The following is the executive summary of an upcoming proposal.
Executive Summary
The educated man in the 19th Century was expected to have excellent skills in handwriting arithmetic, spelling, and memory. Therefore 19th Century Education concentrated on teaching those skills to prepare the student for the 19th Century workplace. We automated those skills using 20th Century technology.
But traditional education continues to call these 19th Century skills as “basic”. Students must learn these first before they can move ahead. I question the wisdom of that strategy.
The employer in the 21st Century wants employees with 21st Century skills. 19th Century skills are secondary. Employers would prefer someone who could keyboard to someone who had good hand writing. The spreadsheet is one of the most widely used programs across almost all industries. But education stresses paper and pencil arithmetic. The World Wide Web has made memorization a thing of the past except in school or theater. Handwriting, spelling bees, mental arithmetic can be called Unnecessary Goods. Estimable skills but not essential to the workplace. Teach students from the start 21st Century skills.
The most devastating blockade to education is the “standardized test”. The purpose of a test is to predict what a student would do in the real world. Project Based Learning means the student must create a project in the real world. A student completes tasks and is evaluated by authentic assessment, an evaluation of what the student has produced.
Not a test score.
Reading
The solution to the reading problem is the solution to everything. Postpone the alphabet until the child can read. Within 5 years children will come to school reading and writing.
Comments