Teaching for the Future

One of our modern minds is responsible for giving utterance to the idea that it is useless to educate our children for the world today because the world twenty years from now will be different; and it is useless to educate our children for the world twenty years from now because no one knows what it will be like. Suppose that our parents and grandparents had assumed a similar attitude concerning us! And yet they could have done so with fully as much justification as could we today. It is quite true that many of the tentative teachings of science are sure to be altered or abandoned. It is quite true that the social, economic, and political patterns at no time remain constant. It is very much more than probable that many of the phases of our living and many of the things with which we surround ourselves will be very much altered and outmoded twenty years from now or even in ten or five. But this does not relieve us of the responsibility of teaching our children the best of what we know today; and it does not relieve any parent or any home, or society itself, from instilling into the lives of each generation of youth an awareness of the ageless laws of life and an unforgettable regard for the timeless truths which will be the same twenty years from now or twenty centuries such unalterable axioms as the priceless value of virtue, the meaning of honor and honesty, the need and blessing of work, the knowledge that nothing worth having can be had without effort, the fruits of freedom, the efficacy of prayer, the eternal permanence of people, and the reality of a living God in whose image men were made. No matter what the world will be like twenty years from now, he who has these eternal verities fixed in his soul can better adjust himself to any set of circumstances. But as to the ever-advancing knowledge of the day, of skills and techniques, of sciences and systems, of living patterns, of processes, and professions it is changing, yes, and ever will be. But this is no reason for waiting for the so-called final findings of the future. He who best prepares in the present is also best prepared to face the future.