David Warlick and Sicheii Yazhi comment on the next week's TIME cover story,
How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century:
This week the conversation will burst onto the front page, when the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, a high-powered, bipartisan assembly of Education Secretaries and business, government and other education leaders releases a blueprint for rethinking American education from pre-K to 12 and beyond to better prepare students to thrive in the global economy. While that report includes some controversial proposals, there is nonetheless a remarkable consensus among educators and business and policy leaders on one key conclusion: we need to bring what we teach and how we teach into the 21st century.
Right now we're aiming too low. Competency in reading and math--the focus of so much No Child Left Behind (NCLB) testing--is the meager minimum. Scientific and technical skills are, likewise, utterly necessary but insufficient. Today's economy demands not only a high-level competence in the traditional academic disciplines but also what might be called 21st century skills.
Will Richardson summarizes the article in four bullets:
1. Teach kids more about the world.
2. Think outside the box.
3. Become smarter about new sources of information.
4. Develop good people skills. (Communicate, collaborate)
It is a long, but very good article. Lots to ponder about. I'd really like to know what people think about it. Fire off in the comments.
Update: David has more reactions and commentary.
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Interesting stuff. I hope that educators in Canada take note.
I think Teach for America is doing a great job at trying to bring these goals to students. Young teachers who are passionate, innovative and not afraid to try and reform the same education system in which they were raised.
And how, pray tell, will a national institution standardize the teaching of 'thinking outside of the box'?
Did you even read what David and others wrote? What national institution? They explicitely do NOT want that. They want the educators on the ground to do it.
Expecting the educators to be able to override the system they're employed by strikes me as rather naive. In many cases, teachers must teach to the test or risk their schools' funding, for example.
What Caledonian said. There *are* no 'educators on the ground'! You have a standardized conceptualization used to train teachers in teaaching colleges and programs that generates teachers with very similar outlooks and training working for organizations that mimic each other 9after all, Texas and California largely determine the textbooks used everywhere) that are beholden to legislation, regulation, and the NEA.