We have all been present at a professional development session, or a faculty meeting, or a parent presentation, where the speaker concludes with the stirring call to action to provide “21st Century Skills” or “21st Century Learning” to our students, so that they will be fully prepared for their future. The call feels so fresh, so invigorating, so current that it is unquestionably applauded. 21st Century Learning is our battle cry as we plunge boldly into the future.
However, this “innovative” battle cry is far from new, far from innovative, and frankly far from helpful in defining the needed learning for students of today and tomorrow. The shine on this newness starts to wear off when we remember that we have been calling for these changes since the early 1990s. Our futuristic vision is nearly thirty years old, and it is showing its age. While any call to education reform and improvement is valuable, it is time to examine whether our focus on the 21st Century might be starting to hold us back.
What’s in a Name?
What’s wrong with asking for 21st Century Learning? If nothing else the term is…accurate. Who could disagree that students in the 21st Century should have skills of their time? All too often, though, the term is used aspirationally, rather than descriptively. Virtually all K-12 students were born in the 21st Century, so why are we still calling educators to strive to provide what should be the baseline expectation of 21st Century schools?
It is certainly a term that has overstayed its welcome. In the 1960s, 70s, and 80s we were not talking about giving our students 20th Century skills, yet here we are nearly twenty years into the next century and calling for everyone to catch up. Are we still going to be calling for 21st Century Learning in 2020, 2030, 2050? Children who are born today have every expectation of living into the 22nd Century. How are we best serving them with 21st Century Learning…if we ever get there?
What Are We Talking About Anyway?
There is also a slipperiness to the term. For some, these skills are a nebulous future learning environment that somehow involves building robots with Legos. But if we are to set something as our goal, we need much clearer definition Most would agree that base fundamental 21st Century skills are
- Collaboration
- Communication in all its many forms (including digital communications)
- Critical thinking
- Ability to access and evaluate resources
- Self-direction and ability to learn independently
21st Century Learning should promote, develop, and assess these skills using the communication and information tools that are available, particularly focusing on mobile digital resources. Schools and school programs should be evaluated based on their ability to provide demonstrable growth in these areas.
How This Plays Out
So, what is the harm of a feel-good aspirational term? The key drawback of the race for 21st Century education is that it kicks the can of accomplishment down the road. If we are working toward 21st Century Education, then we remove the urgency that we should be there already. 21st Century Initiatives tend to be very milestone driven, often relating to implementation of new devices or software with little focus on how these will achieve the goals. These goals delay the hard questions of how we will instruct and assess skills that are far less concrete that the rote memorization and compliance of 20th Century skills.
Updating digital and curriculum resources is, of course, vital. Too much of what is done in school uses skills and equipment that, if not outmoded already in the workplace, are on their way out. However, true 21st Century Learning cannot wait once we get the most up-to-date tools in place. Chasing this “starting point” is a never-ending rabbit hole that ironically preserves the status quo. 21st Century Education is what goes on in our classroom every day. What we want is better education in our classroom, and we want it now.
Where Shall We Go?
The 21st Century is today. The skills, methodology, and learning of today should be the 21st Century education we, our parents, and our students expect, not a lofty goal that can be held as a placeholder for future action. School leadership must firmly embrace these skills as fundamental to the program and lead teachers in forming students for this century and the next, using the tools at hand while new tools to do this even better come into play. Calling for 21st Century Learning is no longer good enough; we need to have 21st Century Learning.