(Sec.1) Imagine being an alien that’s only exposed to a portion of the planet you live on. In turn, when you reach a certain level of age or development, you’re able to access the other portion of this planet, but no one has taught you much about or warned you of this other portion. Many students, when finishing K-12 grades, would relate to this analogy because they are not given all the proper skills in the public education system to take with them in the workforce, college, and America’s economy. This is where 21st century skills come in.
(Sec.2) 21st century skills being subjects such as critical thinking, creativity, teamwork, and a high dose of intellect and navigation in technology. I stress these skills as life-essential, and that they …show more content…
Are they a consideration in the hiring process? Are they asked questions that will concern the things they memorize in the classrooms in the interviews? The answers to all these questions are most likely no. When in an interview, you get questioned of your demeanor as a person, your personal skills, availability, knowledge of the company, and prior experiences with people or classmates. When discussing 21st century skills, these are skills that they can take with them in and out of the classroom, and in the workforce especially. An excerpt from Infobase Learning’s, "Teaching "21st-Century Skills": Should U.S. schools teach more "21st-century skills," such as teamwork, creativity, and problem solving?", explains how the approach of these tactics should be shifted more toward what employers are looking for:
U.S. schools evaluate students on how well they can memorize facts: what the quadratic formula is, for example, or what U.S. president was caught up in the Teapot Dome Scandal. But that approach puts students at a grave disadvantage after they finish high school, advocates assert. The ability to recite all 50 state capitals is not a skill that employers value very highly, they argue. Rather, “being good at problem solving and complex communication is what is increasingly important,” says Richard Murnane, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Mass. (Infobase …show more content…
If they don’t possess these skills, employers are most likely to find someone who does, making students miss out on opportunity.
(Sec.4) Opposing arguments may feel that the skills that are being pushed to produce are an attack on the original common core. In a 2009 Opposing Viewpoints text by Sean Cavanagh of Education Week, he goes into detail of a letter proposed by the Common Core in their stance on the push for 21st century skills: “Common Core says that the P21 [Partnership of 21st Century Skills] program marginalizes knowledge, and therefore will deny students the liberal education they need, and that skill is useless without prior knowledge of a wide array of subjects” (Cavanagh).
This is all true considering that for many years with the common core, students were required to analyze subjects such as math, science, social studies, and language arts. (Sec.5) But supporters of the common core are missing the idea that the goal for 21st century skills was not to completely replace the common core, it is simply to make additions and revisions. Revisions that are more beneficial and geared toward the success of students even after they leave school; revisions that are
(Sec.2) 21st century skills being subjects such as critical thinking, creativity, teamwork, and a high dose of intellect and navigation in technology. I stress these skills as life-essential, and that they …show more content…
Are they a consideration in the hiring process? Are they asked questions that will concern the things they memorize in the classrooms in the interviews? The answers to all these questions are most likely no. When in an interview, you get questioned of your demeanor as a person, your personal skills, availability, knowledge of the company, and prior experiences with people or classmates. When discussing 21st century skills, these are skills that they can take with them in and out of the classroom, and in the workforce especially. An excerpt from Infobase Learning’s, "Teaching "21st-Century Skills": Should U.S. schools teach more "21st-century skills," such as teamwork, creativity, and problem solving?", explains how the approach of these tactics should be shifted more toward what employers are looking for:
U.S. schools evaluate students on how well they can memorize facts: what the quadratic formula is, for example, or what U.S. president was caught up in the Teapot Dome Scandal. But that approach puts students at a grave disadvantage after they finish high school, advocates assert. The ability to recite all 50 state capitals is not a skill that employers value very highly, they argue. Rather, “being good at problem solving and complex communication is what is increasingly important,” says Richard Murnane, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Mass. (Infobase …show more content…
If they don’t possess these skills, employers are most likely to find someone who does, making students miss out on opportunity.
(Sec.4) Opposing arguments may feel that the skills that are being pushed to produce are an attack on the original common core. In a 2009 Opposing Viewpoints text by Sean Cavanagh of Education Week, he goes into detail of a letter proposed by the Common Core in their stance on the push for 21st century skills: “Common Core says that the P21 [Partnership of 21st Century Skills] program marginalizes knowledge, and therefore will deny students the liberal education they need, and that skill is useless without prior knowledge of a wide array of subjects” (Cavanagh).
This is all true considering that for many years with the common core, students were required to analyze subjects such as math, science, social studies, and language arts. (Sec.5) But supporters of the common core are missing the idea that the goal for 21st century skills was not to completely replace the common core, it is simply to make additions and revisions. Revisions that are more beneficial and geared toward the success of students even after they leave school; revisions that are