Will Richardson asked an interesting question that drew double digit comments on his blog, "What Do We Know About Our Kids’ Futures? Really."

Our kids’ futures will require them to be:

Networked–They’ll need an “outboard brain.”

More collaborative–They are going to need to work closely with people to co-create information.

More globally aware–Those collaborators may be anywhere in the world.

Less dependent on paper–Right now, we are still paper training our kids.

More active–In just about every sense of the word. Physically. Socially. Politically.

Fluent in creating and consuming hypertext–Basic reading and writing skills will not suffice.

More connected–To their communities, to their environments, to the world.

Editors of information–Something we should have been teaching them all along but is even more important now.

There’s more, obviously. But I’m curious. What would you add? Or what would you push back against?

His list seems reasonable. Yet it's different from what comes to mind when reading the question he asked.

I commented, Looking at the future as a half-full glass of milk, I’d include personal initiative, calculated risk-taking, and entrepreneurship in any list of behavior youth will use tomorrow, if they plan to live what we call a middle class life today. I expect tomorrow will require personal competition for daily resources that exceed levels most people in the U.S. have experienced since the 1930s, irrespective of what else teachers and politicians do today.

I wonder if a school would have to change much in order to emphasize personal initiative, calculated risk-taking, and entrepreneurship as dominant outcomes for PK12 curricula and daily lesson plans?

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