Our 21st-Century 'Risk'
Teaching for Content and Skills
Our 21st-century nation is economically and educationally more "at risk" now than when the National Commission on Excellence in Education proclaimed it so in 1983 . Both conditions require bipartisan political and educational solutions. Yet our politicians apparently do not get this, as daily on television we see them depressingly unable to transcend their polarized, ideological blinders. (We need to remind ourselves that they are the products of our education system.) Likewise on the education front, leaders continue the long-standing debate about whether schools, and presumably colleges and universities, should emphasize the teaching of content or 21st-century skills. ( "Backers of '21st-Century Skills' Take Flak," March 4, 2009.)
We can only hope for a more enlightened political debate. But in education, we should and do know better. Recent work in developmental, cognitive, and brain-based learning research makes it clear that this is not about content or skills, but content and skills. Learning involves constructing meaning, not just knowing about things; it is about being able to apply what one knows to novel situations. In a knowledge-rich world, being able to access, structure, and use "content" is crucial. What the New York Times writer Thomas L. Friedman calls a "flat world"—the global leveling of opportunities resulting from the ways people, in his words, "plug, play, compete, connect, and collaborate with more equal power than ever before"—requires all of the knowledge, intellectual horsepower, rigor, and deep thinking we have traditionally associated with the best of education.
Instant access to 21st-century information technology does not absolve us of the need to master appropriate content, a fact that E.D. Hirsch Jr. has well articulated. But equally necessary is the ability to connect disparate dots across virtually infinite information—to think critically, apply knowledge, solve problems, and write and speak well (thinking made public). And thus those arguing for teaching "21st-century skills" are also on very solid ground. The debate is not just about the ends of education but, equally important, its means—curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment—and where the emphasis on content and skill acquisition and its measurement ought to be placed, given...
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