21st-Century Skills: Same Old, Lame Old
http://www.ads-get-read.co.uk/articles/113908/1/21st-Century-Skills-Same-Old-Lame-Old/Page1.html
Bruce Deitrick Price
Bruce Price, an author and artist, is waging a personal campaign to improve education in America. His flagship is Improve-Education.org. Also see “37: Whole Word versus Phonics,” a comparison chart that quickly explains why Phonics is superior. By Bruce Deitrick Price
Published on Tuesday 2nd 2010
The Education Establishment is all goo-goo gaga over the newest pedagogical approach: 21st-Century Skills This phrase refers to all the high-level “literacies” that students supposedly need to survive in the brave new world acoming
The Education Establishment is all goo-goo gaga over the newest pedagogical approach: 21st-Century Skills. This phrase refers to all the high-level “literacies” that students supposedly need to survive in the brave new world acoming.
I suspect there’s little new here and that “21st-century skills” is yet another formula for reaching a favorite goal: education with as little scholarly and academic content as possible.
Ever since the 1920s, our elite educators have pushed the idea that Content is passe, and what children should be doing in school is learning practical, relevant things, like how to prepare for a job interview or open a checking account.
Our educators are nothing if not stuck in a rut. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s the Education Establishment waged open war against Content. They would say fatuous things like, “We don’t teach history. We teach children.”
You can find a video on YouTube where John Dewey himself is shown in an old newsreel (seems to be about 1940) saying: “The world is moving at a tremendous rate, no one knows where. We must prepare our children, not for the world of the past, not for our world, but for their world, the world of the future.” What nonsense--as if the world changes fundamentally every few decades. “Not for our world” is a jibe at the adults in the room, people who might be so stunted as to want to preserve anything from “the world of the past.”
Arthur Bestor, a prominent historian, asserted in a 1953 book that bigger budgets would make no difference as long as the Education Establishment was contemptuous of Content. Needless to say, the Education Establishment went right on being contemptuous... through 1970... 1980...1990 ...2000...and into 2010. And here we go again with a slick repackaging of the same old, lame old.
You will hear these words again and again: literacies, skills, competencies. These are the tinsel and trinkets that fill up the modern pedagogical mind. Ask an elite professor of education what it means to be educated, and that benighted soul will name everything but what you need to be educated. He will probably forget to mention reading, writing and arithmetic. Facts or knowledge? Why would a child need any of that? How old-fashioned!
The problem finally becomes one of appearances. What do you tell parents is going on all day, while nothing is being taught? Educators need cover; they need busy-work. So they talk about “real needs,” “life adjustment,” “child-centered,” and “21st-century skills.”
What the top educators like to fuss over is so-called real-world problems, such as filling out forms, dressing for success, preparing a resume, and applying for a mortgage. Admittedly, these are good things to know but they can be learned in a few days, or hours, at a point in the person’s life when they are appropriate. Why should public schools squander the limited time available on these non-academic topics that people can learn perfectly well by themselves?
Kids, while in school, should learn precisely those things where the Triad of Classroom, Textbook and Teacher is absolutely required. Think about learning French, history, biology, or algebra. You need the classroom setup. You need a sage proudly on a stage.
The pathetic genius of American education is to twist a school’s attention toward mundane skills and activities, all the while ignoring perennial truths and knowledge.
We have to wonder: why is it really so bad if kids learn the reasons behind the American revolution? Or where Japan is? Or what 8 times 9 is? Why does this kind of basic information turn the Education Establishment into jello?
For most of a century, the official preachment has been the same: the past is dead and children don’t need it; rote memorization is useless; kids shouldn’t be expected to learn anything because they can look it up; the only valid knowledge is that which students construct for themselves. All of these progressive schemes basically embrace cultural amnesia.
These schemes are shallow and wrong-headed. Children need a sturdy foundation of basic knowledge. Several new articles on Improve-Education.org deal with this thesis: “43: American Basic Curriculum” and “45: The Crusade Against Knowledge.”
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Article Summary: In education, the hot new thing is “21st-century skils.” But this idea is not new or hot. It’s yet another try at tossing out substance, and focusing on fluff.
I suspect there’s little new here and that “21st-century skills” is yet another formula for reaching a favorite goal: education with as little scholarly and academic content as possible.
Ever since the 1920s, our elite educators have pushed the idea that Content is passe, and what children should be doing in school is learning practical, relevant things, like how to prepare for a job interview or open a checking account.
Our educators are nothing if not stuck in a rut. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s the Education Establishment waged open war against Content. They would say fatuous things like, “We don’t teach history. We teach children.”
You can find a video on YouTube where John Dewey himself is shown in an old newsreel (seems to be about 1940) saying: “The world is moving at a tremendous rate, no one knows where. We must prepare our children, not for the world of the past, not for our world, but for their world, the world of the future.” What nonsense--as if the world changes fundamentally every few decades. “Not for our world” is a jibe at the adults in the room, people who might be so stunted as to want to preserve anything from “the world of the past.”
Arthur Bestor, a prominent historian, asserted in a 1953 book that bigger budgets would make no difference as long as the Education Establishment was contemptuous of Content. Needless to say, the Education Establishment went right on being contemptuous... through 1970... 1980...1990 ...2000...and into 2010. And here we go again with a slick repackaging of the same old, lame old.
You will hear these words again and again: literacies, skills, competencies. These are the tinsel and trinkets that fill up the modern pedagogical mind. Ask an elite professor of education what it means to be educated, and that benighted soul will name everything but what you need to be educated. He will probably forget to mention reading, writing and arithmetic. Facts or knowledge? Why would a child need any of that? How old-fashioned!
The problem finally becomes one of appearances. What do you tell parents is going on all day, while nothing is being taught? Educators need cover; they need busy-work. So they talk about “real needs,” “life adjustment,” “child-centered,” and “21st-century skills.”
What the top educators like to fuss over is so-called real-world problems, such as filling out forms, dressing for success, preparing a resume, and applying for a mortgage. Admittedly, these are good things to know but they can be learned in a few days, or hours, at a point in the person’s life when they are appropriate. Why should public schools squander the limited time available on these non-academic topics that people can learn perfectly well by themselves?
Kids, while in school, should learn precisely those things where the Triad of Classroom, Textbook and Teacher is absolutely required. Think about learning French, history, biology, or algebra. You need the classroom setup. You need a sage proudly on a stage.
The pathetic genius of American education is to twist a school’s attention toward mundane skills and activities, all the while ignoring perennial truths and knowledge.
We have to wonder: why is it really so bad if kids learn the reasons behind the American revolution? Or where Japan is? Or what 8 times 9 is? Why does this kind of basic information turn the Education Establishment into jello?
For most of a century, the official preachment has been the same: the past is dead and children don’t need it; rote memorization is useless; kids shouldn’t be expected to learn anything because they can look it up; the only valid knowledge is that which students construct for themselves. All of these progressive schemes basically embrace cultural amnesia.
These schemes are shallow and wrong-headed. Children need a sturdy foundation of basic knowledge. Several new articles on Improve-Education.org deal with this thesis: “43: American Basic Curriculum” and “45: The Crusade Against Knowledge.”
---
Article Summary: In education, the hot new thing is “21st-century skils.” But this idea is not new or hot. It’s yet another try at tossing out substance, and focusing on fluff.