Does Knowledge Have Any Value in the 21st Century?

by Lisa Hansel
April 3rd, 2013

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Posted in Core Knowledge, Curriculum, Teaching | 12 Comments »

In the UK, a debate is raging about Michael Gove’s proposal to implement a Core Knowledge–style curriculum. The discussion largely parallels criticisms and defenses of Core Knowledge in the US, so it’s both interesting and relevant to those of us who would like to see American students become more knowledgeable.

Sadly, strong opposition to the new curriculum is coming from the National Union of Teachers (NUT).  I don’t know anything about teacher preparation in the UK, but if it is anything like teacher preparation in the US, then the teachers are not to blame for their own lack of understanding of the many benefits of a rich, broad, carefully sequenced, knowledge-building curriculum. The UK teachers have probably never been taught about the decades of cognitive science demonstrating that knowledge and skills develop together; they probably have no idea that the higher-order skills we all want students to possess simply cannot be developed without simultaneously ensuring that they also have lots and lots of knowledge.

Now would be a good time for them to learn. As David Green (the director of Civitas, which is publishing a UK Core Knowledge Sequence) points out, the NUT is appropriately concerned about the de-professionalization of teachers—but it fails to see that the new curriculum is an opportunity to right that wrong:

Michael Gove’s planned national curriculum, heavily influenced by American reformer E.D. Hirsch, came under strong attack over the weekend. Critics claim that it will de-professionalise teachers. NUT activists and their allies insist that teachers will have to abandon the ideas that were prevalent when they were trained, and teach in a different way, which risks alienating and demoralising them.

There are good reasons for being concerned about the de-professionalisation of teachers, but Hirsch’s curriculum for the UK is not one of them….

Two main forces have contributed to the de-professionalisation of teaching: the politicisation of performance targets; and the impact of falsely named ‘progressive’ education that assigns a diminished role to teachers. Assessment is useful as a guide to teachers, parents and pupils about how much young people have learnt. However, assessment became dysfunctional in the last few years…. An official report in June 2011 … recognised that narrow ‘drilling’ had become common, squeezing out real learning and denying children a broad education. Lesson time in primary schools was used to rehearse answers instead of deepening and extending knowledge. The focus on results in English and maths meant that other subjects were neglected.

Critics of Hirsch have not realised that his work is an alternative to rehearsal and drilling, not an extension of it…. Cramming for exams is not the same as equipping the memory with useful information that will aid future understanding. Learning times tables, for example, involves memorisation in order to increase fluency in the use of numbers. It is about acquiring knowledge to make analysis and critical thinking possible.

Confusion over the symbiotic relationship between knowledge and skills is so widespread that the sociologist Frank Furedi decided to weigh in too. He sees very basic misconceptions in teachers’ objections to the new knowledge-building curriculum:

Education has been so instrumentalised that its main function is now to ‘provide skills’. The teaching of knowledge itself, for its own sake, is frequently dismissed as an old-fashioned custom that is not relevant to the twenty-first century….

In any discussion about the relationship between analytical skills and knowledge, it is easy to become one-sided. Often, too much of a polarising distinction is made between knowledge and its application. It is possible to make a distinction: knowledge is accomplished through learning principles, concepts and facts, while skills represent the capacity to use that knowledge in specific contexts. But in reality, these two things are inextricably bound together….

Knowledge is not simply the sum total of a body of facts; it is based on concepts, theories and specific structures of thought. So even if some of the content of knowledge changes in line with new developments, its structure and concepts can retain their significance for very long periods of time. Geometric theorems may be contested over time, but they nonetheless express a body of knowledge that transcends centuries….

A liberal humanist education is underpinned by a conviction that children are the rightful heirs to the achievements and legacy of the past. It is precisely because education gives meaning to the human experience that it needs to be valued in its own right.

Anyone who takes a careful look at the Core Knowledge Sequence for the US or the UK will see a curriculum that builds broad knowledge of the world and engages students in grappling with ideas and questions that are central to the human condition. As Green explains, it is a curriculum that could fully restore the teaching profession because it restores teachers to their rightful position as guides to the world:

Many young teachers are still being taught that lessons should be 10 per cent the teacher and 90 per cent the children. Teachers find themselves being criticised for being ‘too didactic’, which is a bit like criticising a doctor for being ‘too medical’. There were two sources for these attitudes: child development theories and political theories that saw teaching as no more than a kind of authoritarianism….

