The power is yours--seize it

Drums keep pounding rhythm to the brain

La-dee-la-dee-dee

La-dee-la-dee-da

Wait till you have reached the age,

History has turned the page,

We still want to hear a brand new thing,

We still need a song to sing,

 And the beat goes on.....

And the beat goes on.....

And the beat goes on.....

And the beat goes on.....

And the beat goes on.....

And the beat goes on.....

(Sonny Bono, “The Beat Goes On”)

 

Yes it does.

The debate rages on, hot and heavy, about the relative merits of NCLB and national standards. And so it should; these are important issues that merit careful consideration and conscientious, well-informed debate. For what it's worth, I think the idea of national standards has merit (after all, 2+2=4 whether you're in Georgia or California) and I think that all schools should be held to a measure of accountability. But this post isn't about that. We'll save that particular debate for another day.

This post is about power.  

It's about what we do (or don't do) to arm ourselves with information and place ourselves in a position to make well-informed decisions about what is, and what is not, in the best interests of our schools and our children.  

It's about not allowing ourselves to be swayed by hype and hyperbole. 

It's about knowing.  

Because knowledge, as they say, is power. 

**********************

Have you heard it?

There has been a great deal of talk of late about improved NAEP test scores, particularly among African-American and at-risk students, as "proof" that our current efforts at reform are working.  Words like "unprecedented, " "historic highs" and "steady progress" have been bandied about in official press releases and in print media with such regularity that it would be easy to assume, given these glowing and optimistic reviews, that we have turned a corner and that we're finally making meaningful and substantive progress in public education. I don’t think anyone expects perfection from our schools.  But we do want to know, or perhaps it might be more accurate to say that we need to believe, that we’re moving forward.

But faith is not enough.  Faith must be supported by facts, so rather than rely on an executive summary or someone else’s characterization of these scores, I decided to go to the best available source when I needed the most up-to-date data on the current state of student achievement.

I went straight to the New York Times.

Nah…

I went to the official Nation's Report Card.  This is raw data, straight from the Department of Education, breaking down NAEP results in a surprisingly clear, concise and readable fashion. No hyperbole.  No characterization.

Just the facts.

And I couldn't believe what I read. 

*******************

First of all, let's talk about the word progress.  It means, generally speaking, to move forward in some way.  But when you carefully examine NAEP data, what will you see?

You’ll see:

• A two point increase in the average 4th grade reading score from 219 in 2005 to 221 in 2007.  But this is progress, right?  Not really. Because the average score in 2002 was 219. The biggest spike in reading scores actually occurred between 2000 and 2002, when the scores went up by six points. But that was before NCLB was enacted into law.       

• Eight grade reading scores were up by only one point, from 262 in 2005 to 263 in 2007.  But here’s the rub. The average score was 263 in 1998.  That means in spite of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on reforms targeted at improved literacy, we show no statistical improvement over the course of the past decade.  This data also shows that the gains our students make in the 4th grade are lost by the time our students reach the 8th grade.

• Fourth grade mathematics scores show steady progress from 1990 (average score 213) to 2007 (average score 240).  But, again, there’s an issue. The biggest gains occurred before NCLB, when scores rose from 213 in 1990 to 235 in 2003.

• The same is true of eight grade mathematics.  Scores were up by two points, from 279 in 2005 to 281 in 2007. However, once again, the pre-NCLB gains were larger, when scores increased from 263 in 1990 to 278 in 2003.

But here’s the real story. None of these improvements persist through to the end of high school. NAEP long-term test results show that since 1990, the scores of 17-year-olds have stagnated in math and fallen in reading.

So is this progress? 

Decide for yourself.  But here’s one more statistic.  And this is the one that pushed me over the edge.

Over and over and over again, we hear about how our African-American children are doing better.  That’s wonderful if true.  But is it?

Here’s one stat.  The Nation’s Report Card webpage documenting average 4th grade reading scores starts with the headline: “White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian/Pacific Islander fourth-graders scored higher in 2007 than in 1992.”  Okay, fair enough. Read further. In 2007, the average 4th grade reading score for African Americans was 203.  This is the “historic high.”

