[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptJeff Utech came up with this list of 21st Century skills:. • Develop proficiency with the tools of technology • Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally … [...]

Although I have embraced the use of technology in my classroom and as a learner, I have some pet peeves I want to air. First of all, 21st century literacy skills do NOT replace REAL, TRADITIONAL literacy skills (i.e. Bloom’s Taxonomy as applied to a text, exegetical analysis, understanding of the nuances of languages, etc). My husband is engaged in a pitch battle at the graduate level in which “21st century” learning is placed at odds with traditional, classical learning. Both are important. The computer is only a vehicle, a tool. It really isn’t the LEARNING or the INFORMATION. Centuries of scholarship and art may be able to be transmitted via the internet, but THE INTERNET IS NOT THE SOURCE OF THE KNOWLEDGE, it is merely the vehicle by which the knowledge is conveyed. It is like the printing press of the Renaissance, the cheap press of the Industrial revolution, the mimeograph machine and the overhead for those of us who started teaching in the last 20 years. It is important to realize that we are merely introducing students to a new VEHICLE for knowledge. Otherwise, we are guilty of creating a generation of, as Elizabeth Cohen in her book “Consumer Republic” called “citizen/consumers.” Yes, we are both, but citizenship calls for a more morality/value/higher-order-based thinking than buying. Yes, we want to make wise consumer choices (ecological, financial, etc), but that is not the sole basis of our citizenship.

My second beef is the line “we are preparing our kids for jobs that haven’t even been invented yet.” I have tried to be hip to that, but it ends up being, essentially, a “well duh” statement. When HAVEN’T we been preparing our students for jobs that haven’t been invented yet since Sputnik blasted off. That is the nature of history. IF we are teaching our students to read, to think, to compute, to problem-solve, then we are preparing them for the future! Yes, the knowledge (facts) we teach may become outdated (for example, there were only 2 kingdoms in Bio and the periodic table was different in 1977), but the way I approach learning is the same — there is a problem and it is my job to find information to work through it. Now, in previous generations, they pretty much thought that knowledge had an “end product.” Today, there is so much to know, we may just need to sift through what is relevant, but if we are teaching higher level thinking, we are preparing them for that. The vehicle may change, but the practice and end game does not.

Thanks for listening!!

I just want to add that if I am critical of the wholesale swallowing of any new tool as the panacea for education, I am NOT critical of its practitioners, particularly our ITRT Mike Hasley. I am just concerned that this good tool not be used by the forces of anti-intellectualism and consumerism to the detriment of liberal arts education and higher thinking for the preservation of culture and progress of humankind!