We now know that theories which devalue the teacher are especially harmful to children from poor backgrounds.  The bottom quarter of young people, whether defined by their school attainment, or by their parents’ income, are badly served by ‘progressive’ methods….

Hirsch’s core knowledge curriculum is designed so that every child from every background can benefit. It represents what children from all social groups can be taught. And it is based on the belief that teaching is a vocation. Teachers are custodians of the best interests of children. Their role is not to facilitate learning defined by the children themselves as interesting or relevant to their lives. The teacher’s calling is to open up new possibilities that children simply don’t know about….

Content-rich education offers a broad curriculum for every child. Expectations are high. They are not just taught the three Rs but a wide array of subjects to prepare for modern life. Out of six chapters in Hirsch’s UK primary school curriculum, one is on the visual arts and one on music.

Trade union activists assume that to be a professional is be autonomous, essentially free to do as you wish. But teaching is not only a vocation, which implies dedication to bringing out the best in every child, it also has much in common with the ‘learned professions’, occupations that are constantly open to the discoveries of science or experience. No true professional would resent having to abandon ideas taught in early training. The self-conception of the teacher as a learned professional is of someone constantly developing a better understanding of how best to teach and what to teach. It’s normal to be asked to do things differently because earlier ideas have been discredited by practical experience or the sciences. This idea of the learned professional is closely linked to autonomy. But it does not mean never having to change your ways unless you choose to; it means being guided by an independent search for the truth and being willing to change pre-conceptions when necessary.

True professionals do not object to applying their craft in a different way when new methods have been shown to be more effective.

Educators should be celebrating knowledge for its own sake and should be fighting for this new curriculum. It offers students the best of what humanity has discovered and created—and it builds knowledge and skills in the only way that really works: together.

Larry Summers Calls Higher Education Stubborn and Anachronistic, Offers Suggestions

by Robert Pondiscio
January 23rd, 2012

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Posted in Education News, Education Practice, Higher Education | 8 Comments »

The following guest post is from Cedar Riener, assistant professor of Psychology at Randolph-Macon College  in Ashland, Virginia.   He blogs about education reform, college teaching, history and philosophy of science at Cedar’s Digest, where this post also appears.

I squirmed a lot reading Larry Summers’ recent piece in the New York Times on where he thinks and hopes higher education will go in the future. Here’s a point by point analysis:

He begins by undermining his own credibility:

A paradox of American higher education is this: The expectations of leading universities do much to define what secondary schools teach, and much to establish a template for what it means to be an educated man or woman.

REALLY? Have you paid attention to any of the K-12 school reform of the administration you have been a part of? The encouraged emphasis on basic reading and math skills at the cost of social studies, science, physical education and extracurricular activities runs exactly counter to the template of colleges and universities in which diverse offerings, and choices of majors proliferate. But I’ll forgive this vague handwaving and move on. Summers’ point is that colleges are seen as cutting edge, but in fact offer stale education which is stuck in the past because tenured faculty (who are often in charge of the curriculum) are stubborn. Dismissed college president says faculty are stubborn and old-fashioned, the Times is ON IT!

The paragraph in which he lays out the reasons that colleges are old fashioned seemed to me to be amazingly disingenuous. Colleges are staid and stuck in the past because… departments and courses have the same names as they did 50 years ago? Students take four classes and exams in blue books? Students pick a major? So the biology major is the same as it was 50 years ago because it is still called biology? Really?

Summers wants higher education to better reflect how the mind and world works. But as someone with expertise in mental processes who works in higher education, Summers’ understanding of both the current state of higher education and the science of cognitive psychology are simplistic and off base. As a result, we shouldn’t take his six “guesses and hopes” seriously except as a warning of the perils of breezy theorizing by famous intellectuals.

1) College curriculum will become “more about how to process information and less about imparting it”.

