Partnership Promotes Changes

Ambitious, challenging, aggressive, daunting: depending on your point of view, any of those words could describe the mission of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. The organization’s framework suggests core subjects, “21st Century content,” learning and thinking skills, ITC literacy, life skills, and “21st Century assessments,” all of which it says are necessary to be an effective citizen, worker or leader.

The partnership’s mission, according to its website, is to put its 21st Century Skills at the center of K-12 education because “there is a profound gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need in typical 21st century communities and workplaces.” (That statement does make one wonder how anyone who graduated in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s, back in the days of the slide rule, could still hold a job today. But they do.)

The partnership’s goal of aligning K-12 education more closely to what is actually needed in the workplace seems admirable. It does raise a question, though: is the main purpose of education to create individuals who are well-suited to the job market? The many corporations represented in the partnership certainly know what skills they want to see in their employees, and they would benefit from a well-trained workforce. However, the skills that the partnership is promoting are valuable to almost anyone, both in the workplace and in life: adaptability, productivity, people skills, leadership, ethics, and the like.

The partnership’s website is worth a visit for at least two reasons. First, they have collected a variety of resources, especially at their “Route 21” database. You may have already read some of their publications. More important, the organization is, and will continue to be, influential in shaping American education. As noted earlier, the partnership has an ambitious mission to significantly change American education. In their vision, teachers and students will both be responsible for additional standards, content, and performance, so educators and parents should know what the organization is saying.

References:

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2009). Retrieved July 22, 2009 from http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/.