Linda Darling-Hammond’s book The Flat World and Education was published in 2010. This same year the charter school she founded had its charter revoked because it ranked in the lowest 20% of California schools. A New York Times April 15, 2010 article stated that “…despite the support of the nation’s finest educators, the benefits that a great university can provide and spending $3,000 per student above the state average, Stanford New School was not able to become the national model that the School of Education set out to create in 2001…” I took pause when I read this article. Frankly I wasn’t too surprised. Reading her book had me questioning almost everything she had to say. Her book is this interesting narrative where she knows why everything is the way it is but doesn’t seem to have any answers that are any better than my own. She and I both agree that teaching should be a competitive profession with competitive salaries. We also agree that teachers are professionals and should be treated as such.
I am at odds with how she curiously leaves Asians out of any mention of students of color or minority students. Is that because they outperform all groups? Do they not fit her agenda? She does include Asians in some of her graphs but does not mention them in the text when discussing the scores or inequities of blacks and latinos. She swings back and forth between her collection and interpretation of data and little heart tugging anecdotes. She talks about education in countries in which the population in homogenous. She delved into all of California’s educational debacles but never tells about states that are getting it right. How can an enormous country like the United States (pop. 318 million) be compared to tiny countries such as Finland (pop. 5.4 million), Korea (pop. 50 million) and Singapore (pop. 5.3 million)? As I stated earlier I do agree with Darling-Hammond on some things. But I think that reading a book by a counterpart of Darling-Hammond like Jay P. Greene, endowed professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas, would be an important part of informed thought and discussion. I don’t agree with everything he has to say either but as my Uncle Oz says, “You have to read everything. To be fully informed you have to read all sides of an issue.” First I need a definition of 21st century skills. But, who do I go to for the definition? What organization can I trust? What groups speaks to what I want to hear and to my values? I don't want to hear it from Apple or Cisco, huge companies with an agenda to make all students and teachers their customers. If you do a web search of "21st century skills for students" you get 67 million results. I'll sift through a couple of pages at most. Here we go. A site called Thoughtful Learning (https://k12.thoughtfullearning.com/FAQ/what-are-21st-century-skills) has a definition that is straightforward.
The 21st century skills are a set of abilities that students need to develop in order to succeed in the information age. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills lists three types: Learning Skills
With these as my parameters I believe I am engendering 21st century skills in my 2nd grade classroom. I use science as my prime vehicle to practice these skills. I'm not saying that I have it all dialed in for my students. There is much that I need to hone and refine. What do you need to learn? I need to find out what technology literacy is for my 7 and 8 year old students. I need to learn how to foster better collaboration. |
AuthorTeacher/Elementary Ed Archives
July 2016
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