This is the standard: “You don’t need to know any facts because you can Google them, you just need critical thinking skills of finding and evaluating facts.” It is so tempting. Information is everywhere, it is at our fingertips, and the ubiquity of this information will spare us from keeping any of it in our heads, just like we don’t have to remember phone numbers, or directions anymore. Unfortunately, this is not how the brain works. As Daniel Willingham reminds us in his book “Why Don’t Students Like School?” “Factual knowledge precedes skill.” Whenever cognitive psychologists look closely at critical thinking, we find that it is tightly integrated with background knowledge. Any definition of critical thinking involves the creative and rigorous application of a network of facts. It is impossible to think critically about neuroscience unless you know dopamine from acetylcholine, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex from the occipitotemporal junction. Not remembering phone numbers is not the same as facts which we will sometime need to recruit to do our thinking. Summers shows he doesn’t have certain facts about language education and cognitive psychology, which he could easily look up, but which undermine the validity of his “critical thinking.” Read the rest of this entry »

My District Spent $33 Million on Technology and All I Got Are These Lousy Test Scores

by Robert Pondiscio
September 7th, 2011

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Posted in accountability, Education News, Education Practice | 12 Comments »

Maybe the medium is not the message.

Voters in the Kyrene school district, which serves students in Tempe, Phoenix and Chandler, Arizona approved spending $33 million on education technology, and are being asked to fork over another $46.5 million in November. The funds have purchased a lot of laptops, interactive whiteboards and software. What it hasn’t bought is higher test scores. The New York Times reports reading and math scores have stagnated in Kyrene since 2005 while rising statewide. “To many education experts, something is not adding up — here and across the country. In a nutshell: schools are spending billions on technology, even as they cut budgets and lay off teachers, with little proof that this approach is improving basic learning,” the paper reports.

“This conundrum calls into question one of the most significant contemporary educational movements. Advocates for giving schools a major technological upgrade — which include powerful educators, Silicon Valley titans and White House appointees — say digital devices let students learn at their own pace, teach skills needed in a modern economy and hold the attention of a generation weaned on gadgets.”

Anyone shocked? Regular readers of this blog will note we have regularly questioned the rush to fill classrooms with technology without asking how–how exactly–it improves outcomes or what we expect kids to learn. Breathless pronouncements about the needs and preferences of “digital natives,” and the imperative of endlessly individualized curriculum and instruction, elevate tools over their use. It’s magical thinking and overlooks that every piece of educational technology—from a piece of slate on a child’s lap and bound books in a one-room schoolhouse to Smartboards and Twitter—is a delivery mechanism, a means of displaying, transmitting, or manipulating ideas and information. The bottle is not the wine.

There is a broad tendency among edtechnophiles to conflate student engagement with achievement, and the Times is particularly strong in puncturing that myth. “The research, what little there is of it, does not establish a clear link between computer-inspired engagement and learning,” notes the Times, citing Randy Yerrick, associate dean of educational technology at the University of Buffalo:

“For him, the best educational uses of computers are those that have no good digital equivalent. As examples, he suggests using digital sensors in a science class to help students observe chemical or physical changes, or using multimedia tools to reach disabled children.

“But he says engagement is a “fluffy term” that can slide past critical analysis. And Professor [Larry] Cuban at Stanford argues that keeping children engaged requires an environment of constant novelty, which cannot be sustained. ‘There is very little valid and reliable research that shows the engagement causes or leads to higher academic achievement,’ he said.”

The Times is as guilty as any news organization of mooning over the need for “digital-age upgrades” and to liberate schools from their 19th century mindset. Thus it’s gratifying to see the Grey Lady take a clear-eyed look at what exactly we get when we fill our classrooms up with tech toys. The answer needn’t be “not much.” But that will always be the answer unless we make an equal effort to thoughtfully design a content-rich curriculum and stop assuming that mere “skill” with technology is a meaningful goal for schooling.

Every trade celebrates its tools, but education has made a fetish of it, too often treating technology as an end, not a means. It is hard to imagine a chef saying, “it’s not the meal that matters but the ingredients”; or an architect declaring, “Buildings aren’t important. Building materials are important.”  But when someone says what we learn doesn’t matter, but that we learn to learn–that skills and tools are what really matter, not content and products–we nod knowingly as if we have heard something profound.

Yetis, UFOs and Term Papers

by Robert Pondiscio
August 9th, 2011

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Posted in Education Practice, Research and Reports | 16 Comments »

Update:  Cedar Reiner posts a research paper-length blog post on this from his perspective as a college professor and cognitive scientist.  Stick with it.  The conclusion is worth the wait.

