The 21st Century Skills debate is back on again. Lynne Munson of Common Core caused a ruckus at a P21 event at the NEA last week. That sparked a response by Paige Kuni of Intel, who chairs the P21 board, over at Flypaper. I won’t rehash the debate, but reading it and thinking about the ongoing dustup prompted a flashback.
Back when the World Wide Web was the Next Big Thing, I worked at TIME Magazine when it became the first major magazine to make its complete contents available each week on a then little-known service called America Online. The project was regarded within the House the Luce Built with anything from amusement to irritation. Those of us who were mixing it up online with readers were dismissed by some ink-stained colleagues as wasting our time on a fad, one that had more in common with CB radio than publishing. But one criticism had merit then and still rings in my ears today. It bothered many reporters and writers that we referred to their magazine pieces as “content.” The very word connoted a commodity, something cheaply made, processed and packaged, sold by the ton and shipped in containers.
So it is with P21. I’ve come to conclude that they are genuinely bewildered by those of us who complain they are soft on rigor and academics. Ken Kay and Co., I think, earnestly believe that they support “world class skills and world class content.” But it’s the word content that causes the disconnect. By referring to history, art, science, math, and literature as “content,” it seems to betray an orientation that dismisses the best of our accumulated knowledge, thought and expression as simply a bunch of stuff. P21 is by no means alone in this. Lots of people who favors a rigorous curriculum throw the word content around as convenient shorthand, present company included.
Many of my erstwhile print colleagues adamantly — and in retrospect, correctly — refused to see themselves as “content providers.” They were White House correspondents, investigative reporters, bureau chiefs, editors, writers and photojournalists. They were probably right, even as they ended up on the wrong side of history. One of the problems bedeviling print media today is precisely that newspapers and magazines have allowed themselves to become commoditized. The reader doesn’t see the value (and doesn’t want to pay) for commodity news, cheaply available everywhere. There’s a lesson in here for education somewhere. It concerns who we are, what we do, and what–if we’re not thoughtful–we will allow ourselves to become.
Over in the comments sections in Flypaper, Diana Senechal responding to Paige Kuni, nails the reductive nature of viewing everything as content.
“I question the value of the sort of analogies you describe. The life cycle of the butterfly is fascinating in itself. The transformation from egg to butterfly is not just a story of “success”—it has intricate processes and startling beauty. There is no need to make superficial analogies with business. There is much of interest right here, in the subject, and it becomes more interesting with deeper study….Making connections is very important, but we have to be judicious about the kind of connections we make, lest we trivialize the subject. I am not a biologist, but I believe many a biologist would agree.
Biology teachers, who clearly see themselves as teaching science not content, would doubtless agree too. Indeed, I doubt there are too many great teachers who view what they do in class as teaching “content.” Those of us who worry that a skills orientation dulls academics need to find a better word to describe what we value if we want others to prize it as highly as we do.
I don’t know how deeply I want to go into furthering this particular discussion, as it always seems to run to extremes. But, let me suggest, again, that we are not looking at two ends of a continuum. We are really looking at two intersecting planes. Each one alone is merely two dimensional, when combined we have all the depth and dimension that is possible in a fully sculpted world.
Is the term “subject matter” still used, or has that fallen by the wayside?
I believe “substance” is a better word than “content.”
Robert,
I have had so many thoughts about your post, I haven’t had a chance to put them all together. First of all, your point about “content” is excellent and far-reaching. The problem goes well beyond the word itself.
I have been told that the “content” is just the “vehicle” for the “strategy” and other incomprehensible stuff like that. The worst aspect of it is the indifference. “Content” implies that so long as you have some sort of subject matter, you’re good. It also negates structure and hierarchy in subject matter. It is all just “stuff,” as you say, some sort of filler for the “container,” whatever that might be.
The very prevalence of the word suggests that some sort of watering down (or thinning out, or emptying) has already taken place. “Content” may be the doppelganger of thin air.
