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How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century -- Printout ...

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Saved by 19 people (-1 private), first by anonymouse user on 2008-03-26


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2006

Highlighted by dsamperi

This is a story about the big public conversation the nation is not having about education, the one that will ultimately determine not merely whether some fraction of our children get "left behind" but also whether an entire generation of kids will fail to make the grade in the global economy because they can't think their way through abstract problems, work in teams, distinguish good information from bad or speak a language other than English.

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we need to bring what we teach and how we teach into the 21st century.

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Competency in reading and math--the focus of so much No Child Left Behind (NCLB) testing--is the meager minimum

Highlighted by micha510

Scientific and technical skills are, likewise, utterly necessary but insufficient. Today's economy demands not only a high-level competence in the traditional academic disciplines but also what might be called 21st century skills.

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Knowing more about the world

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needing workers who are "global trade literate, sensitive to foreign cultures, conversant in different languages

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Thinking outside the box

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Kids also must learn to think across disciplines, since that's where most new breakthroughs are made. It's interdisciplinary combinations--design and technology, mathematics and art--"that produce YouTube and Google

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Highlighted by shadesmt

Becoming smarter about new sources of information. In an age of overflowing information and proliferating media, kids need to rapidly process what's coming at them and distinguish between what's reliable and what isn't. "It's important that students know how to manage it, interpret it, validate it, and how to act on it," says Dell executive Karen Bruett, who serves on the board of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a group of corporate and education leaders focused on upgrading American education.

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Becoming smarter about new sources of information

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Developing good people skills. EQ, or emotional intelligence, is as important as IQ for success in today's workplace. "Most innovations today involve large teams of people," says former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine. "We have to emphasize communication skills, the ability to work in teams and with people from different cultures."

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Developing good people skills

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add new depth and rigor to our curriculum and standardized exams, redeploy the dollars we spend on education, reshape the teaching force and reorganize who runs the schools.

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Global Student

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All students take some classes in either Japanese or Spanish. Other subjects are taught in English, but the content has an international flavor

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Exposure to world cultures

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which skills and disciplines. "No. 1 was technology,"

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video-conferencing with sister schools in Japan, Africa and Mexico

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international mindedness

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international baccalaureate

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first introduced in 1968--well before globalization became a buzzword

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To earn an I.B. diploma, students must prove written and spoken proficiency in a second language, write a 4,000-word college-level research paper, complete a real-world service project and pass rigorous oral and written subject exams. Courses offer an international perspective

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Real Knowledge in the Google Era

Highlighted by dsamperi

Any number of old-school assignments--memorizing the battles of the Civil War or the periodic table of the elements--now seem faintly absurd. That kind of information, which is poorly retained unless you routinely use it, is available at a keystroke

Highlighted by dsamperi

Any number of old-school assignments--memorizing the battles of the Civil War or the periodic table of the elements--now seem faintly absurd. That kind of information, which is poorly retained unless you routinely use it, is available at a keystroke .

Highlighted by dsamperi

"portable skills"--critical thinking, making connections between ideas and knowing how to keep on learning

Highlighted by dsamperi

key concepts that are taught in depth and in careful sequence, as opposed to a succession of forgettable details

Highlighted by dsamperi

key concepts that are taught in depth and in careful sequence, as opposed to a succession of forgettable details

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Depth over breadth and the ability to leap across disciplines

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the U.S. curriculum needs to become more like that of Singapore, Belgium and Sweden, whose students outperform American students on math and science tests. Classes in these countries dwell on key concepts that are taught in depth and in careful sequence, as opposed to a succession of forgettable details so often served in U.S. classrooms

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A New Kind of Literacy

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extremely small textbooks that focus on the most powerful and generative ideas

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America's bloated textbooks, by contrast, tend to gallop through a mind-numbing stream of topics and subtopics in an attempt to address a vast range of state standards.

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documentary

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the elusive nature of truth

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what we know and how we know it

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"If truth is difficult to prove in history, does it follow that all versions are equally acceptable?"

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information literacy

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research and deeper thinking

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gap between how kids learn at school and how they do everything else

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assessments that are livelier and more current and multimedia-based than printed textbooks

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bring their methods--along with the curriculum--into line with the way the modern world works

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. That means putting a greater emphasis on teaching kids to collaborate and solve problems in small groups and apply what they've learned in the real world.

Highlighted by dsamperi

That means putting a greater emphasis on teaching kids to collaborate and solve problems in small groups and apply what they've learned in the real world.

Highlighted by dsamperi

At suburban Farmington High in Michigan, the engineering-technology department functions like an engineering firm, with teachers as project managers, a Ford Motor Co. engineer as a consultant and students working in teams.

Highlighted by dsamperi

At suburban Farmington High in Michigan, the engineering-technology department functions like an engineering firm, with teachers as project managers, a Ford Motor Co. engineer as a consultant and students working in teams.

Highlighted by dsamperi

the kids learn to apply academic principles to the real world, think strategically and solve problems.

Highlighted by dsamperi

methods--along with the curriculum--into line with the way the modern world works. That means putting a greater emphasis on teaching kids to collaborate and solve problems in small groups and apply what they've learned in the real world. Besides, research shows that kids learn better that way than with the old chalk-and-talk approach.

Highlighted by micha510