Ask a high school student – any high school student – when they were last required to submit a research paper.  Not a five paragraph essay or a “personal response,” but a paper – an in-depth piece of academic research and original writing, drawing upon deep reading of multiple sources.  Think footnotes.  A bibliography.  The MLA Handbook.  Research papers are the academic equivalent of the Yeti or UFOs: sightings are rare and those who argue for their existence are routinely dismissed as cranks or nuts.  You may be surprised to learn, therefore, that research papers are the sum and symbol of all that ails American education.

You didn’t know? 

Writing in the New York Times, Virginia Heffernan becomes, by my rough calculation, the 18,938th pundit to suggest that the real problem of American education is its adherence to a 19th century model.  What we need, she writes, is a “digital-age upgrade.”   She cites the wholly imaginary “statistic” that 65% of today’s grade school aged kids “may end up doing work that hasn’t been invented yet.”   Thus, we can’t keep preparing students “for a world that doesn’t exist.”

“Abigail won’t be doing genetic counseling. Oliver won’t be developing Android apps for currency traders or co-chairing Google’s philanthropic division. Even those digital-age careers will be old hat. Maybe the grown-up Oliver and Abigail will program Web-enabled barrettes or quilt with scraps of Berber tents. Or maybe they’ll be plying a trade none of us old-timers will even recognize as work.”

(Psst!  Have a look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the 10 most common occupations for Americans.  Shockingly low-skill, low-pay, and low-tech, isn’t it?   Clearly there are some old-timers who don’t recognize what work looks like right now.  Digital careers?  Tens of millions of Americans are still working with their digits.)

We cannot, Heffernan insists, “keep ignoring the formidable cognitive skills they’re developing on their own.”  Set aside for a moment the curious notion that we should reimagine education around skills kids are developing on their own.   No, what’s really “inhibiting today’s students” is their teachers’ and professors’ insistence that students write papers.  “Semester after semester, year after year, ‘papers’ are styled as the highest form of writing,” she writes. “And semester after semester, teachers and professors are freshly appalled when they turn up terrible.”  Heffernan’s touchstone for her attack on research papers is Now You See It, a “galvanic” book by the MacArthur Foundation’s Cathy N. Davidson, which argues, per Heffernan, against the “industrial-era holdover system that still informs our unrenovated classrooms.”

“Ms. Davidson herself was appalled not long ago when her students at Duke, who produced witty and incisive blogs for their peers, turned in disgraceful, unpublishable term papers. But instead of simply carping about students with colleagues in the great faculty-lounge tradition, Ms. Davidson questioned the whole form of the research paper. “What if bad writing is a product of the form of writing required in school — the term paper — and not necessarily intrinsic to a student’s natural writing style or thought process?” She adds: ‘What if “research paper” is a category that invites, even requires, linguistic and syntactic gobbledygook?’”

Online blogs directed at peers, Davidson observed by contrast, “exhibit fewer typographical and factual errors, less plagiarism, and generally better, more elegant and persuasive prose than classroom assignments by the same writers.”  At Flypaper, Kathleen Porter-Magee, struggling heroically to overcome the handicap of her own industrial-era education, answers with an elegant and persuasive blog post of her own:

“Heffernan seems to have missed her own point. As she implies, we are no better at predicting what today’s elementary students will be doing in twenty years than Hanna-Barbera were at painting what 21st century life would look like in the Jetsons. And so, our job as educators is not hitch our wagons to the latest education fad in response to changing—and often fleeting—technology, but rather to identify the timeless knowledge and skills that all students must master to succeed in any environment.”

Ten years ago, legendary Yeti hunter Will Fitzhugh, the editor of The Concord Review and an unsung hero of American education, oversaw a study of the state of the research paper in U.S. schools.  The results will surprise only digital fetishists who confuse contemporary schools with Dickensian workhouses:  While 95% teachers surveyed believed writing a research term paper is “important” or “very important,” 62% never assigned a paper of 3,000-5,000 words in length; 81% never assign a paper of over 5,000 words.  And that’s ten years ago.  Unless there has been a renaissance of scholarly rigor that I’ve somehow overlooked, I suspect the percentage of 2011 high school graduates who have ever produced a research paper of any length or substance is now a single-digit number.  A small one.

