Week 6 - The Philosophy of 21st Century Skills - Task 1

I truly agree that the foundation of 21st Century Skills needs to be implemented into our schools more prevalently today.  It is the key to our success in the workforce.  I can personally attest that when people graduate from our schools that we are not prepared for the workforce.  The requirements that businesses have today for our youth is ever growing and it is our responsibility as educators to prepare our students.

However, I have concerns of the implementation of 21st Century Skills in our classrooms today.  One article that drew my attention to this topic was the critique by Daniel Willingham, Flawed Assumptions Undergird the Program at the Partnership for 21st-Century Skills.  I am currently reading Willingham's book Why Don't Students Like School (A great read by the way) for my Learning Theories Class here at MSU and I must admit, am a little biased towards his opinions because of this.  One major concern that we both agree on is whether or not we as teachers have the cognitive capacity to achieve 21st Century Skill implementation in the classroom.  We are not gods, we have limits.  This is true, but I believe that through preparation that begins here, in our own education as teachers, we are starting a trend that can lead towards full integration of these new techniques.   Willingham goes on to say that if changing the classroom "were that easy, it would have worked by now, because it has been tried many times before."  I will be a difficult transition, I don't think that anyone believes that this will be an overnight transition, but it can be done.  I believe that we as an education community can achieve the implementation of 21st Century Skills in the classroom and would all be better for it.