Next week, Time Magazine’s cover article, How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century, will bring to the forefront — for one week — issues that we’ve been talking about (angsting over) for years. There’s not much that’s new here but it is a new and unique opportunity to get some of these ideas out in front of people who still envision their own 1970s (or 1950s) classrooms when they think of education.
That said, I must admit some apprehension. I remember how excited I was, back in 1983, when the Nation at Risk report was published, pointing to an education system built on mediocrity. I thought that finally we would start investing in education. As it turned out, all that got invested was a new platform from which politicians could blame educators and promote their own brand of industrial age education.
Even though the Time story explicitly criticizes the mechanized classrooms of the past (and present), I’m still a bit afraid that the wrong people will be empowered to affect change — rather than empowering educators to reinvent education. I’m not saying that we can do it alone, but no one knows more about teaching and learning than we do.
Now for a few reactions to the story.
…Kids spend much of the day as their great-grandparents once did: sitting in rows, listening to teachers lecture, scribbling notes by hand, reading from textbooks that are out of date by the time they are printed…
It’s grandparents, and parents who were taught by grandparents, who maintain our education system. I suspect that there may be some way to insert the very children we are teaching into the formula, some way that they might come to define certain aspects of their own education. After all, the future we’re preparing them for is the future they will invent.
This is a story about the big public conversation the nation is not having about education, the one that will ultimately determine not merely whether some fraction of our children get “left behind” but also whether an entire generation of kids will fail to make the grade in the global economy because they can’t think their way through abstract problems, work in teams, distinguish good information from bad or speak a language other than English.
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| Add this image & link to your blog or classroom web site |
This is what the story is about, and I hope that we can get a lot of people to read it. Perhaps we should all put a picture of the magazine on our blogs and classroom web sites. I wonder if Blogmeister teachers would mind if I put it on all student and teacher blogs. Better ask!
The 21st Century Skills, as described in the article. The report from the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce seems not to be available yet.
Today’s economy demands not only a high-level competence in the traditional academic disciplines but also what might be called 21st century skills. Here’s what they are:
- Knowing more about the world
- Thinking outside the box
- Becoming smarter about new sources of information
- Developing good people skills
Certainly there are teachers and administrators who are leading the way in each of these areas. However, world studies, creativity, information literacy, and interactive skills are not part of THE STORY of classrooms that people typically think of and tell. We’ve got to change that story.
Can our public schools, originally designed to educate workers for agrarian life and industrial-age factories, make the necessary shifts? The Skills commission will argue that it’s possible only if we
..add new depth and rigor to our curriculum and standardized exams,
But what does this mean? Who knows what this looks like? Who can speak both from the point of view of the trained and experienced teacher and classroom manager, and from the context of a rapidly-changing, information-driven, technology-rich world? No one I know! More later on this…
..redeploy the dollars we spend on education,
Certainly this is true. However, we can’t do it the way its been done for the past five+ years, taking from one critical program and giving to another critical program. It’s how we got in this mess, by rightly deploying resources to assure that all children could read and do basic math, but away from equally critical programs like social studies, music, art, and innovative education.
I think that one of the most important things we could invest in is the time for our teachers to pay attention, interact, reflect, and reinvent their own classrooms.
..reshape the teaching force and
Again, what does this look like. We can certainly change pre-service. Not easily, but it’s a solid thing that can be retooled. We can also implement ongoing inservice. But a continually adapting teaching force is not something that you just fix. It’s got to be part of the culture of the job. It’s why much more professional time for teachers is so crucial, so that retooling is something that they do everyday as part of being a teacher, not just a servicing you get every couple of months.
..reorganize who runs the schools.
This one’s easy. Trained and experienced educators run the schools. But perhaps more than anything else, education in the 21st century is about conversations, and our schools must operate within conversations between classrooms and homes, schools and communities, and lots of potent, two-way conversations between students and their learning experiences.
Most of the rest of the story includes some inspiring examples of schools that are moving to the edge of the wave. But what they make me wonder is if all schools might become charter schools. Each school is free to reshape itself within the context of a dynamic curriculum that reflects today and tomorrow, but incorporating local needs, local opportunities, and a desperate need to make schools powerful engines for improving neighborhoods, villages, cities and the world.
