Are they really "21st century" skills?

In the Bridging Differences blog, Diane Ravitch writes:

... the movement for “21st Century skills” sounds similar—if not identical—to earlier movements over the past century. Its calls to teach critical thinking skills, creativity, problem-solving, and cooperative group skills are not at all “21st Century.” Certainly for the past generation, these goals have been virtual mantras in our schools of education. If there is anything that teachers have been taught over the years, it is the importance of pursuing these goals, which are certainly laudable in themselves.

Earlier manifestations of the movement to teach outcomes directly was referred to as “life adjustment education,” or “outcome-based education,” or most recently in the 1990s, “SCANS skills.” In every manifestation, the movement says that we should teach students how to think and teach them real-life skills but downplay academic subjects because students can always look up “bits of information.”

and adds...

Is it [the 21st Century Skills movement] an effort on the part of the technology companies to sell more high-tech hardware and software to schools? Is it an effort to throw a wrench into the effort to develop meaningful and reasonable academic standards by replacing them with vague and pleasing-sounding goals?

Read Ravich's column for a reality check. The blogosphere has rightly been called an echo-chamber of like-minded commentators who reinforce each other's beliefs with few other voices offering divergent opinions. (Tribes?)

So why, if "21st century skills" have been promoted for the past 30 years have they not risen to level of importance of the basic 3rs? Why is NCLB not demanding that schools unable to demonstrate that they are teaching critical thinking be placed on AYP?

I have always been skeptical that society or schools actually want students who are capable of critical thinking. Who are information literate. Who are genuinely creative. These scary people threaten the status quo and may lead a better class of legislators, CEOs, and school administrators. See "Why Robots Make the Best Students" and "The Illusion of Change."

I am also beginning to think that both ISTE, AASL, and other organizations who promote "21st Century skills" have done a disservice to students by their very ambition attempts to incorporate all the skills today's kids need in their documents. Rather than a modest list of well-defined and achievable skills written in a language the general education community and public can understand, we are now working with "vague and pleasing-sounding goals."

OK, call me a geezer, but I still like "research skills" and "computer skills." I suspect teachers who encourage creativity, expect higher-level thinking skills, collaboration, and all these fuzzy  "dispositions" will do so even if they aren't spelled out in standards - or continue to ignore them if they are is so inclined.

Libraries for a post-literate society II

In last Wednesday's post, I began the argument that libraries, if they are to remain vital, need to recognize and support a "postliterate" user-base, defining...

the postliterate as those who can read, but chose to meet their primary information and recreational needs through audio, video, graphics and gaming.

What might be the hallmarks of a "postliterate" library? These come to mind...

1. PL libraries budget, select, acquire, catalog and circulate as many or more materials in non-print formats as they do traditional print materials. The circulation policy for all materials is similar.
2. PL libraries stock without prejudice age-appropriate graphic and audio-book novels and nonfiction for both informational and recreational use.
3. PL libraries support gaming for both instruction and recreation.
4. PL libraries purchase high-value electronic information resources.
5. PL libraries provide resources for patrons to create visual and auditory materials and promote the demonstration of  learning and research through original video, audio and graphics production - and physical spaces for the presentation of these creations.
   
6. PL libraries allow the use of personal communication devices (mp3 players, handhelds, laptops, etc.) and provide wireless network access for these devices.
7. PL library programs teach the critical evaluation of non-print information.
8. PL library programs teach the skills necessary to produce effective communication in all formats.
9. PL library programs accept and promote the use of non-print resources as sources for research and problem-based assignments.
10. PL librarians recognize the legitimacy of non-print resources, and promote their use without bias.

While I recognize this may look frightening, even culturally destructive, to many of us "print-bound" professionals, we cannot ignore the society of which we are a part - and are charged with supporting. I believe culture determines library programs, not that libraries create the culture.

School libraries are often the bellwether programs in their schools. If we as librarians support learning resources that are meaningful, useful and appealing to our students, so might the classroom teacher as well.

In Phaedrus, Plato decries an "alternate" communication technology:

The fact is that this invention [writing] will produce forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned it. They will not need to exercise their memories, being able to rely on what is written, calling things to mind no longer from within themselves by their own unaided powers, but under the stimulus of external marks that are alien to themselves.

