We as humans are always interested in knowing the future. From trivial weather predictions to governmental decisions that impact an entire country, we constantly seek to understand how the world and our experience within it will shake out. Though our collective fascination with the future is almost as old as time, the words and phrasing of such concepts are relatively new. In the English language, Futurity is an interesting word in itself. In fact, looking at the first popularized uses of the term demonstrates the unique meaning of the term. The first known use of Futurity occurs in Shakespeare's Othello (1604), when Cassio, confused by Othello’s betrayal asks Desdemona to tell him whether his present service and “purpos'd merit in futurity” can win over Othello’s “love again." Not too soon after, Benjamin Franklin wrote in his autobiography, ". . . but futurities are uncertain" (1791), to Sir Walter Scott followed as he wrote of events "still in the womb of futurity" in The Legend of Monstrose (1819)(Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Each western writer, in considering relationships, status, and new beginnings, helps establish the concept of futurity as a determined place with undetermined outcomes.
Although the documentation of the word futurity is only four hundred years or so fresh in the English written word, the concept of wondering about the shape of things to come is not. Across centuries and millennia, people using varied languages, expressions, and modes of communication, have aimed at the same goal of predicting and interpreting the future. Yet, methodology of the practice has looked different across time and culture. The most drastic methods of prediction have been between individuals who have an intrinsic gift or ability to predict the future, and systems that provide rules for calculating futures. The most enduring is the practices of oracles, shamans, and prophets, for example, which depend on the capacity of these individuals to access other planes of being and receive divine inspiration. Strategies of divination such as astrology, palmistry, numerology, and Tarot, however, depend on the practitioner’s mastery of a complex theoretical rule-based system, and their ability to interpret and apply it to particular cases (Reese, 2021).
In particular, elements of futurity, including premonition and prophecy, are deeply rooted within Latine history. Latinefuturists recognize that the Spanish conquest itself was an apocalyptic event within the Mexican national imagination. In his analysis of descriptions of the apocalypse in contemporary Mexican sci-fi, Samuel Manickam, writes, “for the Aztecs the Spaniards who rode in on strange four-legged beasts and donned seemingly unassailable shiny armor and wielded fire-throwing weapons might as well have come from another planet. The clash of these two incompatible civilizations, which in turn gave birth to modern Mexico, seems the fantastic stuff of a science fiction tale” (Merla-Watson, 2019). Furthermore, as critic Merla-Watson and Ben V. Olguín suggests, “it perhaps is no accident that the genre of Latinefurism and related genres begin to take shape around the same time that scholars are beginning to excavate and document these and other previously invisible historical atrocities” (Merla-Watson, 2019). Both writers bring to focus the importance of speculation and futurity in the Latine cultural consciousness.
However, speculation on futurity is not limited by practices of divination; it can also be pursued through harnessing the power of the people. Modern advances have taken a more democratic approach by implementing the strategy of crowdsourcing predictions of the future. Turning to the public with the use of polls and private opinions allows for a greater source of input. The process then requires careful interpretation to analyze and process results. Other methodologies include receiving input from highly specific crowds or assembling a panel of experts to discuss a given topic for more accurate results (Rees, 2021). This is apparent in strategies used to unite and mobilize the Latine-American community in the latter half of the 20th century and continue to be utilized today.
No matter the method or the forthcoming results, the critical question of who and what predictions are for still remains consistent. In her article “The History of Predicting the Future Historian,” Amanda Rees ultimately proposes, “those who can influence what people think will be the future are often the same people able to command considerable resources in the present, which in turn help determine the future. But very rarely do we hear the voices of the populations governed by the decision makers” (2021). She continues in acknowledging the role inequities in power play in determining the future in by citing regional or municipal levels as the places where efforts by ordinary people to predict and shape their own communal and familial futures is most actionable. This movement is often in response to the need to distribute scarce resources or to limit exposure to potential harms. Reese suggests that “rather than depending purely on innovation to map the future, it’s more sensible to borrow from history, and combine newer techniques with a slightly older model of forecasting—one that combines scientific expertise with artistic interpretation” (Rees, 2021). It is through communal organization that the Latine community has sought to determine its futurity. By examining the historical rhetoric of futurity, we can begin to understand the way in which speaking, writing, and imagining futurity can shape what is yet to come.
