Tonight I reviewed the website of Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a national organization advocating 21st Century readiness for students. What I found was an advocacy for strengthening programs of instruction that meet the challenges that today’s students would face following graduation in terms of knowledge and skill development. The focus of the tools and resources presented are on strengthening the 3R’s. The 3R’s are the core subject matter such as English, Reading, Mathematics… Surrounding this is the umbrella of, Life and Career Skills, Information, Media and Tech Skills, and the 4R’s, tools necessary for synthesizing the core content, such as Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, and Innovation. The outcomes are strengthened with support systems that relate to instruction. The result will deliver instruction in a manner that will lead to mastery and the ability for the student to engage their future effectively.
The objectives present a sound program of development of the skills necessary for a student to meet and maintain growth in this new century. Within the current, economic, social and political climate, the support for effective implementation of these objectives would appear to be cloudy at best particularly in terms of the cost of implementation and the complication of oversight. With this in mind the program that Partnership for 21st Century Skills advocate does present a strong model from which the educational community needs to develop instruction thus providing the roots from which our children can effectively engage their futures.
