Historical Understanding, Futures Thinking, and the Public Work of Curriculum

This book asks a deceptively simple question: What is education for? Drawing on curriculum theory, history and social studies research, education philosophy, Indigenous scholarship, and futures studies, it argues that schooling too often socializes students into inherited ways of knowing while neglecting education’s deeper democratic purpose: enabling youth to make judgments about their nation-state and cultural inheritances and to distinguish between their probable and preferable futures. Engaging with timely debates in education, such as the emergence of AI, the author makes the case for a pedagogical approach centred on the use of ‘throughline questions,’ which ask students to connect subject matter to future thinking and critically examine their own role in shaping social worlds. Through innovative concepts such as KINships (knowledge–ignorance–privilege relations), curriculum as encounter, and becoming ‘story smart,’ the book outlines a path beyond both standardized schooling and decontextualized “best practices” toward learning organized around ethical inquiry, Treaty relationships, and preferable collective futures.Recommended reading for educators and researchers with interests in democratic education, curriculum design, and educational philosophy and civic education.