Four essential skills

We need a fundamental reassessment of the goals of education in the 21^st century. Students deserve to be prepared for lives that are fulfilling and uniquely their own. They need to learn how to become life-long learners. Their creative potential must be unleashed, for the sake of each individual, and for the benefit of society.

Students need to practice and become ready to refine throughout their lives the following skills:

• find relevant information
• choose thoughtfully
• create boldly and intelligently, and
• communicate appropriately

Find

Information is no longer a precious commodity, confined to books and libraries. It is no longer accessible only to those with money or advanced degrees. It is available to anyone – often in the palm of their hand – and in greater abundance than would have been thought possible even a generation ago.

Students need to have the technical and intellectual tools to select the information that will be the most useful to them. They need to develop the ability to discriminate among the vast resources on the internet, what is reliable and what is not. They need to be prospectors and detectives, and most of all critical thinkers.

Choose

Life in human society for countless centuries involved very little real choice. Between economic necessity and social stratification, lives were pretty well laid out for most people. But today in the United States we are faced with an often bewildering variety of choices in everything from career decisions to family planning to political issues to how we are going to spend our money to fill our leisure time.

Students need to be empowered to make good choices based on a genuine understanding of their individual needs and of the available options. In terms of instructional practice this means that students should be shown how to direct their own learning, and given the opportunity to become experts in the field of their own choice.

Create

Wealth is generated, and personal pride is grounded in personal accomplishment. The human race is imbued with incredible talent, and historically, we have only allowed for relatively few bright lights to shine. The economic growth of the 21^st century will be spurred by creativity.

Students must be given the freedom to generate new ideas and create practical solutions to problems. Their work product should be assessed in its totality, not according to answers selected on a standardized test.

Connect

We live in an age of communication, and yet as our means of connecting with one another proliferate, our schools treat this new reality as an unpleasant distraction that must be stopped.

Students should be encouraged to use technology appropriately, and more importantly, to communicate with others in a productive manner. This means according text messaging its realistic place in students’ lives, and it also means teaching spoken and written communication that will enable students to communicate effectively no matter the context or medium. Communication in the 21^st century involves both traditional modes with all their rules, and means of connecting that have yet to be invented.

These four skills are essential to modern life, but the standard practices in many schools work to discourage their development. Providing a set body of facts for students to learn denies them the opportunity to find the knowledge they need. Enforcing compliance with established procedures denies students the opportunity to choose. Making standardized multiple-choice tests the measure of success in school denies students the opportunity to create and to demonstrate their learning in an authentic manner. Restricting technology, a practice that is so clearly at odds with the real world needs of students in the 21^st century, hampers their ability to connect meaningfully with one another.

We must do better by our children, and we can. But it will take a fundamental reassessment of our goals and a willingness to revolutionize our approach to public education.