Tuesday, November 25, 2008

21st century skills

There was an editorial in yesterday's Boston Globe (which for some reason I cannot turn up online) regarding the Task Force on 21st Century Skills:

This sense of urgency comes from our employers, who say that our graduates don’t have the skills required to attain and remain in today’s jobs. They want employees who can make coherent oral presentations, solve complex problems using either creativity or technology, understand the relationship between the U.S. and the rest of the world, work as part of a team, and have the necessary motivation. Instead, they say, our graduates come to them content-rich, but lacking in most of these skills.

The need to integrate these so-called 21st century skills into our public schools is the focus of recent recommendations presented to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education by the Task Force on 21st Century Skills. Our recommendations include sweeping changes to educator licensure, assessment, accountability and standards, and aim to ensure that students learn academic content in an environment that encourages the use of these and other skills.

Two thoughts:
  • Has it occurred to anyone else that having four years of math would be a basic necessity for the 21st century?
  • The list of skills employers want have largely been bumped out of the curriculum by the last set of "needs" the employers wanted, which led us to the MCAS. The skills are a great list, but if you're spending all of your time drilling on multiple choice tests, you don't have a great deal of time for oral reports.

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