Education for the Twenty-First Century has grown out of a common and deep-seated concern, at a time when many educators are worried about some of the trend-lines in school reform, about the way young people think of their own future, and about some of the relatively simplistic education reforms being advocated, often by people with scant comprehension of modern educational practices. Schools as institutions, schooling patterns, the curriculum and teachers themselves have come under heavy criticism throughout the past decade, but it now has to be recognized that the problems in education have no lasting or satisfactory solutions while schools continue to operate out of the same framework which has determined their raison d'etre for the past 200 years. The authors argue that education does not need fine tuning, or more of the same; rather the fundamental assumptions about schools have to be revised. They argue that learning about the future must become very much a part of the present, and set out some of the thinking and techniques which permit us to confront the future and make it a better place.