21st Century Skills

I recently visited the website for the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/. The mission of this organization is to work with the business community, leaders in education and policymakers to ensure all students receive an education that prepares them for citizenship and careers in the 21st century. The organization provides resources to help support this goal.

At their website, a plethora of information is available. It is well organized, easy to navigate and pleasant to view. I particularly like their colorful graphic showing the 21st Century Student Outcomes and Support Systems. The links and details within the system graphic are extensive. I found all skills and content to be vital for a student's education.

I was surprised and disappointed to see how few states were listed as actively supporting this organization. Unfortunately, Ohio, my home state, is not one of the supporters. I was also surprised to see the lengthy listing of companies heralding this effort. It is impressive in its' length and scope. Many notable companies are included.

If there is anything I was disappointed with; it is placing financial education as an interdisciplinary theme. My experience shows that this tends to diminish the importance of the material and may be overlooked or undervalued by the classroom teacher in the core content areas. As a business educator, the students that take my personal finance course enter being very weak in financial concepts and skills. It does not appear they are receiving enough this through their core courses. With high stakes testing being at the forefront; teachers are forced to choose what will be covered. There just isn't enough time to cover it all.

Students will need to have world class content and skills to be prepared to be a productive member of our workforce as well as a contributing citizen. The content and skills must be mutually supportive of each other. When I think of how 21st Century skills will impact education, two thoughts come to mind. As teachers we desperately need professional development opportunities to learn how to incorporate the skills training in order to support the content. In order to provide this education, we will need the financial support of our community; something that all too frequently is sorely missing in this country. Fortunately technology is becoming less expensive; and that is good news for the future of our world-our students.