to participate in a group project that could create something neither classroom would have created working alone.