But then download the full report card.  Go to page 21, where you’ll find the 4th grade reading scale. Then note where an average score of 203 places you.

An average score of 203 is below basic!

I was so dumbfounded, so utterly flabbergasted by this, I asked my mother, a retired teacher, to look at the report.  She saw the same thing, shook her head and whispered “My God.”

Then I got angry.  Really, really angry.  (And I will try, gentle reader, not to have this blog devolve into an expletive-laced tirade).  A 203 is NOT progress.  It’s pathetic.  It’s appalling.  This is AMERICA not Guam! I don’t care who you are or where you’re from, 4th grade students in THIS country should NOT have an AVERAGE reading score of below basic. Ever.  And then to have the temerity, the unmitigated GALL, to characterize this as progress, insults even the most basic notions of reason or intelligence.

(See, no expletives.  I’m proud of myself).

Imagine this.  Imagine if a teacher said to you of your child, “We are sooooo very proud of your child.  S/he’s made soooooo much progress.  S/he’s now IMPROVED to below basic.  You must be very proud.  We are.” 

What would you do?

I’ll tell you what I would do.

X-Box…..gone.

Cable television……out.

Television……off.

iPod…….forget about it.

Air Jordan’s……don’t even look.

Jeans....from Sears.

Play time…..limited.

Bed time……8 o’clock EVERY night.

Homework…..constantly, all the time, every day until you leave my house, get a job or win the lottery.

Fuzzy wuzzy, feel good tolerance of woeful academic performance…not in my house.  Not ever.

Folks,  when I see scores like this, I’m reminded of a scene from the movie Armageddon where the Bruce Willis character is informed that the only way to save the world is to send his team of deep sea drillers into outer space to drill a hole in an asteroid and drop a nuclear bomb in the hole.  The Willis character looks at the NASA rep (played with surprising restraint by Billy Bob Thornton) and says (as only Bruce Willis can), “You’ve got to be kidding.  That’s the best you can do.  You’re NASA. You’re geniuses.  And this best you can do?  Oh God….”

That’s what I think about education.  Public education is full of, well…educators.  You guys are really, really smart.  You have PhD’s.  You write textbooks.  You study the human brain.  You passed statistics.  You get billions and billions of dollars and year, and this is the best we can do?

It is at this point that I can almost understand (almost….) some republican concerns about increased education spending. Trillions of dollars and this is our return?  A generation of functionally illiterate kids who are hopelessly ill equipped and ill-prepared to compete and succeed in the world as it exists now? This is what you give me?  And then you have the nerve to look me in the face and characterize THIS as progress?

Oh man……

So one of three things is true.  We either:

• cannot fix public education because the problems are too deep, too entrenched, for systemic change, and no one has the gumption, the courage, to say so; 

• can fix public education but don’t know how and no one has the gumption, the courage, to say so; or

• can fix public education, and we know how to do it, we just don’t choose to do it.  And why should we? Public school is for poor kids anyway.  As long as our talented tenth is thriving, we still need someone to bag our groceries and to sell us Jimmy Choo shoes.  So pumping out ill-informed, uneducated worker bees into our economy suits us just fine. (Of course, we can never, ever say that…that would be positively un-American).

Whatever the cause, the effect is the same. There’s not enough work for the worker bees anymore. And with about 50 million illiterate Americans and climbing, who do you think is going to pay for all these unemployed and underemployed worker bees? Look at your paycheck.  See all those Federal, state and local deductions?  That’s right.  YOU will.  YOU will end up paying for our failure to educate our children.  Or more likely, our children will end up paying this debt.  A debt they didn’t create and don’t deserve.

Didn’t like the bailouts?  Stimulus package tick you off?  Well, if we keep this up, if we don’t fix our schools, if we keep characterizing average scores of below basic as “historic highs,” if we don’t start calling it like it is, then the looming crisis, both human and economic, will make our current economic travails look like a hiccup by comparison. 

Believe me, I am, by nature, an optimist.  I do not ascribe to the politics of fear and polarization.  But this is real folks.  It’s real and it’s happening right now. 

