This is an interestng take on cultural difference.
The notion that students need a new approach to education in the age of lightening-fast access to information has become something of a catch-all in education circles. President Barack Obama, for instance, called for “a new vision for a 21st-century education system” in December when introducing his nominee for U.S. secretary of education, Arne Duncan.
via Education Week: Backers of ’21st-Century Skills’ Take Flak.
Go read this whole thing and see if you think the case is being fairly represented.
March 4th, 2009 at 9:41 PM
Problem: When I try to go read the entire article, the page wants a login with a charge for just reading even the one article. ?
March 4th, 2009 at 11:43 PM
Well that’s a pain.
It wasn’t when I linked to it.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:17 AM
It did the same for me! That figures!!
March 7th, 2009 at 8:33 PM
The little bit that it did let me read I think holds true. I really think that the skills we need to teach children and young adults is how to collaberate and use technology. The world is changing everyday and the less we prepare them the more difficult it will be for them to find work and resources.
March 7th, 2009 at 8:44 PM
I wasn’t able to access the article either.
March 8th, 2009 at 6:54 PM
I wasn’t able to read it either without being charged. I agree with Amy; it is our responsibility as educators to prepare students for the world. This includes helping them learn to collaborate with others using technology. If they don’t learn these important skills in school, they may not have the necessary skills for work or college when they graduate. It is good that politicians see the importance of this.
March 11th, 2009 at 9:42 PM
Like others, I was not able to read the entire article, but I thought I would weigh in as well.
What upsets me about this “21st Century Skills” topic is that it is something that sound good for politicians to talk about, but I am not sure that they even understand what it means. Yes, technology skills, collaboration skills, and so forth are important. So why are we still using a multiple choice test to determine whether students have these skills? I think it is a huge contradiction.
March 17th, 2009 at 9:34 AM
Education is always going to be in a question for everyone because everyone thinks they have a better idea than the other person. What they don’t understand that no one idea is going to work for all children or adults. All children learn different and will always learn different. You can pack all children into one idea and expect it to work. There are always those children that will be need a different type of teaching or learning in order to learn and succeed.
Anybody can have a vision and everyone seems to have a vision but their visions have yet to work. The No Child Left Behind was a joke. How can you can say that you have come up with a plan so that no child will get left behind. You can’t say that because there is always some child or children that will get left behind. Obama may have a plan but no matter what it is; it will only include a majority of the children but not all of them.
April 4th, 2009 at 7:42 PM
From everything that I have been reading while in grad school, it seems that in education there is always something new (or old in this case) that is the next big fix. The effort to teach these skills without also integrating a strong content is not the answer. The two should not be divided. Content is also an important part of providing a good education for students. I heartily agree with the article that the new movement could cost the students who need help the most. Students in poor performing schools will not have the background knowledge or the time to spend learning skills when their content knowledge is so challenged. They are catching up with the rest as it is.
The problems with our content is also a point of contention. In order for this to work we need to fix that as well. The core content is as the article states a “mile wide and an inch thick.” I feel we have to look at the big picture and recognize the right answer is probably a mixture of the two, not one in particular.