By Kelly Mekdeci
Participants in a survey of 400 US employers identified professionalism, work ethic, oral and written communications, teamwork and collaboration, critical thinking, and problem solving as the most important proficiencies for secondary school and university graduates to possess. Guyana’s business community would likely generate a similar list of desired skills. Most would also agree that a good education is one that prepares the student for well-rounded success in his or her future. However, parents tend to measure the quality of academic programmes by comparing them with the education they received decades ago. The problem with that way of thinking is that today’s schools are not tasked with preparing students for success in today’s world. their job is to prepare students for success in tomorrow’s world.
Partnership for 21st Century Skills is a US-based educational advocacy organization. The partners include Time Warner, Ford Motors, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Dell, Verizon, SAS, and others. The objective is to create educational systems that prepare students to “triumph in the global skills race” and excel in the competitive economic arena. The Partnership has emerged as a leading advisory and advocacy group for educational reform. It asserts that beyond reading, science, and mathematics, schools should aim to produce critical and creative thinkers capable of solving complex, multi-disciplinary, open ended problems, developing entrepreneurial skills and taking charge of financial, health, and civic responsibilities; communicating and collaborating effectively, making judgments and utilizing knowledge innovatively.
Many schools ignore these skills. A 2006 TIME magazine article claimed that “kids spend much of their day as their great-grandparents once did: sitting in rows, listening to their teachers lecture, scribbling notes by hand, reading from textbooks that are out of date by the time the are printed.
“Why do schools not keep pace with developments in business and technology? Educators and parents often feel comfortable doing what we know how to do well……. teach children to spell, do long division, memorize capital cities, assess proficiency at basic skills and assign children scores based on examinations that have little modern-world context. Many schools also embrace the delusion that spending an hour per day in a computer lab will equip students with the technology skills they will need in the business world.
“In order to assess 21st century skills schools must move into unfamiliar terrain and aim at moving rather than stationary targets. Parents will have to support efforts to move away from content-based instruction in favor of educational programs that promote intellectual dexterity, sound ethical judgment, and healthy habits.
Contemporary schools should not be examination factories, rather thery should aim to produce flexible, responsible, accountable, technologically dexterous students who are apt to embrace challenges.”
If schools do not aim for faster and newer targets, they cannot equip graduates to meet the needs of the private sector. While students can now access vast amounts of information via Google and other open sources many schools and parents continue to require students to spend hours in class and “extra lessons” memorizing facts, formulae and answers to questions, as if they were preparing for some grand trivia competition.
Contemporary students need to be taught how to rapidly process the information put before them and to distinguish between what is and is not reliable, useful, or valuable. According to Dell executive Karen Bruett, “It’s important that students know how to manage [information], interpret it, validate it, and how to act on it.”
What would your business be like if each employee had been educated to possess the 21st Century Skills and qualities? Your company’s innovation, creativity, and flexibility would be beyond measure. These days, it is less important to know the answers to the questions than to know how to question the answers.
