Used Futures: Education and AI
AI has made the question harder to avoid: are we preparing young people for the future they are actually entering, or for one education systems already know how to manage?
Most schools, youth organisations and education-facing teams are working hard inside systems built for a more predictable world.
Strategy documents promise innovation. Curricula are updated. AI policies are written. Programmes are redesigned. But underneath the activity, many teams are still planning around inherited images of the future: stable careers, familiar institutions, linear progression and problems with known answers.
In the futures field, this is often described as a Used Future.
A Used Future is not simply an old idea. It is an inherited assumption about the future that continues to shape present decisions. It can sit inside a curriculum, a careers programme, a youth strategy, an AI policy, a funding bid, a partnership model or a board conversation.
In this free 45-minute webinar, we will look at how Used Futures show up in education and youth-facing work, why they are hard to spot, and how futures literacy can help people ask better questions before rushing to solutions.
This is not a prediction session. It is not a trend briefing. It is not a sales pitch dressed as CPD.
It is a practical introduction to one useful idea: how to spot the future your work may already be assuming.
You will leave with:
- a clear explanation of what a Used Future is
- examples from education, AI, youth work and strategy
- one assumption to examine in your own context
- a practical question you can take into a team, board, curriculum or programme conversation
- a clearer sense of whether deeper futures, AI or strategy work could help your setting
This session is for:
- educators, school leaders and curriculum leads
- youth organisations, NGOs and charities
- universities, foundations and public-sector teams
- social enterprises and education partners
- EdTech teams and corporates working with education
- founders, programme leads, advisers and board members
You do not need prior knowledge of futures literacy. You do not need to be leading a whole organisation. You only need one live question about the future your work is preparing for.
I’m Rachael Smith, founder of The Education Futurist. My work brings together strategic foresight, futures literacy, AI literacy, curriculum design and institutional change. I have worked at group level in international education as Group Head of Future Ready Learning for Charterhouse Asia, and I am part of the Metafuture network connected to the UNESCO Chair in Futures Studies. I am also writing on futures thinking in education and will be teaching on the MASc Education Futures at the London Interdisciplinary School.
The future is not something to fear. It is something to build, together.