2¢ Cents Worth
It is indeed exciting to know that TIME has taken up this issue (pun intended). The key now is getting TIME and others to highlight what a rethink looks like, as you have said. This is where the bloggers with vision can help. Lead the media and policy makers to one of the many blogs that show Passion-Based Teaching, vision, and empowerment to use the tools available to create a world-wide community of learning communities. And they shouldn’t just be in the suburbs that can afford it. I wondered about this the other day, and now I think it is even more important to lure them in to SHOW, not TELL. The TIME is now.
Sorry for this, but I couldn’t resist:
I had an unusual reaction to the TIME Magazine cover story. As I logged in with my home address (to prove I was a subscriber) and began to read, up popped a request for me to do a short survey. For a change, I decided to do it.
Then, I returned to read.
As I clicked to Page two, up popped a request to do the survey. I said NO and read more….
As I clicked to Page three, up popped a request to do the survey. I said NO.
and so on.
I wonder how many surveys they were hoping to get out of me?
Someone on their technical staff doesn’t have a “high level of competence” in the logic department! New skills indeed.
>>But what they make me wonder is if all schools might become charter schools.
This is perhaps the most interesting question. If things continue as they are, will your question change from “will” to “should all schools become charter schools?”
I’ve consulted for a good charter school, but my impression is not that they are all innovative, strong and adaptive. However, at least they have options. The structures are less heavy. Opportunities exist.
Public school education is as important now as it ever was. I worry that charter schools mean that people with money have yet another way to opt out of the public school system. Public education is meant for all children. If all children go to the public schools, then all the taxpayers are willing to pay for it. If only the poor go to the public schools, how long will the rich be willing to pay for it? We have very few charter schools in my province. I think that it is one of the reasons why the ordinary public schools are still doing well.
Our public school teachers are just beginning to see the heavy hand that produced such things as “NoChildLeftBehind”. Pulling control away from the classroom teachers and placing emphasis on standardized testing. What a waste of resources!
Standardized testing tests so little of what really matters. I hope teachers in the U.S. are able to stand in the way and stand up for the important things, as you seem to. Perhaps then, we to the north, will have an improvement in our snowballs chance.
Maybe I need to clarify what I meant by Charter Schools. There are so many terms involved with education that have been wired to the controversies of vouchers and school choices. My thinking is completely unrelated to these issues. I’m thinking of all public schools being freed to reinvent themselves. Each school would likely take on a dramatically or slightly different behavior. They will appear more in the image of their communities, local industries, or lack of local industries.
For instance, a community without much employment would work with community planning to concentrate on skills that might draw certain industries, or to grow small business services, or online intellectual services.
The thing is that schools would be free to serve their communities.
Admittedly, there are dangers in this. There are lots of schools that are comfortably coasting, going through the motions. There would have to be measures that assure that schools are working for their communities. But here’s where I differ with the accountability approach of NCLB. I would rather see teachers empowered to cultivate 21st century classrooms, instead of simply holding their feet to the fire.
I believe that there is only a thin line between most mediocre teachers and great teachers. Time to plan and resources to build with can bridge that line.
I was impressed that TIME published this article…
And I think you are on to something – in order to make a real change in what is happening in the classroom several things will need to happen but not the least will be to give teachers more time to learn how to implement 21st century skills, more time for them to reflect on what these skills should look like in the classroom and more time to plan how to integrate these skills.
Policy makers, administrators, teachers, parents and students will also need to understand the importance of these “21st century skills” in order to be successful in today’s world – this is where conversations are so vital.
Hopefully more of us will read the article and share it on our blogs (http://musingsfromtheacademy.wordpress.com/2006/12/12/teaching-21st-century-skills) and with others who have an impact on education.
I have posted this on two of our blogs as well for discussion by both our vision committee, which is working on this very question, and on my library blog.
I think that Time’s coverage will raise this into the mainstream, and I agree that this discussion has been brewing in workshops, publishing, and on campuses as everyone grapples with the new technology tools.
I for one am thrilled to see the conversation shifting. I honestly believe there are ways to deliver the basics while also building in more complex thinking skills and excitement for students.