Why?  Writing a research papers, as anyone can tell you, is not an “authentic” learning task.   The average student is already far more likely to “demonstrate mastery” by creating a poster, an advertisement, a blog post, or a series of tweets than writing a research paper. If the future of education means an end to the tyranny of the paper, rest assured the future is already here. The fresh-thinking offered up by Heffernan and others who wring their hands over our anachronistic schools is as least as old as John Dewey, and its triumph is very nearly complete.  Just ask a high school student. 

What Heffernan is offering up, sorry to say, is a blander version of 21st Century skills, which privileges skills over content, and devalues actual academic work.  The sad parade continues.  We talk about rigor and academic achievement while dismissing the legitimate products of scholarship as inauthentic and anachronistic.

“Pardon my age, but if 65 percent of jobs in the future will have new names, they will all still require basic literacy, patience, honesty, responsibility, probably some knowledge of math and science, an ability to listen and to follow instructions, etc. In short, nothing new,” says Fitzhugh via email.  “I don’t forsee the day when ‘witty and incisive blogs’ will be able to take the place of legislation, annual reports, history books, judicial opinions or any  of the other vital tasks of a literate society,” he concludes.

Fractured Skills

by Robert Pondiscio
February 24th, 2011

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Posted in Curriculum, Education News | 20 Comments »

Fascinating post — and responses — over at Common Core’s blog.  The organization, which advocates for content-rich curriculum and teaching has found a mole and invited her to blog about her experience teaching at a New Tech High School, a hotbed of the 21st Century skills movement.

With 62 schools in 14 states, New Tech’s mission is to help students gain both ”the knowledge and skills they need” but teacher  Emma Bryant says don’t be fooled, it’s really all about the skills.   “We practice project based learning, utilize the latest technology, and hold to a mission of helping our students acquire ’21st century skills,’” she writes.”  And what does that look like, exactly? 

“Roughly once a month we present students with a new project which must result in a “product.” According to our model the more “real world” the product, the better. Real world, meaning the product mirrors what could reasonably be demanded in a corporate setting — from a redesigned company logo and slogan to a promotional video or a press release. Students work in small teams to complete projects, with each team member receiving the same grade at the end. After all, it’s not about what individual students learn but the final product. Students are assessed on a handful of learning outcomes — collaboration, communication, innovation, work ethic, technological literacy, information literacy and content. Content usually makes up between 15 and 30 percent of a student’s grade.”

Content, as she describes it, takes a backseat to the student work product.  Emma’s students “might work a quote from a short story into a reworded company slogan,” for example. ”Or perhaps they might work with Photoshop to create a company logo depicting an event from European history.”

“Apart from being grafted onto ‘real world’ products, content is rarely discussed in the classroom. Instead, students deal with content in teams or individually, with little to no scaffolding from the teacher. Dialogue, questions, critical thinking, and debate surrounding content are low on the list of things you will see in a 21st century classroom. And so students end up with convoluted ideas about history, a cursory understanding of and appreciation for literature, and a shaky foundation in math and science.

Just as fascinating as Emma’s post is the comments it has engendered on Common Core’s blog.  Several New Tech teachers have complained strenuously–some  earnestly, others sarcastically.  All take issue with the idea that the schools are giving short shrift to academic content.   “If Ms. Bryant feels that content is pushed aside in her classroom, perhaps she should turn her critical eye toward the curriculum she creates and how it is implemented in her classroom,” writes one. 

But it’s worth asking why teachers are creating curriculum at all, and whether this doesn’t bolster Emma’s claim that content is fungible and skills non-negotiable.  If you view a subject–any subject–as a body of knowledge to be studied and mastered, then “coverage” (a dirty word among progressive and skill-driven educators) leading to deep appreciation and understanding matters.  A curriculum–a coherent grade-by-grade overview of all the topics within a discipline that students are expected to know– becomes very important.  It’s not something teachers are expected to create, but rather to use their creativity and skills to deliver.  The students’ ability to produce a “product” become a means to demonstrate mastery.  Put the emphasis on the skills and products, however, and the content becomes merely a delivery mechanism–something the product is “about.”   If teachers are creating their own curriculum, then is it not perfectly obvious that they view the content as unimportant or secondary to the skills being taught?

