My post from the other day ridiculing the "21st Century Skills" movement sparked some great comments. Allen says:
One worthwhile thing that an outfit like Fordham could do to prevent this sort of nonsense is to provide some historical context. How about an Internet Museum of Edu-crap? Failed, and flung-aside, edu-fads, catchphrases, leaders, ideas and a taste of the wide panoply of nonsense that's afflicted, and continues to afflict, the public education system.Here's a contribution: there's a public education district somewhere that had, or perhaps still has, a Chief Pedagogical Officer. That's sort of the cargo-cult equivalent of a chief financial officer but without any noticeable responsibilities other then to justify their own, continued existence.
Exhibit Number One for the Fordham Internet Museum of Regrettable Public Education Decisions.
I like it...we'll break ground right away! Meanwhile, Marcia writes:
As a middle school librarian, I continually see students who know how to change the screensaver; turn the screen upside down; work around the school's internet safety features or the firewall ... and on it goes....My concern is for the students (many of the same mentioned above) who can't gather and evaluate meaningful information on any given topic.
Angela agrees:
My concern about your post is this- We can not confuse tech comfortableness with ???tech -savviness.??? As you experienced, kids are incredibly comfortable with technology. For most, technology is like oxygen! What they lack is the ???savviness??? to analyze, evaluate, manage, and use web and multimedia content technology affords them access to.
But Robert Pondiscio of the (wonderful) Core Knowledge blog sees it differently:
The ability to ???analyze, evaluate, manage, and use content??? has nearly nothing to do with the web and other technologies....We have always had the need to separate good information from bad, to evaluate the interests of the source, render judgement, etc. In order to think critically, kids need a broad education that arms them with the raw material that informs critical thinking. ???21st century skills??? holds out the promise that there is either a shortcut to this end, or that the eternal verities of being a thinking being have been revoked or altered. Saying it doesn't make it so.
I think Robert gets it right. Finally, my colleague Emmy made a great point to me:
I've observed in Ohio, at least, that most folks crying out for 21st Century Skills are "older."?? No one under 35 is clamoring for them here in the Buckeye State, and very few folks under 50 are.?? It seems that a bunch of people who first entered the workforce before PCs were on every desktop and before email was a way of life, and who had to adjust quickly to the new technology, are worried that today's kids won't be able to cope with what tomorrow brings--forgetting??that they, too, would have been quite at ease with computers, etc. if they'd been using them since age five.
Exactly. I'm fresh from a meeting in California about web 2.0. The generational divide was...well, quite apparent. But it was also a great display of "21st Century Skills." We communicated effectively, cooperated with one another, thought critically, and used technology, and all of us had 20th century educations. The bottom line: if we provide a solid education in core disciplines like literature and history and science and math and the arts and foreign language, the kids will be fine--even if they never take an "information technology" course. I promise!
