The amount of human knowledge in the world is doubling every 13 months. If for no other reason than that one, our efforts to reform education must be centrally focused on the shift from a race to master an ever-expanding catalog of content toward skills-based instruction that gives students the tools they need to discover and learn on their own. In many ways, the implementation of the Common Core State Standards could do just that, providing educators with a rare opening to fundamentally change instruction toward a more skills-based approach.
Much of academic content has a logical sequence. Students need to understand algebra before they can take on calculus, and it would be challenging for any student to understand the U.S. Civil War without a basic sense of geography. Likewise, though, skill development has a logical sequence: Students can’t pass new computer-only exams if they don’t know how to copy and paste or drag and drop. I’m not saying we should throw out To Kill a Mockingbird or critical instruction of the names, event, and themes that people need to know to be culturally and socially aware. But with the advances of today’s globally competitive society increasingly so rapidly, what students need more than anything is the know-how to access and understand the wealth of information around them. They need hard skills, like those in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, but they need soft skills, too.
“What if we focused on developing kids who are ‘learners’ instead of trying to make sure they’ve ‘learned’?” asked Will Richardson, an author and educator, in Educational Leadership. “What if, instead of delivering the same common education to every student, we focused on developing the skills and dispositions necessary for them to learn whatever they need to learn whenever they need to learn it? That means rethinking our classrooms to focus on individual passions, inquiry, creation, sharing, patient problem solving, and innovation.” More important than the sheer tonnage of new “knowledge” is the way that increasingly easy access to that knowledge is speeding up the learning curve and with it the methods and processes that used to be far more stable. While factories, science labs, and hospitals may have used the same machine for 50 years in the past century, the technology workers must master in the 21st century is updated every year or two. To master the jobs of the future, students will need to adapt to a world where thinking and approaches change at an alarmingly fast rate.
Common Core represents a real shift in standards toward skills over content, inquiry and analysis over memorization. But to make this work it’s going to require more fundamental change and a system that looks different. We can’t graduate students from one grade to the next based on completion of content alone; we can’t assume all students in a grade level need the same thing; and we also can’t continue to teach as though all students have the same career or life goals (especially the goals we may impose on them). Teachers must guide learning instead of just impart it and build learners who can make choices for themselves.
Scott Goldstein is a social studies and ESL teacher at a D.C. public charter school. He can be reached at scottaudc(at)gmail(dot)com or on Twitter (at)ScottGoldstein.
“What if we focused on developing kids who are ‘learners’ instead of trying to make sure they’ve ‘learned’?” asked Will Richardson, an author and educator, in Educational Leadership. “What if, instead of delivering the same common education to every student, we focused on developing the skills and dispositions necessary for them to learn whatever they need to learn whenever they need to learn it? That means rethinking our classrooms to focus on individual passions, inquiry, creation, sharing, patient problem solving, and innovation.” More important than the sheer tonnage of new “knowledge” is the way that increasingly easy access to that knowledge is speeding up the learning curve and with it the methods and processes that used to be far more stable. While factories, science labs, and hospitals may have used the same machine for 50 years in the past century, the technology workers must master in the 21st century is updated every year or two. To master the jobs of the future, students will need to adapt to a world where thinking and approaches change at an alarmingly fast rate.
Common Core represents a real shift in standards toward skills over content, inquiry and analysis over memorization. But to make this work it’s going to require more fundamental change and a system that looks different. We can’t graduate students from one grade to the next based on completion of content alone; we can’t assume all students in a grade level need the same thing; and we also can’t continue to teach as though all students have the same career or life goals (especially the goals we may impose on them). Teachers must guide learning instead of just impart it and build learners who can make choices for themselves.
Scott Goldstein is a social studies and ESL teacher at a D.C. public charter school. He can be reached at scottaudc(at)gmail(dot)com or on Twitter (at)ScottGoldstein.
RSS Feed