Formal Education Fights the Future

Master futurist Jim Dator, 73, sees today’s formal educational institutions as not being in step with a future-oriented society and facing big obstacles in learning and communicating.

Futurist Jim Dator

This article is the first in a series of interviews with world-renowned futurists. _ ED.

By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter

Master futurist Jim Dator, 73, sees today’s formal educational institutions as not being in step with a future-oriented society and facing big obstacles in learning and communicating.

``The problem with Korea (and the U.S. and most nations) is that our formal educational system is hung up on reading and writing, while most people learn and communicate about the world through audiovisual images,’’ Dator said in an exclusive interview with The Korea Times on Wednesday.

Mentioning critical tools for today’s people such as movies, TV, interactive games and the Internet, to learn about the world, Dator stressed that most formal educational institutions focus largely on the spoken and especially written word in lectures and textbooks, and ignore the information that other tools are disseminating.

``Most formal schools do not enable learners to develop communication skills in producing movies, TV, music, games and the like and continue to focus entirely on having students acquire and use writing skills,’’ Dator said. ``It is the schools that should change, since the learners will do so as long as audiovisual technologies continue to grow and proliferate.’’

Stating his premise, ``We are a product of the models and media we use to comprehend and communicate about the world,’’ Dator developed the logic of his argument.

``If you only know how to speak (and only speak one language), you live in a very narrow world. If you know how to speak other languages, your `world’ changes because of the way different languages structure experience,’’ Dator continued.
``Similarly, if you get most of your information about the world by reading and writing _ and do not produce as well as play video games, for example _ you live in a `wider’ world than does a speaker only, but a `narrower’ world than does someone who is also active in the consumption and production of audio-visual images.’’

Forecasting Alternative Futures

Dator was the first professor in the U.S. university education system to teach a course on the future. Ten years after he began teaching future studies at Virginia Tech in 1966, He established the Institute of Alternative Futures (IAF) in 1977.

When Dator entered futures studies, he believed that it would be possible to ``predict’’ what the future would be because of his deep faith in ``social science.’’ However, his belief has changed and he believes now that ``prediction’’ is not possible in the highly complex and dynamic world of today.

Instead he introduced the term ``alternative futures.’’ ``The most important use of futures studies is to help individuals, communities, and nations `envision’ and move toward `preferred futures’ based on such values as nonviolence, fairness, mutual respect, and individual, social, and environmental `evolvability’ which means a broader concept for what is now often called `sustainability,’’’ he explained.

Will Korea Lose its Future Vision?

Dator served as president of the World Futures Studies Federation in the 1980s and 1990s. Also, as the head of the Space and Society Division of the International Space University since the 1990s, he has had a chance to travel to several countries including both North and South Korea.

``I have come to see the way in which different languages, cultures and historical experiences influence the way individuals and communities think and act (or do not act) toward the future,’’ he said.

In the 1960s, he also went to Japan and taught for six years at the College of Law and Politics of Rikkyo University in Tokyo in order to understand the reasons for Japan’s quick modernization and its lost future vision in the 1990s.

Dator is now interested in looking at whether Korea will go through Japan’s former process. ``My interest in Korea is to understand how South Korea also transformed itself so quickly into a leading post-industrial country and whether it will also soon lose its futures vision, or can continue to transform itself in order to help humanity move beyond the pathologies and limitations of the present toward fairer and evolvable futures for everyone,’’ he said.

Hallyu Signals Dream Society

The futurist said he was studying how and why the ``Hallyu,’’ or Korean cultural wave emerged so quickly and swept over the world so effortlessly.
``I concluded that the Hallyu was in many ways due to government policy makers who decided that the era after the `information society’ might be `a dream society of icons and aesthetic experience’ and thus decided to base a major part of the Korean economy on the production and export of dreams, images, and aesthetic experiences,’’ he said.
``Again, whether Korea can sustain its initial lead in this area remains to be seen,’’ he added.

Dator is also keenly interested in space exploration and settlement. However, he sees that although Korea has the potential to be a leader in this area, he has not found a breakthrough.

``I would like to be able to talk with decision makers in Korea about the nation becoming a leader in space exploration and settlement,’’ he said.
``And of course, since there are no human settlements in space now, and hence no governments in space either. Space settlements offer humanity a unique chance to develop completely new forms of governance, fit for the 21st and 22nd centuries, which all current governments on Earth today are not, having basically been invented in the late 18th century, and not much has changed since,’’ he added.

Dator introduced his publications on ``the design of new political institutions’’ that talk about new government system in the future.
``Constitutional governments were a wonderful invention over 200 years ago. They were based on the cosmologies and technologies of that time and are now woefully out of date. It is well past time for all people everywhere to re-imagine and re-invent systems of governance, based on cosmologies and technologies of the present and foreseeable future. Why not start here in Korea?’’ he said.

Dator’s Future Plan

Lastly Dator shared his plans to establish future studies as a part of the whole education syllabus and to set up ``future research’’ as a part of every social institution around the world.

``We recently completed a study on the future of families for the Korean Foster Care Association. Ongoing projects focus on Hawaii 2050 sustainability, the future of design, judicial foresight, and the future of education,’’ he said.

Graduating from Stetson University, Jim Dator gained an MA in political science from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from the American University.

He is currently professor and director of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies, Department of Political Science, University of Hawaii at Manoa.

He has studied the political-economic futures of North America, the Pacific Island region, and East Asia, especially Japan and South Korea.

The global futurist also worked with the Korean government in 2006 and shared his wish to meet many young people and other Koreans to understand what they feel and believe about the world of the present and future.

kswho@koreatimes.co.kr