The conceit of “21st Century Skills”
Like many of you, I’m still getting back into the swing of things after a nice New Year’s break. One of the joys of this holiday season was visiting good friends and their kids—and watching my son Nico (14 months old, adorable, brilliant, did I mention adorable?) play with them too.
And what did I learn from spending time with little kids? Among many other things (such as, don’t pick your toddler son’s nose if you don’t want him to pick yours), I noticed how tech-savvy they are. Not a second after I unveiled my iPhone (did I mention I have an iPhone? I’m on Facebook too!) did our 9- and 7-year-old friends attack it with knowledge and skills befitting a systems engineer. “Download Spore! Download LineRider! Can I play? Can I play?” It took me weeks before I even figured out I could download applications onto my phone. How did they know all of this?
Now, this is surely a banal observation, but hello, 21st Century Skills people, do we really think we have to teach our schoolkids how to use technology? My wife and I reminisced with friends about the computer courses we had to take back in the day. Remember typing “if/then” statements into Apple 2E’s? How much good did that do us? If I had it to do over again, I would have much rather read some piece of classic literature instead.
Thankfully, Jay Mathews spent his holiday break penning this incisive editorial calling the 21st Century Skills movement by its true name: another “doomed pedagogical fad.” Good for Jay. The piece is part of a broader backlash against the latest incarnation of the “all kids need to learn is how to learn” argument. Call it the “life adjustment” movement, call it “outcomes-based education,” call it “21st Century Skills” or call it a “doomed pedagogical fad.” Or simply call it bunk, because that’s what it is.
Happy New Year!
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January 6th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Hear, hear, Mike! I hereby welcome you to Loyal Order of 21st Century Skills Skeptics. Your experience with the tech-savvy kids is well observed. In a previous life, I had a little cottage industry writing kids books about online services and this cool new thing called the World Wide Web. I gave it up after realizing writing books explaining the Web to kids was quickly becoming tantamount to explaining how to use the phone, or watch TV.
There’s a serious downside to the 21st century skills meme, however: it sounds reasonable on the surface and might even persuade parents. If it gains traction, it becomes (like critical thinking, problem solving, et al) a means to devalue academic content in favor of this bright shiny new toy.
We’ve written a lot about this over at the Core Knowledge blog. But the indispensible read on this is Dan Willingham at Britannica Blog (http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/12/schooling-for-the-21st-century-balancing-content-knowledge-with-skills/)
January 7th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
A downside? Heck, devaluing academic content and diverting parents is practically the raison d’etre for 21st Century Skills(tm).
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.
January 7th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Mike,
How true your remarks of how tech savvy our students are.
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.
Information of these features is either innate or spreads like wildfire.
My concern is for the students (many of the same mentioned above) who can’t gather and evaluate meaningful information on any given topic.
They seem able to make sense of the technical part of this world [WAY MORE than I can], but have less ability to make sense of all the information they find using this technical skill.
They seem to have even less ability to evaluate their own legal or moral responsibility in relation to this vast amount of information.
Wish we could find more effective ways to use the technology they love to engage them in leaning about gathering, evaluating, synthesizing, and producing meaningful results.
January 7th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Mike-
This post brings up may important points to consider in the conversations regarding the “21he st Century Skills Debate.” As an educator, I am equally as frustrated about the ridiculous rhetoric surrounding these important discussions.
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.
I work with K-12 students and educators daily, and watch in horror as they aimlessly type a word into Google, go to the first link, never once pausing to consider the nature, validity, and source of their search.
Call it what you wish, but in the age when anyone, can say anything ,about any topic, the skills of analyzing, evaluating, synthesizing, and thinking critically about the information are necessary skills for engagement and full participation in the 21st Century world.
January 7th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
The ability to “analyze, evaluate, manage, and use content” has nearly nothing to do with the web and other technologies. Reliable and unreliable information — and the ability to know the difference — isn’t materially different if the information is online, in print, transmitted verbally or written on the wall of a tomb in hieroglyphics. 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.
January 9th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Angela’s right. I think that, at its best, the conversation about 21st century skills can lead us out of the NCLB morass and back to having respect for critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and global awareness. The machinery we happen to use is incidental.
January 12th, 2009 at 10:53 am
OK. You have had your fun. Now it is time for a little Backlash backlash.
Yes, granted that “21st Century Skills” has become a buzzword and occasionally a cover for silliness. And the “technology” instructors always seem to be grasping for cover. But nearly every source that you have cited also acknowledges that there is something more at the bottom of this.
Labor economists have documented how much our job market has changed over the last 3-4 decades. Your typical “Ford” assembly line worker of the 1960’s would not last a week on today’s line at a Toyota or Honda plant.
Granted, it is not the skills themselves that have changed as much as the percentage of people in the workforce expected to have some of them.
Take a look at the PISA 2003 problem solving study. 58% of our 15 year olds scored as “Level 1″ or “Below Level 1″ problem solvers. Further, we are only getting one third to one half the percentage of our kids up to the highest (Level 3) problem solving ability as are the top performing nations. This is not a recipe for long term success.
In one research study we put observers into classrooms to simply log what was happening. Although the teachers were ostensibly implementing a lesson plan that would give kids some problem solving practice the instruction that was actually taking place was happening at a very low level. In a few cases, it was painfully obvious that the teacher did not understand the point of the lesson. You hope and pray that this is the exception, and not the rule, and then you remember that 58% of our kids are “Level 1″ problem solvers or below and start to worry.
I see in my own office that a distressing number of people (58%??) cannot really solve novel problems that require several steps (e.g., find data on two Web sites and use it to reason to a conclusion, look at a table, graph, or chart of moderate complexity and explain what it shows.) These people function best with very routine and repetitive work tasks. And, guess what? We have fewer and fewer of those.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
While you were writing this I was in Alabama with a colleague interviewing students at two high schools — one serving low-middle income, the other middle-high income families. Sure, the students were quite competent using mobile technologies, video games and social networking sites to do the things that teenagers do peer to peer. But they had little or no understanding of how to use the Web and web-based tools to do research, create meaningful content, or collaborate on school/work related projects.
The real “conceit” is that because students are reasonably comfortable with digital devices they somehow know how to use those devices in educational or work-related ways. We shouldn’t let our own “awe” at young folks’ facility with technology mask these realities. Today isn’t like yesterday for one very big reason. It’s called the World Wide Web.