To quote a song by Journey, "Don't stop believin'".
I'll change a few of the first line lyrics to tie into my blog.
Just a 19th century boy, living in a 21st century world
he took the education train going nowhere.
Where are we going as educators? nowhere? anywhere?
I guess up here in Canada we don't have the same exposure to all of the education news in the US, unless you have cable and can watch CNN (or the Communist News Network as my dad calls it. Yeah, he's American) or FOX news. What seems to be the same here in Canada is the concern over our education, in particular the public sector. How have we been able to successfully educate and produce students prepared for the work force? The answer is we haven't. Well let me rephrase that, we haven't done it very well consistently enough to say we are doing it right.
My views on the 21st century skills is divided. I don't which way I'm leaning towards, not yet anyway. On this earth everything goes through change. Some changes take a millenia while others happen faster than even the human eye can see. I have watched how things have changed even over the last 5-10 years in education and technology is like a hungry monster growing bigger and faster every second. There is a need to allow education to grow and change but in the process lets not compromise the knowledge we gain from past resources.
In Ken Kay's video he stated that we can't have a battle between content and skills. Don't replace teaching content with 21st century skills or in other words, we shouldn't focus on how to know instead of knowing, there needs to be balance. He also stated that the goal for the 21st century skills is "every child will have world class content and world class skills." I feel that a glee mash up is an appropriate term that would sum up my views. Where content(facts) and critical thinking(personal views) complement each other. Mashed up to create a positive learning environment. I am are living in the 21st century and I would be stupid to exclude the past. Past, present and future working together to create world class students that's my 21st century.
I don't think Jay Matthews is wrong in thinking that the 21st century skills is "The Latest Doomed Pedagogical Fad." Like any fad it becomes popular quickly and moves across the globe. The problem is that someone is always leading the trend or fad while others are behind. We are behind other countries who have already made the transition to information products and services we are behind in education too, particularly in science and technology. How do we catch up? What can we do in our educational system to compete? Everything in alignment to prepare citizens with the 21st century skills
to compete in this worlds economy. This is the driving force behind the 21st century skills
education initiative.
We have seen variations of the 21st century skills mindset in the past. Not called by the same terminology but very similar none the less. We can remember when the emphasis was on curricula like reading, writing and arithmetic, then the need for trades people like a plumber, electrician or auto mechanic. Now the need for the creative thinkers, dreamers, innovators, the technological visionaries who weren't limited by their own imagination.
I read a quote in one of the articles and it said, "creativity is as important as literacy." To be creative is great but what if your career requires you to read to gain a better understanding of what is required to do the job. You can't very well think critically on the written word if you can't read it first. Maybe you are expected to write out the very technical instructions for a manual but you never learned to write. Creativity is amazing and inspiring. It helps in demonstrating things to others without relying heavily on literacy. There has to be a collaboration where skills and facts work together, where creativity and content go hand in hand.
I don't think Jay Matthews had it wrong when he called it a fad. Maybe he knows something we don't. When this fad fades like the hula hoop and jelly shoes because something cooler comes along, how much time till we see a
resurgence like the Rubik's cube or Yo-Yo(both of which have been
revamped and made with technological components)to attract this 21st generation.