Curriculum Overview
Amongst the present topics upon which folks often speculate about the future of is the United States public education system. This social institution seeks to prepare youth with a set of predetermined skills and concepts for the future, or as the US Department of Education’s mission states, “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access” (2011). Despite the systemic history that has traditionally viewed students as products that must be shaped and molded to fit a predetermined future, the current system is working to reorient itself. Even more educators acknowledge youth, especially brown and black youth, as the agents of societal advancement and change with the need to create, organize, and problem solve for an undetermined future.
At the small, magnet high school located in New Haven, Connecticut, the majority of the student body identify as Hispanic (50%) or Black (38%), though greater diversity exists within these labels as students claim connection to places across the diaspora from West Africa, The Caribbean, North, Central, South America and beyond. With High School in the Community’s magnet theme of leadership, social justice, public policy and service, HSC takes pride in being a “small school for students who want to do big things” including recognizing, interrogating, and reimagining what the future means and looks like for each student and their community as a whole. Through project-based curriculum and mastery based grading policies, HSC strives to empower students to step up and make a positive impact on society while pursuing their individual educational goals. In addition, many students are interested in elements of futurism in pop culture such as superheroes, hypothetical technology, alternative worlds. Their interests in futurism can be harnessed to dive deeper into conversations of futurity. The goal is to help students connect their interest in pop culture with their ability to develop their own ability to imagine solutions to present and future societal injustices.
The unit draws upon the framework proposed by designer, educator, and activist, Laura McBain proposes in her article “Educator as Futurist: Moving beyond ‘Preparing for the future’ to ‘Shaping the future’” that suggests that educators become co-creators with youth in the pursuit of “imagining a wider range of the possible, plausible, probable futures in which we will be learning and living” (2020). By taking a design approach, giving form to ideas, rapidly experimenting, and learning through iterative processes, schools can become a space where learning communities can build toward more preferred futures. We must also teach our youth to become “adept time travelers — to make sense of the past in order to envision new futures; to be sense makers of disparate types of information — moving seamlessly between what’s known and unknown; to flex their imagination in expansive and applied ways, and to become critical and contextual thinkers''(McBain, 2020). Faced with generation-defining crises like climate change, perpetual war, weakening social safety nets, biased artificial intelligence, and resurging fascism, our youth need to analyze and interpret both failed and successful historical events to envision and create a pathway through the chaos that keeps the humanity of the masses intact.
Furthermore, through a futurist approach, educators and students can “uncover and solve complex challenges in the hopes of creating a more equitable, humane, and anti-racist future” as well as “understand the equitable and ethical considerations of policy, technology, and power dynamics of systems and structures” and “integrate emotional intelligence and mental wellbeing into our curriculum as a core investment in the future health and resilience of our students” (McBain, 2020). By specifically studying Latine and Afro-Latine artists, activists, and leaders of resistance students will be able to identify the systems, knowledge, and actions that benefited the collective in the face of oppressive political, social, and economic control.
In the unit, Nosotras Somos el Futuro, students will first study key movements in Latine political mobilization in US history. Throughout the unit, students will also engage with grounding ideas such as culture, representation, appropriation, and futurism through various media genres of short fiction, music, art, video, and essays. In pursuit of developing their own futurist craft and style, students will learn to: identify and analyze how artists create text that draws from culture to represent the future; gather and reflect on personal knowledge of family traditions and culture; share understandings of Latinx culture; and present their own stories about the future advancement and cultural evolution. By examining Latine history and culture with an emphasis on Futurism, the hope is that students have the opportunity to become empowered by their connection to the past and recognize their community’s cultural capital to design the future.