When I was growing up, I never heard the word “content” in the sense of “subject matter.” I encountered it in publishing and programming, but was still surprised to find people wielding it so blithely in school.
And this is indeed where the misunderstanding lies. If it doesn’t matter what poetry you read, then you have already made it trivial. Making a music video of a poem does not trivialize it further. Perhaps, if the poem is lacking, the video enhances it. The idea of “content” goes against the idea of good and bad poetry.
P21 is not even a leap from this state of things. It is a mini-step.
Diana Senechal
“If it doesn’t matter what poetry you read, then you have already made it trivial.”
But Diana, would you not agree that the world of “acceptable” poetry is vast, and no one list or progression can comprise the ultimate curriculum? It always surprises me that someone who defends professional integrity and freedoms so staunchly is so deeply enmired in didactic requirements for “content.”
I can understand the meaning of the words that the content is a vehicle for the strategy, in the sense that we may have set a universal goal with regard to a student’s ability to read, understand and appreciate poetry. It may not be true that any old poem will do, but it remains that many, many are available, excellent and may be arranged across many possible progressions.
I can also understand the strategy being a vehicle for teaching the content. Artistic portrayals of the content of literature or historical works have been utilized throughout history to spread messages to non-literate populations, or across language barriers, or simply as the artist’s joy in expressing to a public their understanding of an event or story. It is hard to argue that Da Vinci trivialized the last supper by offering it up as a painting (with reinterpretation through an Italianate lens), or that Botticelli degraded the novella The Decameron by reinterpreting it in the painting Story of Nastagio degli Onesti.
None of these artistic reinterpretations or expressions can take place exclusive of the “content.”
But Margo/Mom, a work of art is not a “strategy.” Da Vinci did much more than “offer up” the Last Supper as a painting.
Yes, the world of “acceptable” poetry is vast, but who ever said anything about “acceptable” poetry? I didn’t. I believe we should teach excellent poetry.
We may disagree about what constitutes excellent poetry. That is fine. But to give up on excellence for that reason–that is absurd.
Diana:
I don’t see anyone giving up on “excellent” poetry. Nor do I see that the vehicle of music videos is inherently inferior (or superior) to that of oil painting. I will allow that the young Da Vinci’s in most schools are not performing at the level of The Last Supper–regardless of the media.
But to insist that by defining “skills” as an additive consideraton to “content” somehow degrades (or trivializes) the content is an argument that takes us nowhere. To insist that content is primary (and we can get to skills and applications somewhere later in the day, if there’s time) just guarantees that we will be overlooking the kind of learners for the whom the questions of “why is this important,” and “how will I ever use this,” are burning motivators. It also allows us to overlook these questions in making content related decisions. Is it important to memorize the capitals of all of the states? Why? It’s content. It’s important–each of those capitals is a seat of government. In what context will that knowledge be used? It starts to get dicier to defend here. Is it more important to have the knowledge built into one’s head, or to understand the significance and how to find it when needed?
We have always had ways in which to examine student’s understanding and ability to apply knowledge–but they have always been far more difficult to assess and evaluate. Knowing the capitals of the states is easy to assess–even without state-wide standardized and machine-graded systems. Understanding the relationship between each of those capitals and the capital in Washington, or any of the uniquenesses state by state and what that means for the way that people live by region–well, much more difficult. Not impossible–just more difficult.
But, while the first computer aided assessments merely mimicked the ability of paper and pencil factual knowledge types of assessment, computer assessment is coming into an ability to assess far more complex things (think about the first static Resusci-Anni manniquins compared to ones today that can incorporate blood pressure, bleeding, heart rate–a far more sophisticated system of indicators that interact as they respond), including a student’s ability to apply knowledge in simulated situations.
Grading an essay by computer appears to be easier and more effective than I would have imagined. True–the computer doesn’t respond to what a student is expressing. But when I was teaching students to write well enough to get a GED, I didn’t pay much attention to content either. Writing is a skill. A computer can give immediate feedback to skill aspects of writing. Guess what that does–it frees up teacher time to focus on the content. It enables greater volumes of student practice in written expression. This is important.
