21st Century Skills

This push towards so-called 21st Century Skills--as if educators, of all people, knew in 1910 what skills would be required of students for the next 90 years--would be relatively harmless, outside of the immense expenditure of time and money, if certain advocates didn't minimize actual content knowledge.

I've said for years that a person cannot think "critically" without having some knowledge about which to think--but the first several lines of this post are far more eloquent and pithy on the subject than I've ever been:

This post reminded me of something I wrote back in 2005, in response to other assertions by educationists to the effect that technology makes memorization unnecessary. I quoted some lines from a song by Jakob Dylan:

Cupid, don’t draw back your bow
Sam Cooke didn’t know what I know

…and observed that in order to understand these two simple lines, you’d have to know several things:

1)You need to know that, in mythology, Cupid symbolizes love
2)And that Cupid’s chosen instrument is the bow and arrow
3)Also that there was a singer/songwriter named Sam Cooke
4)And that he had a song called “Cupid, draw back your bow.”

“Progressive” educators, loudly and in large numbers, insist that students should be taught “thinking skills” as opposed to memorization. But consider: If it’s not possible to understand a couple of lines from a popular song without knowing by heart the references to which it alludes–without memorizing them–what chance is there for understanding medieval history, or modern physics, without having a ready grasp of the topics which these disciplines reference?

You can't "think" until you have something in your head to think about.