Twenty-first century readers and writers need to
• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
As opposed to Shakespeare, who got by just fine by eating his pen and drinking his ink.
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally
Ah yes, collaboration. Never noted before, except in all the examples of trading across cultures, or working together in hunter-gatherer tribes. The Allies in WWII acheived their success by fighting with each other all the time.
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes
Sir Issac Newton's work on calculus is being used by global communities to meet a variety of purposes.
• Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information
This is a skill necessary for that 20th century skill of flying a plane. Or the 19th century one of driving a car.
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts
Why do we all need to do this? And what's the difference between critiquing, analysing or evaluating a text?
I also note that science textbooks have often been multimedia dating back before the 19th century (in less fancy language, they include pictures).
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments
Because ethics only started to matter in the 21st century. Never mind all the debates amongst the Ancient Greeks about the good life.
On the whole I think the complexity of the literate environment we handle nowadays has reduced, because of better design of books and newspapers, cheaper printing allowing for more use of white space, typing standardising writing far more than handwriting is standardised, the rise of English as a second language not merely in Europe but in distant places like Asia and countries that were never colonised by the British, and other factors. Also, practice in solving problems cross-culturally has been making this easier - not perfect, but easier. Every case of successful cross-cultural trading makes the next step easier.
21st century skills are visual, not verbal
In my district, the visual is dominant. For the new "environmental stewardship" item on our Strategic Plan, kids were invited to --- wait for it! --- make posters.
For Honors English, students have the option of making posters.
For the new, improved, much more serious, advocated-by-the-PTSA ELA reading plan, the AP photography class is going to take pictures of teachers reading books and hang them in the hallways of the high school.
When you've reached the point where the first response to a request by the PTSA that students be assigned many more good books to read is to make posters of teachers reading books, you've missed the point.
As of this week, I think this is happening because students can't read. Schools are still using whole language repackaged as balanced literacy (whole language with phonics sprinkled in), and very large numbers of students don't read particularly well. A couple of days ago, I came across a personal account written by an attorney who couldn't read as a child -- and who, when he reached 8th grade, I believe -- had a social studies teacher who taught using lots of charts and graphs, which was unusual at the time. Suddenly, he could understand what was going on in class, his confidence rose, and he (somehow) prevailed.**He was extremely grateful to this man, whom he saw as the special teacher who saved him.
It struck me that, when their students fare better with visuals than they do with print, teachers would be positively reinforced for emphasizing charts, graphs, and images over text. If this were the case (assuming bright, barely reading students really do fare better with charts & graphs), over time teachers would gradually shift towards the visual without being aware of having done so. Slow changes for the worse go unnoticed.
Temple (Grandin) calls this phenomenon: the bad gets normal.
* Environmental stewardship falls under character education, in case you're wondering, along with "global awareness."
** I've lost the link - sorry. I found it via Wrightslaw.
visual learning
foldables
why lawyers burn out
Independent George re: foldables
your tax dollars at work part 2
my busy day
not your father's formative assessment
remembering key concepts in math with foldables
south of the border
Steve H and palisadesk on foldables
homeschooling convention: no foldables
you may have to hit refresh a couple of times to load these pages:
21st century skills in Singapore
the master plan
horselaughs are heard in Singapore
more horselaughs in Singapore
I used my 21st century skills yesterday and they failed me miserably. In fact, they lead me twice to hilariously wrong conclusions.
ReplyDeleteThese incidents sobered me and I'm thinking now that at every age, people were considerably challenged and it's boorish to think that today's skills are somehow better than yesterday's. At the root of any challenge is the ability to synthesize disparate stuff into a new whole and that doesn't come from knowing a thing it comes from knowing how to figure out a thing.
Figuring out stuff comes from having the breadth of experiences to forge something new out of all your little puzzle pieces. What a lot of people foist off as 21st century skills are things that any competent, liberally educated, curious person should be able to figure out on their own.
I've discovered my spiritual twin!
ReplyDeletehttp://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-02-26-07.htm
Irascible Professor is great!
ReplyDeleteI found another guy in his category, a retired guy who is teaching writing at a community college.
His stuff is a hoot.
Must find that URL.
There are no 21st century skills.
ReplyDeleteIt's all a ruse to stop teaching reading and writing & start teaching something the kids already know how to do.
i.e.: PowerPoint
C. spent THREE YEARS learning PowerPoint in the middle school.
omg -- I just got an email from a friend saying her child has to write a short poem for social studies.
