Does giving a kid an iPod mean you are teaching “21st century skills?”
A Chapel Hill, North Carolina middle school may become the first in the country to give an iPod to every teacher and student, “an experiment that would challenge teachers and administrators to ensure the hand-held devices are used as learning tools, not toys,” reports the News & Observer. The school’s principal defends the iPod plan with a phrase that is rapidly becoming an education cliche: “[Our teachers] state their commitment to teach 21st-century skills, because technology is the future for students and teachers.”
Reporter Matt Dees injects a healthy note of skepticism in his piece, noting “it’s still not clear how the iPod Touches would be used at Culbreth Middle School. And school officials know that students may use the iPod Touches more to download the new Jonas Brothers single than to tap the riches of human knowledge.” Dees quotes Core Knowledge founder E.D. Hirsch, who comments, “There has been a tendency to use technology as a substitute for curriculum.”
Technique and how-to ideas have taken the place of deciding what it is, exactly, we want these children to learn, says Hirsch. But I have nothing against the technology if it’s in the service of grown-ups facing their responsibilities to decide what the students need to know precisely. If they did that, these technical gadgets will be valuable.
I’ve been hearing the phrase a lot, so I ask the question in earnest: What exactly does it mean to ”teach 21st century skills”? Is learning to play an instrument a 21st century skill because you use an iPod? Is writing a research paper a 21st century skill just because you use Google? I’m hard-pressed to think of a single use of the phrase that didn’t conflate the tool and the task.
In a New York Times piece last week, Steve Lohr noted the technology is starting to “turn the corner” in schools, and offered an example of how it can transform learning. “The emphasis can shift to project-based learning, a real break with the textbook-and-lecture model of education. In a high school class, a project might begin with a hypothetical letter from the White House that says oil prices are spiking, the economy is faltering and the president’s poll numbers are falling. The assignment would be to devise a new energy policy in two weeks,” Lohr wrote. But as Joanne Jacobs noted, there’s nothing new about project learning. I would add that neither is working collaboratively intrinsically “21st century.”
Critical thinking? Problem solving? As old as banging rocks together to make fire. Working collaboratively? You mean, like hunting in groups to bring down a antelope? I’m no Luddite, and I’m all for using technology in the service of learning. But what are these uniquely “21st century skills?” Are there any?
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