But please, please, please, don’t take my word for it. Don’t blindly accept my characterization.  That’s the point of this post.  Agree with me, disagree with me, tell me I’m full of it, it’s cool—but check it out for yourselves.  Arm yourselves.  Inform yourselves.

Then decide.

There are many forms of power; most unattainable to the common citizen.  But some forms of power are yours and can never be taken away should you choose to exercise that power.  One is the power of the mind.  It’s yours.  Use it.  The other is the power of information.  One of the great benefits of living in the Digital Age is that information is readily available.  There is simply no excuse for not knowing.

So take it. 

Power. 

It doesn’t belong to Obama, or Duncan or your elected officials.

It’s yours.

Seize it.

The power to think, the power to decide, the power to act and the power to shape our individual and collective future.

 

Why do we have summer vacation?

Oh boy.....

I'm venturing into very dangerous, very sensitive territory here, so please allow me to qualify a few things at the outset.

First, as anyone who follows this blog knows, my mother was a school teacher for over 20 years. So I truly appreciate how hard teachers work and the mental and physical demands of the job. I get that. I really do. Teachers, I'm on your side.

Second, as a parent, I also understand the importance of family time; of the need for a contiguous, uninterrupted block of time to play together, vacation together or just be together.

That said, I'll throw this out there.

Why do we have summer vacation?

This question occurred to me as I read the increasing number of plurks and tweets from educators eagerly awaiting the end of the school year. I understand that. I felt the same way when I was a student (14 more days to go, 13 more days to go...), and would undoubtedly feel the same way if I were a teacher. But as the parent of a school age child, and as someone who has only worked in the private sector, I find myself increasingly confused by the uniquely American phenomenon of taking nearly 2 months off from school. I addition to being out of sync with virtually every other facet of our society, I'm beginning to think that this practice has disastrous implications for the cognitive development of our children.

I'll elaborate.

Being a lawyer just sucks. Really. You work all of the time. Even if you're one of those large law firm lawyers billing $500 an hour and making a kings ransom in salary (which is the benefit), the attendant cost is that you work constantly and you have to be reminded about your children's birthdays. I know there have been entire years where I did not take a week off. There was a three year stretch where I did not take a vacation at all. I have never taken two consecutive weeks off. If I took a month off, I may as well stay wherever I landed because I'd become irrelevant or get fired.

Here's a bit of insight from behind the veil. I don't care what employers say, they don't like it when employees take vacations. They really don't. I've huddled up with enough business owners when vacation requests come in to know that they might give you the Cheshire cat grin and say: "Have a really nice vacation (toothy grin on cue)." But what they're thinking is: "I ought to fire you, you thankless sack of [expletive deleted] because while you're busy hanging out at Disneyland with the wife and kids, I'll be here running the business that allows you to pay your damn mortgage. Yeah, have fun and pray to God that I don't come across someone while you're busy getting a tan that I think is better suited to do your job."

Two months off just doesn't work in real life. Not for anything. Until Congress made it illegal, women were getting fired for getting pregnant and having babies! (An extreme and awful practice by the way). My point is this, business is not seasonal. Life is not seasonal. The "real world" for which we are preparing our kids is not seasonal.

Three words for everyone. "Employee at will." Look it up.

Point #2.

If our kids aren't in school, especially Pre-K through 8th grade children, what the hell else do they have to do? Work for the board of trade? Really, what are they going to do? Watch video games? That's healthy. Play sports? They could do that and still be in school. Go on vacation with the family? Great. Take two weeks. Now what?

Right now, parents from sea to shinning sea are scrambling to figure out what they're going to do with their little bundles of joy when that final school bell rings. I know I am. And that's all fine and good for parents with means and options; they can send their kids to camps or summer programs. But what about the millions of parents who are struggling just to keep the lights and gas on? Who can't pay their mortgage or their rent? Free summer school is an answer for some; especially in Title I schools, but this is not a systemic solution available to everyone.

All that takes a back seat to the biggest problem.