I have written previously my belief that this is not some nefarious scheme to devalue content.  Rather, I tend to think that 21st century skills advocates are genuinely perplexed by the criticism that they do not value content.  After all all of those products produced by project-based learning are about something.  And that’s content, right?  Not exactly.  The disconnect comes down to coherence.  Critical thinking, language development, vocabulary growth and many of the most desirable ends of education are “domain specific.”  You cannot be an all-purpose critical thinker or problem solver.  These “skills” are largely a function of the depth of your knowledge of a particular subject or domain and do not readily translate from one domain to another.  Thus any attempt to privilege or emphasize skills at the expense of coherence or rigor is doomed to produce less than complete understanding–and less than compelling “products.” 

As always, the issue is not content vs. skills as an either/or proposition.  Both are essential and desirable.  It’s a question of which is the horse and which is the cart–and which is most likely to succeed in producing the desired results we all want for kids.

Update:  Joanne Jacobs joins the fray.

Growing Up Gadgety

by Robert Pondiscio
November 22nd, 2010

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Posted in Education News, Education Practice, Parents, Students, Teaching | 12 Comments »

Is prolonged, focused attention a 21st Century skill? 

“Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters,” notes the New York Times.  ”But computers and cellphones, and the constant stream of stimuli they offer, pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning.”

“Growing Up Digital, Wired For Distraction,” a major Times thumbsucker, is long enough to challenge the attention span not just of teens but Trappist monks.  But it’s must-reading for educators.  Behind the undeniable lure of technology is a risk that “developing brains can become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks — and less able to sustain attention.” 

“Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task but for jumping to the next thing,” says Michael Rich of Harvard Medical School, the executive director of the Center on Media and Child Health in Boston. “The worry is we’re raising a generation of kids in front of screens whose brains are going to be wired differently.”

The tension, of course, is at the same time researchers are raising red flags about raising children immersed in a digital bath, education is redoubling efforts to increase technology use in the classroom for engagement, customization and efficiency.  The Times makes much of a research study, familiar to readers of this blog, that reading and academic works goes down not up, when computers arrive in the home.

The result is one of those Rorschach tests of an article, virtually guaranteed to confirm your biases  (The world is going to digital hell!  We’ll never engage kids if we don’t embrace technology!).  The most interesting section of the piece is the Times look at current research on ”what happens to the brains of young people who are constantly online and in touch.” 

The researchers looked at how the use of these media affected the boys’ brainwave patterns while sleeping and their ability to remember their homework in the subsequent days. They found that playing video games led to markedly lower sleep quality than watching TV, and also led to a “significant decline” in the boys’ ability to remember vocabulary words. The findings were published in the journal Pediatrics.

Other studies cited by the Times suggest that “periods of rest are critical in allowing the brain to synthesize information, make connections between ideas and even develop the sense of self.”  “Downtime is to the brain what sleep is to the body,” observes Michael Rich, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and executive director of the Center on Media and Child Health in Boston. “But kids are in a constant mode of stimulation.”

“The headline is: bring back boredom,” says Dr. Rich, who the Times points out, recently gave a speech to the American Academy of Pediatrics entitled, “Finding Huck Finn: Reclaiming Childhood from the River of Electronic Screens.”

Talking Fast, Not Sensibly

by Robert Pondiscio
March 24th, 2010

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Posted in Education Practice, Essay | 15 Comments »

“We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.”  Henry David Thoreau, 1854

I was reminded of the above quote from Walden while reading Diana Senechal’s thrilling cover story in the new issue of the American Educator.  Diana is a familiar figure to readers of this blog, but she arrives on the broader stage of education thought with her essay, “The Most Daring Education Reform of All.”  At one level, it is a skeptical look at the “clamor for newness” that marks education reform generally and the specific focus on “21st century skills.”   

           Far too often, the 21st century skills argument carries a tone of urgency, even emergency: We no longer live in a world of books, paper, and pen. Children grow up surrounded by digital media. They can communicate with peers around the world; they can find obscure information in seconds. Yet they are unprepared for the jobs of today. We still treat them as passive recipients of knowledge; we still drill them on facts that they could just as easily Google. If we do not act now, we will lose our global competitiveness—so everyone who cares about our future should jump on board. Employers need people who can create, solve problems, work together, use technology, and think critically. We must make our students critics, innovators, and team players; we should teach them to communicate in the broad sense of the word by infusing their coursework with blogging, recording, filming, texting, collaborating, and tweeting.

