21st Century Education????

In the education world today, a debate is raging over "21st century skills". Should teaching 21st century skills - critical thinking, innovation, problem solving, collaboration, global awareness - be a primary goal or remain secondary to teaching core content areas like math, science, history and literature? How do we get kids ready for the future? Should we set our sails for skills, or content? Everyone is seeking a panacea for our failing schools, but few are looking in the right place and many, I'm afraid, are far too focused on the wrong time.

In my thirty-something years of experience with young people I've become convinced that we must concentrate on the 21st century children and youth we already have rather than just on the 21st century adults we say we want. We must focus the discussion on how we teach our children rather than only on what we teach them.

As a teacher educator deeply steeped in the richness of early childhood, I often find myself compelled to say, “I can change a lot of things (at least theoretically), but I can not change how children learn.” Young children must learn by doing and moving. They will only learn well what relates to their own lives. They must have the freedom to explore their physical, social, and intellectual personal worlds in their own ways. They must feel safe and valued in every way in order to risk exploring. And if, gentle teachers, you succeed in meeting these absolutely essential needs, then good luck trying to stop children’s learning of critical thinking skills or any body of knowledge you steer them toward. To most children, from these beginnings all good things can come, in their developmentally appropriate time, from global awareness to nearly any amount of content mastery.

Unfortunately, these beginnings are not guaranteed. They're not guaranteed to any children in this climate of high stakes testing, whether those children's parents are well-to-do or struggling. And there is surely no place where these beginnings are more conspicuously absent than the typical school in our poorest urban neighborhoods.

The good news is that all our children, however fragile or strong, come to us already masters of learning many momentous things. Walking, talking, running, singing, smiling, and feeding and dressing themselves ­– they've already proven they're eager to learn. I see it daily in every school I visit. But in the hundreds of hours I've spent in urban classrooms I've also been forced to see that by 1st or 2nd grade many children seem to have literally given up, or to be on the verge of it. They act – and act out – like they already consider themselves to be failures, if not in all ways then at least in one or two.

The imperatives of teaching, grounded in how children learn, are missing, and we've gotten what we deserve. Is it any mystery, then, why to most of the 2nd grade teachers I work with, 21st century skills look pretty far away, especially for the kids in their classrooms who have given up in some way? Is it really a surprise when those 2nd graders become ever more rebellious as they get older? With each new grade they continue to encounter teachers who aren’t taught, supported, or encouraged to teach in the ways that children learn best.

There are still those teachers who get by with requiring high levels of obedience, memorization, and passivity. They employ a kind of transmission model that's gussied up with a lot of charisma, and some are quite good at it. In the classes I visit, however, whether preschool or high school, it's getting harder and harder even for those hyper-energetic souls. Kids rebel and then it's right into what Pedro Noguera calls the “discipline gap." This is the land we've contrived for children who can't or won't, or who fail too long or rebel against teaching that doesn't work for them and adults who gave up on them long ago. In that land, to paraphrase Dr. Noguera, we start with humiliation and punishment and move right on up to exclusion. Woe betide us if we're depending on this inadequate, punitive, but extremely entrenched system to help our children become the best they can be in the 21st or any other century.

We've made choices to have our 3-year-olds trace letters too long and play too little; choices to have our 2nd graders lose recess privileges because they act out against the passivity of their classes. This is not rocket science – although it is brain science. Best practices in early childhood were agreed upon long ago. They emphasize child centered, richly interactive learning environments that encourage lots of active exploration, and humane and caring teachers knowledgeable about how kids learn and how to teach so kids can learn. Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, Abe Maslow, William Glasser; follow any solid developmental theorist and you'll get not only good beginnings but active, dynamic schools for every age. In spite of what we know, we've chosen otherwise.

We’re spending a lot of energy debating whether we should teach 21st century skills, or content, or both, – the what of our education system – but until we get the how right, agreeing on what we're to teach may be impossible. Of course we owe it to the future of our children to put serious thought into what they must learn today to be successful tomorrow. However, we can ensure that success only by putting our energy into changing the way children are taught now.

Accountability Poem - for teachers

On Accountability:

Measure the success of your teaching
by the light in your students’ eyes –
when they ‘get it’,
when they see some small or large truth beyond
answering the question right and pleasing you,
the teacher.
If you don’t know how,
yet,
Watch for that light, those lights,
just notice, pay attention.
And follow.
You will never go wrong if you follow the light in their eyes.