Charter schools, community schools, academies, whatever you call them the point is the same . . . schools that have the courage and freedom to innovate, the autonomy to move quickly, and the support of administrators, community and parents to expect high standards of thought and effort amongst the students. If we could break away from the idea that public schools are cheap daycare and move into a format that allowed for more time on task with students and more time to plan and collaborate as teachers there would be more innovation. Greater support and less adversarial relationships between admin/teachers/students/parents/media/politicians/etc/etc would also encourage educators to take risks that could lead to real change.
In today’s educational landscape we are building walled fortresses to protect ourselves from the attacks of society. Once walls are built you can no longer move on to new frontiers.
The premise of the recent Time Magazine article, “How To Build a Student For The 21st Century,” (December 18) is largely false, and frankly, sickening.
I am a veteran high school history teacher whose students do very well on standardized tests – AP, CAPT, SAT. I never to teach to tests. I demand that students go beyond their limited frame of reference and learn something, which inlcudes memorization. My students acquire lots knowledge.
That Stanford University Professor who told her daughter to tell her teacher that she only needs to know the Amazon river – not the other rivers of South America – is a perfect example of the Educrat mentality. On the contrary, the mere act of learning something and memorizing it is a useful activity. Moreover, to understand more about the estuaries of the Amazon can lead to other sociological and anthropological awarenesses, even if they are not realized immediately. Memorization builds brain power and makes higher-level thinking possible. How can one think at a higher level when they know very little? How can we ask our young people to depend on Google? Do we not want to help young people think on their feet? Knowledge begets knowledge. More knowledge will not hurt young people, instead it will help them intellectually, psychologically and physiologically.
This “crisis” in education has come before, as far back as the nineteen twenties. In 1925 William Heard Kilpatrick of Columbia Teachers College said that instead of teaching facts and figures, schools should teach students “critical thinking.” Students need to learn how to “look-up” information in the modern world – the 1920s! In his “Child Centered School,” Harold Rugg urged in 1928 a shifting of the focus to a child-centered environment. (Heather MacDonald) These so-called cutting-edge progressive education theories are old. Moreover, they have never worked with most students.
We thought the human condition was somehow evolving by 1914 and then we had WWI. The human condition is what it is. Students are what they are; much of the time they are reluctent learners. The Rousseauian theory of the naturally inquistitve young person is largely false. Some students are sometimes deeply engaged. Yes, the very best and brightest are often self-directed learners. But what about the big middle? No matter how the educrats twist it, turn it and re-package it, their wares are the same, and so are the results. And they are poor results.
And what are the wares of education schools? Theories. Of course educrats will say that knowledge is not important because content – history, math, science, literature etcera – is outside their area of theories. More often than not, student-centered, group work is inefficient and less effective in helping students attain the kind of education that is going to help them succeed. Constructivist education is in the end obsurd. There has been a proliforation of Kaplan study centers and the like, because the recent upsurge of progressive education practices over the last 15 years has forced students to get direct, teacher-centered instruction elsewhere.
I am deeply, deeply concerned about the future of our young people. Their counterparts from India and China are learning much more than our young people, and, yes, they do a lot of memorizing and withstand lectures and obsorb lots of information. But they are also very creative.
Education should not be expected to be fun and immediately relevant. It should better than fun. It should be fulfilling and mind expanding. It requires lots of work and intensity. We do not need longer school days or schools years, we need more intensity and content oriented education. For fun we can have more team sports available to more students at all ability levels; they can learn “cooperative” skills, while bringing more blood to their brains and building self-esteem through hard work.
The directives from the education establishment are forcing a loss of discipline and rigor at a time when we need more of it.
We need to impart lots of knowledge and information to the millions of reluctant learners so that they have in their heads an educated mind even when the computer is down. The late Neil Postman said that computers have not solved any problems in education that were there before. Instead, computers and the internet have created new ones.
Not asking students to memorize everything does not mean that they leave school without knowing anything — without knowledge. It also doesn’t mean that they do not learn to think. Quite the contrary. We ask them to learn by thinking, not by storing.
I agree with you, David, that to learn about the Amazon only is absurd, that learning about the Amazon system and other rivers and their influences is where the kind of learning needed by inheritors of the 21st century. My disagreement is in teaching all children the same things about South America’s rivers. I believe that assigning an activities to students, to solve a relevant and authentic problem, where they have to find, synthesize and use information about the rivers systems, in order to solve the problem will result in the learning that will help today’s children.