The past two decades have seen a push for reformation in American education. The result of much of this movement has yielded little verifiable improvement in learning which is, presumably, the purpose of reforming education in the first place. There are a couple of core issues at the root of the problem that plagues today’s American education system: the needs of today’s twenty-first century students are not the same as the needs of yesterday’s students and the skills needed in today’s twenty-first century job market are not the same skills needed in yesterday’s job market. When these issues are truly embraced, it becomes evident that there is not a need to change a few things here and there, rather there is a need for a huge overhaul in our thinking about education and ultimately in the fostering of our students’ learning.
American schools have overwhelmingly adopted a Standards-Based system of educating our students as a result of the 1983 report, A Nation at Risk. Groups of standards have been established so that students may be measured against them. With this system, there is no longer a normative set of data in which the students are measured against other students, rather there are established goals that each child must strive to achieve. These standards are developed at the national and state levels and while many state’s standards vary, the degree to which they vary are pretty slim. In general, there seems to be a consensus about what our children are supposed to learn and when. The problem is not determining what we, as educators, would like to imbue into our pupils, rather we have not yet reached success in determining how we are to effectively teach our students these things.
Tony Wagner (2008) interviewed many CEOs and people in higher level management in various fields to ask them what they considered to be necessary traits or skills that twenty-first century employees entering the work field must possess. Through this process, he came up with seven survival skills for the twenty-first century: critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration across networks and leading by influence, agility and adaptability, initiative and entrepreneurialism, effective oral and written communication, accessing and analyzing information, and curiosity and imagination. In keeping these skills in mind, and tying them to the state standards that Avicenna Academy has chosen to adopt as a set of minimum expectations for our students, we must now focus on the means by which to assure that our students have the best opportunity at succeeding at not only meeting the standard goals but also at honing the aforementioned skills. The ultimate goal for us is to give our students the best possible advantage in tomorrow’s job market so that they may be successful and productive citizens of the United States and members of the larger global community.
A big concern for many educators is how we go about sharing our love for learning with our students in such a way that it sparks a love for learning in our students. The students are aware that there are standards that they are expected to learn, but that knowledge alone does not inspire them to work toward the goals. It is evident to many educators that there is a lack of relevance in today’s education. Specifically, many schools give their students work that bears no resemblance to work that they are expected to do outside of school either now or in their future. Many students are aware of this discrepancy and whether or not they can articulate their discontent with so-called “busy work”, they are exhibiting their disregard for our goals by not doing homework, refusing to study for traditional tests and their overall lack of participation in the classroom. Lack of apparent relevance is a big concern for all educators and one that Avicenna Academy is choosing to address immediately.
Reference:
Wagner, Tony. 2008. The Global Achievement Gap: Why even our best schools don't teach the
new survival skills our children need--and what we can do about it. Basic Books; NY, NY.
