21st Century Skills for the Classroom - What does this mean?

As we consider the different aspects of the inevitable (albeit much resisted) marriage of classrooms and 21st century technologies, one of the "new" ideas bouncing around is the importance and implementation of 21st Century Skills. From the different sources I've digested, including a 30 minute podcast featuring an introduction to 21st Century Skills from Chris Johnson, a former faculty member at Arizona State University who now works as a consultant who promotes these skills, a video by Ken Kay, president of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and several documents from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, I can truly say that I don't see it. To me, even though I've been teaching for only 2 years, I cannot see the big deal that these guys are making over these "skills" that they feel students must have to make it in our current century.

Maybe this is because I believe I have benefited from an outstanding, private education my entire life having spent all of my years in the Seventh-day Adventist education system. I always had teachers utilizing the most recent technologies and the most sensitive and up-to-date teaching methods. I know that when I walk into my classroom each day I challenge myself to not only provide my students with that same quality education that I received, but also to do my best to surpass my teachers for the benefit of my students.

Listening, watching and reading these materials from the proponents of this "new" look at education I guess I was consistently wondering "How is this a new idea?" I think if you went to the best schools in our country, they would all laugh and say "Yeah, we've been doing this for years!" I suppose then, this blog puts me more in league with other dissenters of this "fad" in education like Jay Matthews of the Washington Post and Andrew Rotherham of US News and World Report, who seem to feel as though this is a fancy way of saying our schools should do better.

That idea of our schools doing better, is, of course, something we all believe in. It is a sad truth that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) aims for the minimum, when our schools (and I believe this is the core message of the push for 21st Century Skills is that we should set the bar high and expect more from our kids. Going back to my own education experience, I feel as though that's exactly what I benefited from in my church's school system and I also feel as though that idea of expecting more from the iGeneration is a driving force in my lesson planning.

So here are some of my main issues with the 21st Century Skills crowd and what they are peddling. First of all, listening to Chris Johnson's podcast brought up a lot of issues for me. For the most part, I felt as though his recommendations for the classroom sound good, but upon closer inspection they really fall apart and he contradicts himself to some extent. For example, the idea of setting middle school and high school students loose on an unfiltered network seems unrealistic to me. Yes! We must teach them responsibility, but to say that kids who feel more than they think will not be tempted, distracted or completely derailed by the more negative things available on the net is not being realistic. And according to Johnson, kids are only really "in-school" for a very small percentage of their week. So, if that's true, then why would we choose the deconstructionist route he's recommending that would ultimately utilize time less efficiently? Any teacher knows that there are never enough minutes in a class period to cover everything, but Johnson would have us fill the room with gadgets and toys and books, tell the kids to be creative and then sip our lattes while the kids try to piece together something of value. I'm not saying that it's a bad idea for kids to learn hands-on, but I believe that our kids want us to play a more important role than Johnson envisions.

I also agree with Matthews and Rotherham that there seems to be a major issue with the implementation of these 21st Century Skills in the classroom. I'm blessed to be at a great school that provides me with current technology, but I know many fellow teachers that are not so lucky and I know that many many public school classrooms are in even more dire need of updating their technology. So, since these skills seem to be rooted in access to cutting edge technologies, what happens when the teacher can't get access? And do we, the teachers, really need to teach our kids how to use these new technologies? My kids are quicker on their qwerty keyboards than I'll ever be, they usually are the ones who help me fix my software and hardware issues and they always have the next gadget before I do. So why should I spend my classtime trying to make sure they understand how to use these technologies?

Okay, so here I am being negative and I feel that is never too useful - so what do I like about this concept of 21st Century Technologies. First of all, I do believe in all the goals proponents of these skills have listed. I think that any reasonable person can see that our country must be focused on creating a generation of creative thinkers, problem solvers and capable communicators. So these are good goals these folks have. As Matthews and Rotherham point out, I just want to make sure that the pursuit of a tech-happy, global-thinking workforce doesn't supplant the quest for meaningful content in our classrooms, because that integration of beautiful ideas, amazing invention and the pursuit of developing the whole individual are what truly sets our country apart.

That's my two-cents anyway. =)