The BIGGEST problem, in my humble opinion, is that kids get REAL dumb REAL fast during the summer. It's amazing how much of the stuff we just spent the last 10 months cramming into their still developing brains gets lost. After Christmas break, my son seemed to forget how to write his name. (So now time away from school does not mean time off from school--much to my son's disdain and vocal displeasure). We take this time off, kids get a great tan and then spend the first month or so of the next school year playing "let's catch up" instead of "let's push forward." The more I think about it, the more I think this whole summer vacation thing just doesn't make sense.

Yes, there should be some time off. Some sort of summer sabbatical. According to my friend and colleague Kelly Tenkely, the schools in her county take a three week summer break and three additional three week breaks throughout the school year. This seems to make more sense to me. Kids, take your three week break and then, to use my mama's words, "get your rusty butt back in school." Now we could (and probably should) change things up a bit in the summer. We could have a shorter school day. We could change the hours so we're not getting our kids up before the crack of dawn. (Who's BRILLIANT idea was THAT anyway?) We could allow the children more free time or the ability to craft individualized lesson plans. Perhaps we could also use this time to focus on subjects that get the short shrift during the standardized test driven school year such as art, music, and yes, sports and physical exercise. We could have school camps where the kids are learning, having fun and developing a stronger sense of community. This time could be used for meaningful, more deliberate professional development rather than those awful (and generally ineffective) in service days during the school year that many teachers seem to hate.

And finally, but most importantly, perhaps this could be a time where teachers are encouraged to experiment with innovative instructional practices, such as the use and integration of technology, because they’re not consumed and driven by standardized test prep. There's a whole lot we could do during the summer that’s different if we're creative and willing to think outside of the box. It doesn’t have to be more of the same.

So what do you think? Is a summer vacation a needed and necessary respite? Or does putting the brakes on learning and saying, "we'll see you in two months" do more harm than good? Is this really right for our times; especially in high-poverty communities with a large number of at-risk students where the school might be the only stabilizing factor in their lives? Sure, this time off made sense when most of our students spent the summer harvesting crops or helping out on the farm. But if I may, this is 2009, not 1909. If you were to poll most kids in inner-city public schools today, I suspect very few of them spent their summer shucking corn.

So is “summer vacation,” like so many other traditions in our schools, something that we should take a long look at and ask ourselves, “Is this really in our student’s best interests?"

I'm open here. I'm not dogmatic about this and I'm not necessarily trying to make a case. So by all means, let me know what you think. Am I off? Are there alternatives? I'd like to know. Because I don’t need to be right. But I would like to arrive, logically and dispassionately, at the right answer. Because a lot of what we’re doing right now just isn't working.

Kids first, remember? It's a motto I see prominently displayed in most schools.

So what do we do?

13, 12, 11….the final school bell is about to ring.

What should we be doing when that final bell rings to truly put our kids first?

Inspiration from Earth Day

Every child should have a laptop.

Every child?

Yes. Every child in every school, whether rich or poor, should be handed a laptop, netbook, or some other portable, wireless device on their first day of school along with textbooks, pens, paper and other school supplies.

Impossible you say.

Nutty idea.

Ok. Here's another one.

Wireless access should be a public utility. It should be available to every household in the same way that electricity is available to every household. It should not be the province of the few. It should be a resource for all.

Never happen you say.

Nutty idea.

Well how about the idea of an "Earth Day?" Back in 1969 when the idea of Earth Day was proposed, I'm sure there were a number of naysayers who thought...yeah right. This is stupid. More hippie, commie nonsense. This will go nowhere.

Earth Day is now observed in 175 countries. It is the only event celebrated simultaneously around the globe by people of all backgrounds, faiths and nationalities. More than a half billion people participate in Earth Day Network campaigns every year. It is now, by some estimates, "the largest secular holiday in the world."

How's that for a nutty idea?

My last blog post was titled: You take inspiration where you find it. That sentiment is certainly very true today.

Every great event in the course of human history begins with an idea. An idea becomes a cause. A cause can become a movement that, one day, changes the world.

So I'll say it again...

Every student should have access to a laptop.

Every home should have wireless access.

Crazy idea, right?

Maybe.

