21st Century Skills: Why They Matter, What They Are,and How We Get There

Ken Kay writes an article about how modern skills (21st century skills) would benefit students today and why it is important to have this kind of stuff taught in schools. He says that in the past skills like finances, business aspects and global awareness have not been very necessary because the society has not been moving that fast. Now that it is, writer Malcolm Gladwell says that it is important to teach students these type of skills. He says that their has been research and lots of thought into what will be taught and hopes that people will catch on and start implementing this in classrooms. Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) was a test that showed most Americans score lower on skills like these because they involve world knowledge and critical thinking to be successful. He says there are 3 reasons that these skills should be necessary for 21st century knowledge. Number one, the skills are rarely taught in schools and since they aren't made a big deal, they don't "matter" to people. Second, it is critical for all students in today's world to achieve this knowledge. And last, employers are specifically looking for these skills in order to succeed in the workforce. He says we need to be more organized with our teaching and more competitive. 

I think that this article is important for many reasons. One of those reasons if when I was in school, I always wanted to know how to survive in the real world but instead I was being taught geometry when I wasn't even going into a field that dealt with high math skills. I was being taught literature (which was important) but not necessarily. I needed to know how to be writing papers for college and other stuff. This article seemed to be nothing like the common core. This is something that is very well researched and thought out. The students are not the bait in this process. These educators will see how students react and work with this kind of change and work around that. Whereas the common core, I feel like, is using the students as bait to figure out if it will work or not. I think implementing 21st century skills into education could only help students in the long run.