Are education reformers—and even educators themselves—capable of forecasting the education “essentials” of tomorrow? In an article for Education Week, Christopher Doyle challenges the notion of a set of 21st century skills. Historically, he writes, we have been unsuccessful at predicting skills essential to the future. He points to forward-thinking talents like Einstein, Freud, Gandhi, and Picasso, “those truly oriented to the future,” who felt “alienated in their own time.” Such artists and thinkers deviated from the educational norms of their day to blaze their own paths to success.
In contrast to those who would teach the skills of the future, he offers his agenda as a teacher:
“It is to teach my subject matter, history, to the best of my ability. This includes trying to understand and reach a generation of high school students whose intellectual world is increasingly fragmented into sound bites, PowerPoint bullets, text messages, Facebook posts, and “tweets,” and who appear rapidly to be losing the capacity for lengthy reading, synthesis of thought, and critical analysis. My agenda also encompasses linking the past to current events such as climate change, economic and debt crises, and wars on terrorism. I aspire additionally to teach empathy and ethics, qualities that I believe the discipline of history is uniquely capable of developing. And I seek to improve my students’ skill at writing while sharpening their capacity for critical thought.
“I do not know if any of this qualifies as ‘21st century.’ It often seems difficult enough; yet it appears far more realistic and hopeful to stick to my subject than to chart a suspect course toward a badly drawn image of the future.”
Still, reformers, such as the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, continue to re-package skills that have been taught for centuries in shiny new jargon. Leaving us to wonder if the artists and philosophers of tomorrow are being any better served in the classrooms of the 21st century than they were in those of the 19th.
Hillary Marder
This is a perfect short assessment of the problems all teachers face in our technologically based world today. Administrators are continually trying to “sell” the product to parents who fear that if their children are not completely up to date with all of the most recent technology they will be left behind. They fail to understand that the true road to success is the ability to think critically about issues at hand and, more importantly, be able to articulate their ideas in cogent and convincing ways, not as a series of sound bites.
University Professor
Thank you for your well thought out post about 21 Century Learning.
We too are concerned about what you referenced happening in education with your statement that reformers, “re-package skills that have been taught for centuries in shiny new jargon.” I have studied various writing programs from large publishers that have come out with their “Common Core Compliant” programs. Funny enough, upon in-depth analysis, I have found exactly what you described happening with curriculum. Many of the pages DO NOT cover the Cores, and are instead just a repackaging of pre-Core material.
At WriteSteps we were very cognizant of this when we created our “truly” Common Core writing program.
Publishers and educators alike are doing a real disservice to our profession with this behavior. We hope the Common Cores aren’t just another way for publishers to make a buck.
Thanks for illuminating this issue.
Suzanne Klein, Common Core Specialist
http://www.WriteStepsWriting.com