But maybe, just maybe, it's an idea that could become a cause that, one day, changes more than just our schools, but changes our world. Think of a world completely connected. Think of a world where the barriers between "us" and "them" become blurred, then broken down. Because if you think of it, there really is no "them." It's just "us." One world, one planet, one cause, one destiny.

Happy Earth Day everyone.

21st Century Skills-- Use it or lose it?

It's funny how an entire lifetime can boil down to a few seminal moments. Fleeting images, mental and emotional vignettes that flash through the recesses of our minds, little things...small things...but ultimately, the things that both shape and define our lives.

I clearly remember one such moment from my youth.

I was a chatty little lad. (Which I'm sure stuns those of you who know me). I liked learning new and fancy words and then impressing my friends and family by using these new and fancy words in new and fancy sentences. My mother once joked that I started talking fluently at 2, and over 40 years later, she's still waiting for a pregnant pause.

Rimshot, please.

Anyway, one day when I was in the 7th or 8th grade, I heard the word "gauche" for the first time. I think it was during an episode of Gilligan's Island; from the lips of one of the most iconic characters in broadcast television history--Mr. Thurston Howell, III of course. I remember thinking, what a cool sounding word. I liked the way it rolled off the tongue. Gauche, gauche, gauche. Saying it made me feel so grown up. Like a man.

The problem is I had no idea what it meant.

I thought it meant "sophisticated, proper, something classy." (After all, if Mr. Howell said it, it had to be something good). So I vividly remember the day when my father (a very, very large man), my mother, my brother and I were in our kitchen talking casually after dinner and as everyone was about to leave the room I had one of those "let-me-show-mommy-and-daddy-how-grown-I-really-am" moments.

I said, "Mom, Dad...."

All eyes turned to me. I had the floor.

"Our house is so gauche."

Silence.

Dead silence.

Then my Dad's upper lip did this thing where it quivered, got really thin and turned kind of blue.....which meant he was really mad. My mother, an even tempered person if ever there was one, looked at me without a hint of amusement and said, "What did you say?"

At this point, I began to suspect I had done something terribly, terribly wrong.

I got as far as "Um...." before my mother said:

"Don't ever say that again."

Now I was in full-blown retreat.

"But Mom, gauche is a good thing."

Her expression softened a bit but I could tell she was still not pleased. "No, it is not a good thing," she said.

"Michael," my mother looked me squarely in the eyes and spoke in a cool measured tone.

"Don't ever use a word unless you know what it means."

With that she left the room along with my father whose upper lip had thankfully returned to its normal size and color. I breathed a sigh of relief. But they never did tell me what "gauche" meant. Since I couldn't even spell the word, I was unable to look it up in the dictionary. I didn't find out what gauche meant until years later.

I remember that day too.

For years, I thought the word "gauche" was spelled "gosh" (which explained why I couldn't find it in the dictionary). But when I finally figured that out that the "o" was in fact an "au" and the "sh" an "che," I was able to pull out our twenty pound, eleven inch thick unabridged dictionary (remember those...I am such a digital immigrant) and look up the cool sounding word with the really funny spelling. As my finger worked its way down the page, I remember feeling what could best be described as an uncomfortable mix of intellectual curiosity and anxiety. Then I found it.

Gauche.

Awkward, clumsy, inept, unsophisticated, inelegant, graceless, unpolished, uncultured, ill-bread, ill-mannered.

Each word was like a punch in the stomach. I grew up at a time when there were certain things you simply did not say to your parents. Like calling your house gauche. My parents were hard working people. We did not have a lot, but whatever we had, they worked really hard to get. And even though my intentions were good, I'd insulted them.

I felt like a fool. Worse than that, I felt like an educated fool. I'd gleaned what I thought was a bit of knowledge that I thought would make me sound more intelligent, but I ended up sounding far less intelligent than had I said nothing at all. I have no idea if my parents remembered this incident (they certainly never mentioned it again) but it was a lesson I will never forget.

Never use a word unless you know what it means.

Which brings me to phrase "21st century skills."

I'm sure you know what they are.

But do you know what it means?

Because I don't.

