Submitted by MBA Research & Curriculum Center, 2021 Fall Meeting Sponsor
As educators, can we influence the world 10,000 years from now?
The Long Now Foundation is in the process of building a 10,000-year clock. The idea is to help us think beyond our immediate future, and to imagine life and our potential impact beyond that of our generation, or our children’s generation, or even our children’s children’s generation. In education, and in Career Technical Education (CTE) specifically, adopting this mindset will help us make choices that last “beyond the ages” and continue to shape our world far into the future.
10,000 years ago dates back to the Middle Stone Age, or Mesolithic Period, when nomadic hunter/gatherers roamed the land and lived drastically different lives from our own. Life as we know it today resulted from the events of thousands of years in the past. The seeds of our reality were planted millennia ago, when agriculture was just being introduced—and our lives are a product of their germination.
So, the big question now is this: How will we look back at ourselves 10,000 years from now? I hope we look back with appreciation at the choices we make today.
CTE students now have so much to learn—the world is changing so quickly. It’s hard to think about the “long now” versus just “now.” We will never really know if we can make a 10,000-year impact. But just in case—just on the off chance that we can make a difference—why not infuse ethics education into our classrooms now in hopes of leaving a legacy based on ethical decision making (in business and in life) for generations to come?
MBA Research is working with the Daniels Fund in Denver, Colorado, to bring ethics education into classrooms in middle school, high school and community college. We have developed numerous resources for use in classrooms in CTE and beyond. The materials range from individual instructional modules to semester-long courses on ethics.
We also have videos highlighting the Daniels Fund Ethical Principles, an Ethics Boot Camp with immersive, interactive ethics-based learning activities. The boot camp also includes a free, certification-based assessment for use after ethics-based learning in the classroom utilizing our materials. The best part? All of these resources and materials are FREE to download and use in the classroom or for Career Technical Student Organization (CTSO)-based activities.
Can we make an impact 10,000 years in the future? We don’t know—but it’s absolutely worth a try.
Visit MBAResearch.org/Ethics to learn more about integrating our ethics materials into your classroom and to access the free resources available for students in your state.
