It often seems that educationists are always looking to the future. It’s all about pushing, changing, re-aligning, re-defining, re-prioritising, planning, implementing, evaluating and so on. It is always about looking forward, usually impatiently.

No-one it seems, wants to pause and reflect. Few consider school or system development in terms of where we have come from to be where we are at the present moment.

This futurist bent means that that the far, far away tomorrow’s are the days that count. There is today, there was yesterday. Before that, to all intents and purposes, there was nothing. Historically, we peer into the rear vision mirror of schools and systems at what is essentially a blank page.

We need to reflect upon aned appreciate our history. Our present and future needs to be informed and shaped by past priorities and lessons learned.

Our schools and systems educators and support staff need to record educational history. They wrong the present and possibly distort the future by failing in this task.