***************

A few weeks ago on on plurk, a teacher posed the following question:

"What would you say if asked to give a one line description of 21st century skills?"

Now you can usually send out a "plurk" or a "tweet" on virtually any subject, including whether or not you should put pickles on a tuna sandwich (you most assuredly should not) and get a host of responses. Micro-blogging networks like twitter or plurk can be an enormous source of information, so I'm not being at all critical of the forum. I like the forum. But I was really curious about this particular plurk because I had yet to find a single, cogent definition of "21st century skills" myself.

So I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Finally, a response:

"I can't think of anything at all."

About ten minutes later, a second response:

"Wow...that's hard...I'm thinking."

Then a third:

"I'm game. Here's my shot--it is the ability to use tools of technology to adapt your environment to create active responses."

That was it.

And I thought, if that's the best we can do we have got a REALLY big problem.

I recently read a "tweet" from Gary Stager that said, in part, "ed tech needs to get its act together...." I'm not sure what Mr. Stager was referring to on this particular occasion, but I think our use (or overuse) of the phrase "21st century skills" may be one such example.

The importance of developing what we term "21st century skills" is at the very core of our case for education technology. But have you found an actual definition? What I've found are "frameworks" (a grossly overused word), a matrix or lists itemizing and describing what "21st century skills" are. But as any good English teacher will tell you, there is a fundamental difference between a description and a definition. So while we're pounding the pavement, shaking our fists and baying into the wind about the need for pedagogical change, change, change...we're doing so predicated on a premise--the importance of developing "21st century skills"--that we struggle to define.

And that folks is a problem.

Remember, I want us to win this fight. But those of us "in" the ed tech camp; those of us who think that technology and other multimedia tools should be fully integrated into our curriculum and classrooms are still the minority. If I may put on my lawyer hat for a moment, we have the burden of proof. We have to convince the majority to move away from something, to something. So if we're going to succeed, and to date we have not succeeded, at least systemically, we had better be very, very clear about why.

So let's try and break this down. What exactly is the problem here? Why has the phrase "21st century skills" become such a lightening rod of confusion and controversy?

The problem, and I will try to tread lightly here because I respect and admire the work of organizations like the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, is that the phrase "21st century skills" is problematic. It is, at best, misleading and, at worse, offensive to a large segment of our audience. If nothing else, it creates an unnecessary and counterproductive distraction that potentially leads us away from more substantive discussions on the merit of education reform through meaningful technology integration.

Vision if you will a conversation with the most truculent and technology-resistant teacher in your school. We'll call him Don. Don's been teaching without computers for about 25 years and you're trying to make your case for technology integration. You're really passionate, your arms are flailing about, you've got charts, graphs, stats and a really cool power point presentation. Don is not moved. You show him "Shift Happens." Don is still not budging. You show him "Pay Attention." Still nothing. Then you give him this:

"Don, in order for our kids to compete and succeed in the 21st century, they have to have 21st century skills and they're not developing those with the way we're teaching now."

Now Don perks up. "Excuse me?"

Don folds his arms, a wry smile forming on his face, and he asks, "What do you mean, 21st century skills? What exactly are 21st century skills? Give me one such skill.

You say:

"Creativity!"

Don starts to laugh. "Excuse me? Creativity? That's a 21st century skill? I'd take Mark Twain over most of the drivel that we spew out today as art, literature or music. Are you suggesting that we didn't need to be creative in the 20th century? I know a few hundred highly successful people, all former students of mine, who might take some umbrage at that. Try again. Give me another 21st century skill."

"Communication skills!"

At this point, Don looks visibly annoyed. "Communication skills? What have I been doing for the past 25 years? What have my students been doing for the past 25 years? Writing on scrolls? Communication is not a 21st century skill. It is a basic human necessity. Please explain to me how something as fundamental to our existence as communication is a 21st century skill? Have you ever read Plato? He was as skilled a communicator as has ever existed in the course of human history and he lived over 2000 years ago. Barack Obama was a product of 20th century education and I'd say he was a pretty skilled communicator. Communication is most assuredly not a 21st century skill. Unless of course you're referring to communicating via text message, a practice that I think is compromising our student's ability to read, write or speak effectively. Give me something else."

