kitchen table math, the sequel: 21st century skills: back to the future

Saturday, March 17, 2012

21st century skills: back to the future

email from a friend:
21st Century skills are nothing but the rehashed SCANS skills.

They are workforce skills translated into Outcome Based ed. The Ed Establishment changes the name of OBE to Competency based ed, Standards Based Ed. ect. It's easier to throw parents off the track if they change the name and re-sell it as new. Hard to find the failures on the Internet with a different name.

It all goes back to Marc Tucker's vision and transforming the schools to become Polytechnic schools.
Wow.

Live and learn.

Here are the SCAN skills, invented in 1992:
SCANS Workplace Competencies: knowing how to allocate time, money, and materials; interpersonal skills such as working on teams, teaching others, and negotiating; using, evaluating, and communicating information; understanding social, organizational, and technological systems; and effectively using technology.
U.S. Department of Labor, Learning a Living: A Blueprint for High Performance, Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, April 1992
The 21st century skills people took out "allocating time, money, and materials" and put in "creativity," but otherwise these are essentially the same thing.


4 comments:

TerriW said...

Between the two, I think I'd rather they focus on teaching kids to allocate time, money, and materials, frankly.

SCANS 2012!

Catherine Johnson said...

lolllll!!!!

NO KIDDING!

When I compared the two lists, I thought: YOU MEAN YOU TOOK OUT THE ONLY THING I COULD ACTUALLY AGREE WITH ON THIS LIST?

ChemProf said...

This goes back further -- Heinlein talks about it in "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" (published in 1958). The protagonist goes to Central High, which prepares students for the modern era by not bothering to teach useless stuff like literature, calculus, or foreign languages ancient or modern.

Anonymous said...

100% correct except 21st century also has a huge digital component.

Also known in other states as Career Pathways.

SCANS never deactivated. It simply waited around for 20 years ready for another Pres to implement.

What is trickier this time is school to work and goals 2000 ends are split between feds and various states. Most of the Race to the Top winners are piloting various aspects to then spread to the remainder of the states under Common Core's actual implementation. Much different from the PR campaign

Student of History