But Senechal’s purpose is larger, and she’s not merely raging against the schlock of the new.  The root of generations of ed reform fads is the assumption that schools’ primary objective is “to meet the demands of the day,” she writes.  And that assumption must be questioned.   

          At its fullest and best, education prepares us to be with others and apart, to enjoy the life of the mind, to survive and prosper, to bring up new generations, to act with integrity and conscience, to pursue useful and interesting work, and to participate in civic and cultural action and thought. If schools try to be up to date all the time, then they are reduced to chasing fads and obeying the whims of the market. Part of the schools’ work is to help prepare students for their future occupations, but they do not achieve this by scurrying to meet employers’ demands.

Critics will be tempted to dismiss much of what Senechal has to say as a mere defense of traditional curriculum and teaching.  But they do so at their own peril.  Creativity and innovation, the oft-cited goals of contemporary education require knowledge and practice, she observes. “When we take them too lightly, we encourage and even celebrate shoddiness.  Mediocre creation abounds, as does false innovation,” Senechal writes.  She illustrates this with a particularly pointed anecdote:

          Once I attended a professional development session where we were told about the power of the Internet as motivator for students. The speaker cited the example of a student who, as a result of a blogging project, had become excited about poetry and started posting her own poems on the school blog. I took a look at the poems that evening, Googled a few lines, and saw that all but one were plagiarized—not from first-rate poets, but from websites that featured sentimental and inspirational verse. Why was this not caught earlier? Anyone paying close attention to the poems themselves would likely have suspected that they weren’t hers (the language was an adult’s, and hackneyed at that). The presenters were genuinely excited that the Internet had motivated a student to write; perhaps they chose not to judge the poems lest they interfere with her creative process. This is the danger: when we value creativity (and technology) above the actual quality of the things created, we lose sight of what we are doing and why.

Diana’s piece reminds me that education, and especially education reform, tends to be thick with people that – there’s no nice way to say this—simply don’t much care for education.  It is a means to an end, something to serve the “larger” goals of economic, political, or social progress.  Senechal reminds us that not only is this a dispiriting way to view education, but ultimately, it’s a self-defeating one.

                When the frenzy over 21st century skills passes—and it will—students will see that their opportunities depend largely on their knowledge. Many will graduate with blogging experience, but those who can write a strong essay on a Supreme Court case will be better prepared to enter the fields of history, law, or journalism. Many will have online science portfolios, but those who have studied calculus, read parts of Newton’s Principia, and can prove Kepler’s second law (for example) will be much better prepared to study physics at an advanced level. …The ability to make a YouTube video or podcast will mean little in the long run, if the other things are absent. Moreover, those technologies may be obsolete in another few years, but literature, science, languages, mathematics, history, music, art, and drama will stay.

Ultimately, Diana’s piece is not a rebuke, but a challenge to rise above mindless fealty to the “claims of the present” and “seek out excellence, nurture it, defend it, and live up to it.”  To make change, but to do so  thoughtfully, she concludes, “may be the most daring education reform of all.”

Brilliant stuff.  On a day when most of the education world will be examining the latest NAEP scores, and using the data — the data! — to defend or decry various policies, programs and “theories of action” it is good to be reminded why we get out of bed in the morning.  Or why we should.

The Questions Get Tougher For P21

by Robert Pondiscio
December 4th, 2009

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Posted in Curriculum, Education News | 7 Comments »

Common Core’s aggressive skepticism about the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) is slowly emerging as one of the great David vs. Goliath stories in education.   The tiny Washington-based nonprofit, which is less than two years old, has been relentless in questioning the whole concept of 21st century skills.  A big piece in next week’s Ed Week by Stephen Sawchuk gives big play and credibility to one of Common Core’s more troubling charges: that P21 is “a veiled attempt by technology companies—which make up the bulk of the group’s membership—to gain more influence over the classroom.”  Sawchuk writes:

Although business-education partnerships are by no means new, P21 stands apart for the number of its partners, their influence in the technology world, and the sheer size and scope of the work it is trying to perform.  And for that reason, it is worth asking: What is P21? And how does the group plan to respond to criticism as states adopt its prescription for student learning?

