No Child Left Behind has accomplished what many educators predicted. It has ensured that those who usually get left behind get left more behind. It did this by requiring some schools—not the best ones—to keep their eyes on the wrong ball. It’s the quality of the teaching, stupid. Standards do not ensure good teaching and standards bureaucratically imposed can go a long way to reduce the quality of teaching.
Good teachers teach as if their students can think. Not only can think, but must learn to think better in order to be successful. Somehow in our society there has developed the notion that thinking is all well and good, but first you need to learn your three Rs, when the truth is the other way around. To learn the three Rs you have engage the brain before teaching the skill. If we want our children to be prepared for this new century, we need to teach them as if they are thinking all the time.
The National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) has come out with Skills for the 21st Century. There are five:
- Creativity and innovation
- Facility with the use of ideas and abstractions
- Self-discipline and organization to manage one’s own work and drive it through to successful conclusion
- Leadership
- Ability to function well as a member of a team
In his latest book, Five Kinds of Minds for the Future, Howard Gardner, professor at Harvard University and author of the useful concept of Multiple Intelligences has his own list of five:
- Disciplined mind (expertise in a field)
- Synthesizing mind (scanning and weaving into coherence)
- Creating mind (discovery and innovation)
- Respectful mind (open mindedness and inclusiveness)
- Ethical mind (moral courage)
