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Saturday, January 04, 2014

 
 
 

The Need for Change

 
 

In the book titled Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner, he states that essential competencies and habits of the mind in the 21st century include effective communication skills, curiosity, critical-thinking skills and innovation.  It includes knowing how to think-to reason, analyze, weigh evidence, problem-solve and master content (p. xxiii).
The problems facing our public schools is a low level of intellectual work, lack of curiosity, forgetful memorized fact regurgitation and a general lack of real challenge for students in the classroom. 
In the 21st century, students have to be engaged in the learning environment by seeing their commitment as having real meaning for them and their community.  The standard competitive grading system, that permeates the educations system, does not contribute to the development of this culture of learners. 
Our schools breed a culture of competitors with each participant vying for their own piece of education that becomes more and more unauthentic and meaningless.  Today, while technology may have reduced knowledge to a commodity, the real learning in the classroom will come from understanding derived from experience and project-based models of learning.
 
 


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