I remember fifth grade. This was the year that we were required to copy over final drafts of our writing in ink. We were not allowed to use ball point pen. We were required to use a fountain pen (although we used cartridges, our desks still had little holders in them for ink bottles). Our teachers, and the school believed devoutly that writing with a fountain pen was a necessary part of our education. It’s sort a silly little anachronism now.
But, I wish that my children’s schools took as seriously the necessity of training children to use a computer. Writing in pen required that all errors be finally corrected. Setting ink to paper memorialized the efforts. Writing on a computer is completely different–never too late to edit and change. Edits can be handled by one or more individuals. Some works (like wikis) are characterized by their impermanence and continuous and open editing process.
Every year, it seems, starts with worksheets to check knowledge of basic math facts–but no one ever gets to being able to use a spreadsheet to construct a formula that uses those facts in multiple ways with repeated accuracy (or inaccuracy, depending on the selection of the appropriate formula, or entry of the data).
These are not add ons. They are basic “content,” if that word makes anyone more comfortable. They are things that our students must learn that we are overlooking, just as we are overlooking their ability to work with one another in ways that makes good use of varying skills, abilities and knowledge.
Margo/Mom:
The perennial student questions of “why is this important” and “how will I ever use this” may seem like motivators on the surface, but for most kids they only arise as petulant excuses to avoid learning no matter what answer we give them. The problem I have with your logic and that of P21 in general is that it appeals to, and thus will only encourage, these anti-intellectual impulses in children and adults both; the implication is that the things learned in school had better have some practical, immediate, “real-world” payoff, or else they’re not worth learning at all. That’s what typically happens when “mere content” is subordinated to skills, and it’s obvious to me that P21 is all too willing to cater to this lazy utilitarianism while it fuels yet another round of wasteful fad-chasing and gimmickry in our schools.
I would also point out another danger on the horizon: if it doesn’t matter what “content” students are to learn in school, then it doesn’t matter what “content” teachers bring to the table, either. It appears we’re destined for another wave of educational formalism (as ED Hirsch calls it), in which pedagogical methods are prized over the substance of teaching, and wherein we will cultivate another generation of teachers steeped in educational gimmickry but who have little expertise in any given academic subject. That does not bode well for us or for the 21st Century.
James, I agree about the risk of “lazy utilitarianism” but not your uses of “only”.
1) I don’t think this “only” arises for students out of petulance. Our educational system too often tells kids to do stuff “just because” (or, rather, it seems that way because the reasons are unarticulated or are not articulated well or just are confusing). Some of the questioning you cite does come out of petulance or mischief instead of curiosity, sure, but I want us to see the asking of the question as a call to us educators to self-evaluate and perhaps revise. Of course, we shouldn’t change reflexively, simply because someone complains. (I admit that you do attribute the bad motives to “most” and not “all”, but I’m not even willing to concede “most”!)
2) The fact that P21 appeals to certain things in the extreme does not necessarily mean that it “only” has to encourage anti-intellectual impulses in children and those who teach them. Let me agree immediately that anti-intellectualism is poison to all of us and our systems as well. That said, I believe it’s possible that we can value both content and process without necessarily resigning ourselves to polarizing on either side. There’s a dialectical dance that can go on without it being completely resolved into either “option” devouring the other…unless the forces of reductionism (and I think we all suspect that these reside in the political world) are permitted to push the dialectic off the cliff.
We need a variety of nutrients plus physical activity to stay strong and get stronger. We can keep feeding the pro-intellectual organism with a variety of nutrients, and engage it in a variety of exercises, with maximum health being the outcome. In the education world, neither approach need be subordinated to the other, although we will have to be vigilant about maintaining balance.
I guess I just don’t believe that the slipperiness of this slope is inevitable. At the risk of sounding like a Pollyanna: why can’t we all just get along?