For most of human history, since any given social system was so fragile, and since no one really understood why the system operated at all, a conservative posture, defensive of the fragile status quo , probably had some merit. But now, modern social science is helping us better to understand the pragmatic, adaptive function of human institutions and values, and forecasting techniques are helping us see that we can no longer plunge blindly into the future. It is research aimed at developing democratic techniques for social system design that I believe is the major immediate challenge to the research portion of futuristics. The second major component of any futures research activity, I believe, should be teaching. It is at least as important to clarify your images of the future as it is to clarify your images of the past, and one function of the academic study of the future is to clarify these images, I believe.
Dull teaching can render boring the most exciting topics.
In the United States, for example, there has been a great furor over teaching sex education in the public schools. Some critics feel that such classes will encourage greater sexual promiscuity among teenagers. Perceptive supporters of the program, however, have tried to calm these critics by pointing out that our public school teachers can make anything boring, even sex, so our teenagers can be expected to become less interested in sex, as a consequence of their study, rather than more. Indeed, I have heard some people say that the Third World Futures Research Conference has already made the future an irredeemably boring place, but I am only repeating hearsay, not expressing my own opinion Nonetheless, I would hope that courses in futuristics would try to be as experimental as possible in instructional techniques. Beyond that, I would hope that instruction in futuristics would not be confined to the classroom or to the ordinary structures of academia.