21st Century Skills--a quick look at the newest education fad

21st Century Skills--Same Old, Lame Old ^ | Jan. 29, 2010 | Bruce Deitrick Price

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Here's a short blog entry I can't improve. It's a tease for a longer article (see link) but almost complete in itself:

"21st Century Bull

Okay, here's the last century of American education summed up in a sentence: the Education Establishment pretends to care about education, knowledge, basics, all that stuff, even as they undercut them at every opportunity.

That's it. A century of disingenuousness. Every single pedagogy and method was a con. New Math and Whole Word, most spectacularly so. The others less blatantly so but just as subversive....It's as if we're dealing with drug addicts here. They say they've reformed; they say they're "clean." Maybe at this point they can't help themselves.

Anyway, the melodrama continues. The big new gimmick is 21st Century Skills. The argument goes like this: our young people are all weighed down with knowledge. The burden is just too horrible....Yes, that's right, they're talking about American kids who can barely find the USA on a map!!! What these kids need instead is skills. Enough with the knowledge. Teach them vital skills, like how to prepare a portfolio, resume or slide show.

This is going to be The Big (Phony) Battle in American education for the next few years. Get your program right here. Please see "21st Century Skills--Same Old, Lame Old."" (Click link for this article.)

(Post is from my blog called EducationImproved.blogspot.com. Very readable. All the entries are short like this one.)

[Little Pig]

Whole word worked fine for me. I was reading by 3 using it.

[Uncle Miltie]

"Girls like guys with skills!"

[Talisker]

Okay, here's the last century of American education summed up in a sentence: the Education Establishment pretends to care about education, knowledge, basics, all that stuff, even as they undercut them at every opportunity. That's it. A century of disingenuousness. Every single pedagogy and method was a con.

Absoultely, positively bang-on bullseye.

[Talisker]

Whole word worked fine for me. I was reading by 3 using it.

Straw man - 3-year olds don't read words that need the sounding out of syllables, or looking things up in a dictionary. Everyone starts by tiny-word recognition... unfortunately, that's where everyone stays now...

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Smart kids crack the code in time, no matter how they are taught. Some like you and me crack it rather early.
There are two interesting things: are you saying that you were reading those words as sight-words? That is, graphic designs? Probably not. How could you be sure?
Second, even so, more than half the kids don’t learn to read, or only very poorly. And thus we have millions of functional illiterates. Some experts say a few sight-words can’t hurt. I’ve simply decided as a tactical matter to campaign against sight-words generally. So even if I’m wrong about the stray genius, you, I want to do the right thing for the great majority.
50,000,000 functional illiterates is the big crime of the 20th century.
(For more on what it’s like for kids, please Google: “40: Sight Words—The Big Stupid.”)

[GenXteacher]

This “21st Century skills” detritus is part of the source of the changing of the Social Studies curriculum here in NC. The people at the NC Department of Education have bought into this mess hook, line, and sinker. The fact is that working hard, studying, and actually taking an interest in your studies are skills that work in any century. But in education, the latest fad (supported by “research”) takes hold of those who make policy, and they shuffle along with it, arms outstretched, making a few groans and perhaps a few oozing noises.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Thanks. A wonderful comment. All the bad ideas are now “research-based.” In that case, could we just have something based on experience??

Maybe “bought into” isn’t right. That lets the Dept. of Ed off the hook. “Perpetrated” might be more like it.

In any case, please use my work to help out. That linked-to article is fairly aggressive, and might make a few of these sophists blink.

[SunkenCiv]

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	Gods Graves Glyphs	Thanks BruceDeitrickPrice. The big new gimmick is 21st Century Skills. The argument goes like this: our young people are all weighed down with knowledge. The burden is just too horrible....Yes, that's right, they're talking about American kids who can barely find the USA on a map!!! What these kids need instead is skills. Enough with the knowledge. Teach them vital skills, like how to prepare a portfolio, resume or slide show. This is going to be The Big (Phony) Battle in American education for the next few years. Get your program right here. Please see "21st Century Skills--Same Old, Lame Old." I'm sure this is of interest, but if not, I promise to write "I won't do this again" 1000 times on the blackboard. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
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[GenXteacher]

Well, I am not wholly convinced that some of them actually are aware of what they do- that some of the folks at NCDPI are pretty much enjoying a sinecure through the grace of some bigwig.

As for the Social Studies curriculum, the outcry has at least buried the first draft. I submitted an alternate proposal the other day- since they are taking feedback still, and I didn’t like the thought of having to teach some of that offal.

As for educational “research” I have some serious doubts- the research usually doesn’t match what I see in my classroom. I think that quite a bit of the research is skewed to back up the researcher’s thesis- because in order to get research grants, and continue a career as a researcher, you have to get results.

[wintertime]

The big new gimmick is 21st Century Skills.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If our Founding Fathers were resurrected, or woke up like Rip Van Winkle, how long would it take them to adapt to our 21st Century?

Hm? About a week? Two weeks?

How long would it take the typical youth of today to adapt to 18th century living? Hm? Years? Never?

[wintertime]

At 3 how would you know or remember what method was used?

And..Ok so maybe you're real bright. How do we know that the method used by your mom and day would work for those with an IQ of 100?

[Little Pig]

FWIW I know because my mother is a teacher, so she knew what the method was called.

As to how well it would work for a 100 IQ student, apparently the answer is that for some it works just fine. How well Whole Word works is a function of how the student’s brain processes information, not intelligence.

[Little Pig]

It’s not a straw man. Maybe I’m the exception, but I was reading at 3rd or 4th grade level by age 3. In kindergarten the teachers had me reading to the other kids, and by first grade I was reading at highschool level, all thanks to Whole Word ;)