New Skills Needed to Face the World?

In Tony Wagner’s article,”Rigor Redefined”, he talks about how he thinks kids are not learning the skills they need to succeed in twenty first century careers. He thinks we need to start teaching new skills. I agree with him on most points. He says, “It’s time to hold ourselves and all of our students to new and higher standards.” I similarly blogged about the same thing two weeks ago. Tony Wagner suggests many different skills that we need for these twenty first century careers. He says that these are new and different skills, but I disagree. I think that we need skills such as problem solving, flexibility, and verbal teamwork skills, but I don’t think that any of these skills are new. All of these skills are useful and needed, but these are skills that have always been needed. People still had to problem solve in older times, but for completely different issues. The only difference between now and then is that we have different problems to solve. We can still use the same skills that we have always used, just apply them to a new and different situation. In general I like Tony Wagner’s article because it reinforces the skills that we need to learn, but I think that students are being educated in a standard way. We need to raise standards on everything, but we don’t need to change our skills. The simple solution is to raise standards on our skills and make sure everybody is learning them. The problem is that we are not learning them. These skills are not new. These skills are old, and have stopped being taught. All we need to do is start teaching them again and at higher standards.