In a rapidly changing world, schools need to reorient their curricula to ensure adequate preparation of children for the future. Among the fundamental changes affecting society are the diversification of lifestyles, the development of genetic engineering, trends toward automation, and the information explosion. The educational crisis reflects these changes. Torsten Husen notes the increase in schools' bureaucratization, sorting functions (which cause fierce competition), and socialization functions (which stifle needed student qualities). To survive the crisis, the school curriculum must assume three new orientations. First, the curriculum should have a futures orientation and should include studies of futurism, forecasting methods, and alternate futures. Second, the curriculum should have a systemic orientation. Current Western thought is too analytical. Education should instead start with the whole, not the parts, and should avoid linear or sequential approaches, stress the concepts of limits and interdependence, integrate disciplines and levels through a thematic approach, and emphasize understanding the relationships among facts. Finally, the curriculum should have a global orientation to prepare students for the future's heterogeneous "global village." Schools should reinstate foreign language study at all educational levels and should infuse curricula with comparative, cross-cultural perspectives. Following these three orientations will help produce the "competent generalists" needed in the next century. (Author/RW)