The piece also examines the background of P21′s executive director Ken Kay, a veteran technology policy advocate.  The most interesting new tidbit:  “According to P21’s publicly available 990, a federal form required of 501(c)3 tax-exempt organizations, the group used to share an address with Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti, a Washington-based technology lobbying firm,” Sawchuck reports.   So what do all those technology companies get out of being part of the Partnership?

In exchange for dues, the member organizations receive several benefits, Mr. Kay explained. They become part of “a proactive process for creating a new vision of education.” They have new networking opportunities and better access to federal policymakers and state leaders. Finally, they can access “early intelligence” about where the education system may be headed in order to help ensure that products and services align with that vision.

P21 spent “in excess of $1 million of its revenue” two years ago to promote 21st-century skills, EdWeek reports.  About half of the sum went to E-Luminate, “a marketing and communications-consulting firm of which Mr. Kay is the co-founder and chief executive officer. The firm has a contract with P21 to handle day-to-day operations of the organization,” Sawchuk notes.

To be sure, P21 the questionable 21st Century Skills meme is still an education bumper sticker — a phrase people throw around without thinking much about.  But thanks to Common Core and Lynne Munson, the chorus of skeptics is growing louder and louder.

21st Century Skills Comes to Springfield Elementary

by Robert Pondiscio
October 7th, 2009

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Posted in Education News | 8 Comments »

If the Simpsons parody a trend, has it peaked? If so, 21st Century Skills may officially have achieved punchline status.  In last Sunday’s episode, a classroom prank backfires; Bart and his classmates get their teacher, Mrs. Krabappel, fired.  She’s replaced by a Zachary Vaughn, who announces, ”I just got my masters in education from Tufts University and you are my first class ever!”   But, the energetic newbie quickly adds, “why talk when I can text?” He texts the class a homework assignment: “20 minutes of Twittering.”  Later, Bart describes his first day with the new teacher

Then Zach Skyped us, live blogged our spelling bee and friended us on Facebook!”

“I thought you were studying the Lincoln Douglas debates,” replies Lisa.

“You mean the L-Man/D-Dog flamewars?”

In another scene, the teacher mocks a student who describes the Monroe Doctrine, noting “Do you mean to tell me you memorized that fact when anyone with a cellphone can find it out in 30 seconds?” 

“I’ve crammed my head full of garbage!” the distraught student moans.

“Yes, you have,” says Zach, who also describes Mrs Krabappel’s smiley face stickers on graded papers as “caveman kudos.”  Naturally, he texts smileys instead. 

Tellingly, the rest of the episode involves Bart’s efforts to undo his prank and get his old teacher her job back.

(H/T: Mid-riffs)

Plus ça Change

by Robert Pondiscio
September 15th, 2009

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Posted in Education Practice | 5 Comments »

Diane Ravitch takes to the op-ed page of the Boston Globe to urge Bay Staters not to be seduced by 21st century skills hucksterism.   Her singular contribution to education is historical memory in a field where it’s famously lacking.  Whether it’s the “Project Method” of the early 20th century, the “Activity Movement’ of the 20s and 30s, the “Life Adjustment Movement’’ of the 1950s, or  “Outcome-Based Education’’ in the 1980s, Ravitch reminds us that we’ve seen this movie before. 

None of these initiatives survived. They did have impact, however: They inserted into American education a deeply ingrained suspicion of academic studies and subject matter. For the past century, our schools of education have obsessed over critical-thinking skills, projects, cooperative learning, experiential learning, and so on. But they have paid precious little attention to the disciplinary knowledge that young people need to make sense of the world.

“For over a century we have numbed the brains of teachers with endless blather about process and abstract thinking skills,” Ravitch concludes. ”We have taught them about graphic organizers and Venn diagrams and accountable talk, data-based decision-making, rubrics, and leveled libraries. But we have ignored what matters most. We have neglected to teach them that one cannot think critically without quite a lot of knowledge to think about. Thinking critically involves comparing and contrasting and synthesizing what one has learned. And a great deal of knowledge is necessary before one can begin to reflect on its meaning and look for alternative explanations.”

My neck hurts. Must have injured it nodding vigorously in agreement.

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