Now you're starting to sweat a bit. This time your voice is a bit more sheepish. "Critical thinking?"

Don rolls his eyes. "Yeah, and I guess those of us unfortunate enough to have been born in the 20th century are just plain stupid. Oh however have we managed to survive, develop a vaccine for polio, send a man to the moon and build your beloved supercomputers without the ability to think critically."

Don looks you squarely in the eyes.

"What you're giving me are important life skills. I'll certainly concede that. But these are not skills that are unique to the 21st century or the 20th century for that matter. So help me out here. Explain this to me as though I was one of your students. Can you give me a simple, one sentence definition of what a 21st century skills is?

You pause. Reflect. Then say: "Don, 21st century skills are the skills our kids need to compete and succeed in the 21st century."

Don sighs and says, now almost sympathetically, "Isn't that where we started?"

And you've lost. Don's gone and no matter how many times you show him "Shift Happens" or thrust PISA results under his nose, you probably won't get him back.

*************

In the law there is something called a "red herring." A red herring is defined as "a diversion intended to distract attention from the main issue." By basing our case, in whole or in part, on the importance of "21st century skills," we may be handing those predisposed against technology integration the perfect red herring. We find ourselves so busy defending what is and what is not a 21st century skill that the main point about pedagogical change gets lost.

So let's try to get down to the heart of the matter.

What are we really trying to say when we refer to the importance of 21st century skills? What is the point? Can we offer up something simple, something straight-forward, something that fully, but succinctly, embodies the essence of what we're trying to say?

I've come up with this:

Rather than talk about the importance of "21st century skills," I point out that our first job as educators is to help our children survive and thrive in the world as it exists now.

That's it.

John Dewey, whose views on “progressive education” provided the theoretical foundation for constructivism, once wrote: “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.” Dewey did not say that our kids needed "20th century skills" because he did not need to. His premise, as true now as it was then, is that as our world changes the way we teach must reflect these changes. When most of our children left school after the 8th grade to work on farms, we taught one way. When industrialization changed our means of production, our economy and our world, our schools adjusted accordingly. (Perhaps not for the better, but they changed). Now the personal computer, wireless technology and the global reach of the internet have changed every facet of our world. And to paraphrase Thomas Friedman, "we ain't going back."

So what do we do?

Our job, as educators, is to adapt and adjust to that change and to prepare our children for that world. For their future. And a part of that challenge is to make sure that our kids are familiar and fluid with the tools of the 21st century and can use those tools to be and create something of value to the world as it exists now. If we fail to do that, then we fail them. There's no better or worse here. It's not about 21st century skills versus 20th century skills and no, kids today don't have to be smarter than we were.

But they do need to be different.

Because our world is different.

Now we can explain what some of those differences are. Now we can discuss some of the cognitive and practical skills that students need to have mastered before entering the workforce in order to compete on this new, flattened global stage. But note, I present it this way to avoid throwing up the red herring of so-called "21st century skills." The "Don's" of the world might object to the idea of technology, they might balk at the concept of "21t century skills," but no good educator should balk at the idea that our common challenge is to prepare our children for the world as it exists now. How you define and characterize that world is up to you. But going forward, I will shy away from the catch-all phrase "21st century skills" whenever possible because I don't think it helps our case.

Now having trudged through all this you might think: "Mike, this is all about semantics. All this who-shot-John about a phrase. It doesn't really matter. We shouldn't get tripped up over words."

Oh really?

Teachers.....front and center here. How many times have you heard your students plead to you in their most long-suffering voice when unhappy with a grade or your assessment of their work....but [Mr./Ms.______________], you're not being fair. You know what I mean."

And how do you respond?

No, I don't know what you mean.

I know what you said.

We're making a case for change. Right now that case has not been terribly successful. So I ask you to reconsider one element of our case. I ask you to consider this.

21st century skills.

Yes, we know what they are.

Yes, we know what we mean.

But does our constant reference to "21st century skills" help or hurt our cause?

Should we use it?

Or lose it?