Child asked whether an essay would be an acceptable substitute.
Answer: no.
Here's an observation to chew on... I teach math and know very little about teaching reading except for what I've read here and what I hear through the walls in my school(s). Please take this observation, then, as rank speculation from an intensely curious and needy math teacher.
ReplyDeleteI have many, many kids who 'read' just fine. That is, if I say, "Read that question to me", they'll say all the words and have no apparent vocabulary problems. The problem is they seem to have read it more like a novel than a math question. They know all the words but they don't really know the implicit details in what they've read or they don't try to extend the implication of the words.
Here's a math example. Two sides of a rectangle have lengths of 3m and width of 2m. What is the perimeter of the rectangle? Many kids can't do this problem because they don't have four lengths to work with. They need to infer from the word rectangle, that they actually do have all they need. They don't do this.
I can usually ask the same kid a direct question about the properties of a rectangle and they will tell me four right angles and opposite sides equal, just like it says in the book. But, they don't do it unless pushed directly and they don't do it upon reflecting over what they read. It's like they have all the parts but don't see the word as the entry point to their filing system.
My conjecture is that there is a difference between reading for enjoyment and reading for analysis.
Here's an example. If you read a passage about a mother's sister in a novel, my guess is that, without some further prodding from the passage, you just keep cruisin' along reading. But if you're reading 'academically' you need to take a deep breath and articulate (at least mentally) that this mother's sister is an aunt. It wouldn't be particularly important for immediate understanding in reading for entertainment but it could be mightily important for a lawyer or investigator reading documents to make these connections.
Could this be an effect of whole language and its intense focus on digesting genre for enjoyment? Is there an academic genre where you are taught to slow down and analyze the passages?
Is reading for analysis a 21st century skill which is being ignored in our reading programs or an 18th century skill we've glossed over? Readers don't seem to be coming to me with this critical skill. If it's my job as a math teacher to kick start this process I need to know how to get it going.
Maybe I'm just up to early with too much coffee?
no; absolutly right.
ReplyDeletethe royal road to reading
is *more reading* and this
ought to be better known.
all these experts? well,
their systems will work
to the extent that they get
their victims to read more
than they otherwise would;
otherwise they'll be part
of the obstacle course.
you just can't teach it:
lead a horticulture, etcetera.
of course i agree that there
are *kinds* of reading; this
could be a useful observation
if it doesn't become part of
some "learning styles"-type
doctrine and muddy the water
so timeserving pedants can
push their agendas.
advanced literacy is being able
to read in *lots* of ways
(i.e., to read lots of different
*kinds* of documents ... math
and foreign languages are obvious
[but extreme] examples of the need
for special skills in reading
certain texts ...).
*all* math teachers encounter
difficulties that are really
about literacy (not math per se);
of course we should embrace the
opportunity to model certain
aspects of our particular corner
of the art (let's see ... maybe
we'd better ... draw a diagram!)
but g-d knows it can be frustrating.
when i sit down with a new tutee
in our learning center, it's common
for 'em to read me the problem
they've been working on out loud.
which is weird all by itself
since i can read it silently
*much faster* ... but what's
scary is how *poorly* some of 'em
read aloud. it's no damn
wonder you don't understand
this, one wants to say ...
is this what they call a
college student these days?
but, of course, no ...
back to that diagram ...
ok. back to venting
in my *own* damn blog.
alas, I have just realized I'm too tired at the moment to read these comments any better than Paul's kids!
ReplyDeleteBack tomorrow!
Is reading for analysis a 21st century skill which is being ignored in our reading programs or an 18th century skill we've glossed over?
ReplyDeleteWell I'd place this skill well before the 18th century. The Ancient Egyptians were publishing maths textbooks. And since they didn't have algebra, the intended readers had to figure out how to solve the general problem from the book's description of how to solve a specific problem, by which I mean one with specific measurements.
In the 19th century Lewis Carroll published a book of logical syllogisms that required this sort of thinking.
I don't think we have had enough time so far in the 21st century to come up with general new skills that everyone needs to learn.
In the 20th century when I was at school I don't ever recall being taught how to slow down and analyse passages in test questions. Of course this may just be me not remembering it. (I do remember being told on occasion not to over-analyse questions on tests, bloody useless advice, as I didn't consciously know how I was analysing them in the first place, and still don't, they may as well have told me to change the way I digest food).
This is not much help I know. Perhaps Palisadesk knows more?