Plato might well approve of our return to the oral tradition – in its digital forms. But his quote also demonstrates that sometimes our greatest fears become our greatest blessings.

So what qualities do you believe define a postliterate library? A postliterate classroom? A postliterate school?

Libraries for a post-literate society I

First off let me just say that I've impressed the hell out myself with the title of this post. But I just can't think of another way to describe some thoughts I've been trying to organize for a while. Something less ostentatious will present itself eventually, I'm sure. - Doug

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“... the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” Steven Jobs

Next time you are returning to your seat from an airplane's bathroom, do a quick scan over the shoulders of seated  passengers. What are they doing?

If your observations are similar to mine, well over 50% of air travelers are listening to portable music devices, playing games on handhelds, working on presentation or spreadsheet files on laptops, or watching video on small players. Book readers today are the minority.

Any number of recent studies are concluding that reading is declining.1 Not just any reading, but reading of novels and longer works of nonfiction. A range of pundits are remarking that online reading is changing their personal reading behaviors.2 As the Job's quote above suggest, we are rapidly become a postliterate society.

Wikipedia describes a postliterate society as "a society wherein multimedia technology has advanced to the point where literacy, the ability to read written words, is no longer necessary."  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postliterate_society (Aug 10, 2008)

I would modify that definition and define the postliterate as those who can read, but chose to meet their primary information and recreational needs through audio, video, graphics and gaming. Print for the postliterate is relegated to brief personal messages, short informational needs, and other functional, highly pragmatic uses such as instructions, signage and organizational device entries or is highly supplemented by graphics. Their needs for extended works of information are met through visual and/or auditory formats.3

Postliteracy is impacting books themselves. How many citizens - already manga and illustrated novel fans - will learn about this year's presidential candidates from:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2008/07/mccain-and-obam.html

While many adults exhibit postliterate behaviors, the "Net Generation" is its poster child. And the poster child of the Net Gens is Jeremy from the popular comic strip Zits. A recent panel was illuminating:

Dad: Jeremy, let me tell you a little story about patience.
Jeremy: Is it long? Can you just give me the bullet points? Or maybe the highlights? A short synopsis would probably be more effective.

And the last panel concludes...

Zits by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman 8/05/08 <http://www.arcamax.com/zits/s-386501-750305>

The term “postliterate library” may at first look seem like an oxymoron. But it is not. Our best libraries are already postliterate, increasingly serving sets of users who communicate, recreate and learn using media other than print. And the attitude we as professional librarians adopt toward the postliterate may well determine whether our libraries continue to exist.

Education and librarianship has a bias toward print. This communication/information format that has served society well and in which most professionals now demonstrate high levels of proficiency is expected to be vociferously defended. Most of my fellow professionals are in the same straights that I find myself - a competent reader, writer and print analyist but neophyte video, audio and graphic producer, consumer and critic. And it is human nature to be dismissive of those competencies which we ourselves lack.

But I would argue that postliteracy may be a return to more natural forms of communication - speaking, storytelling, dialogue, debate, and dramatization. It is just now that these modes can be captured and stored digitally as (or more) easily as writing. And  information, emotion and persuasion may be even more powerfully conveyed in multi-media formats. 

What do you see as critical attributes of a library that serves a postliterate clientele?

In the next post, I'll share some of your ideas and mine about postlieracy and its impact on our resources, our programs, and our curricula.

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1. These include:

National Endowment for the Arts  "Reading at Risk" report, 2004 <www.arts.gov/pub/readingatrisk.pdf> 

Michael Rogers "What is the worth of word? Will it matter if people can’t read in the future?"  <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14823087/from/ET/>

2. These include:

Naomi Baron  “Killing the written word by snippets” (Los Angles Times, Nov 28, 2005) <http://articles.latimes.com/2005/nov/28/opinion/oe-baron28>

Mark Baurlein The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupifies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30)

Nicholas Carr "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" <http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google>

Maggie Jackson Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age.

Lee Siegel Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob.

Motoko Rich "Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading? New York Times, July 27, 2008 <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/27reading.html?ref=education>

3. This differs from aliteracy in that the demand for information and new learning is present, only met in other means than print. Aliteracy simply means choosing not to read.