Like many of you, I'm still getting back into the swing of things after a nice??New Year's??break. One of the joys of this holiday season was visiting good friends and??their kids--and watching my son Nico (14 months old, adorable, brilliant, did I mention adorable?) play with them too.
And what did??I learn from spending time with little kids? Among many other things (such as, don't pick your toddler son's nose if you don't want him to pick yours), I noticed how tech-savvy they are. Not a second after I unveiled my iPhone (did I mention I have an iPhone? I'm on Facebook too!) did our 9- and 7-year-old friends attack it with knowledge and skills befitting a systems engineer. "Download Spore! Download LineRider! Can I play? Can I play?" It took me weeks before I even figured out I could download applications onto my phone. How did they know all of this?
Now, this is surely a banal observation, but hello, 21st Century Skills people, do we really think we have to teach our schoolkids how to use technology? My wife and I reminisced with friends about the computer courses we had to take back in the day. Remember typing "if/then" statements into Apple 2E's? How much good did that do us? If I had it to do over again, I would have much rather read some piece of classic literature instead.
Thankfully, Jay Mathews spent his holiday break penning this incisive editorial calling the 21st Century Skills movement by its true name: another "doomed pedagogical fad." Good for Jay. The piece is part of a broader backlash against the latest incarnation of the "all kids need to learn is how to learn" argument. Call it the "life adjustment" movement, call it "outcomes-based education," call it "21st Century Skills" or call it a "doomed pedagogical fad." Or simply call it bunk, because that's what it is.
Happy New Year!
