School-of-Thought

This is really GREAT STUFF from Ian Jukes’ site.  I’m quoting the first few paragraphs of ”21st Century Fluency Skills.” 

The primary task of the educational system must be to give learners the right tools and provide them with a critical mind, so that they can ask the right questions and make the right connections.  The problem is that the world is not the stable, static place it once was.  The world has changed and continues to change.  Today as Thomas Friedman notes in The World is Flat we are preparing students for jobs that don’t exist, using technologies that haven’t been in vented, to solve problems we haven’t begun to think about.  As a result, the definition of what it means to be educated in the light of the modern world has changed and continues to change.

In his book The Third Wave futurist Alvin Toffler noted that, “the illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

In the information age, citizens will need to work with information in all forms to fashion content products that have value, that entertain and teach.

But if all learners do is learn the traditional literacies — to read, write, speak. and calculate — they may be literate by 20th Century standards but certainly not by 21st Century standards.

Thanks Ian, for the great message.