Last night I had a good conversation with a neighbor about the limitations of narrowing a secondary education as a way to concentrate on the preparation for a career or job skill. The premise of our talk was that throughout our teens and 20s you are constantly changing and that selection of a destination at 17 could be a dead end at 35. We agreed that it seemed better to make life choices after getting a well-rounded education in high school or college. Then this morning, I read that in response to Estonia’s lack of computer programmers, first grade students (and all other students) in this country are learning how to program a computer. Although this may be an extreme example of the job market driving education, it does raise the issue of a school’s role in how best to prepare students for the future. Is it best at age 18 to be able to write computer code? Or, is it better to have a broad understanding of a variety of content areas? According to some, neither question is more important that the other. What matters most is an ability to be a lifelong learner that will allow you to when necessary, reinvent yourself. This morning’s article included a quote from the futurist Alvin Toffler that captures this new reality: In the future “illiteracy will not be defined by those who cannot read and write, but by those who cannot learn and relearn.”
So how is KPBSD doing with preparing our students for the future? We are offering more skills based training as a way to orient our students to career pathways. I don’t feel however, that we are doing enough with training students to be lifelong learners. This is not necessarily a criticism of KPBSD, as it is of our larger educational structure. We devote a lot of time to assessments that test knowledge (this is not bad), but are overly dependent on external events or competitions to test problem solving ability. As we continue to develop our curriculum we need to ensure that we include assessments that are based on the application of the learned knowledge
One Comment
Thank you for bring out the need to be a life-long learner. I’d like to encourage staff to get to know how Alaska Native families, parents and grandparents of children in your schools have developed an attitude of life-long learning. We can learn much from them.
The PR dept. with the cooperation of the Indian Education program in your district might want to develop articles for staff and parents that shows Alaska Natives as life-long learners. My 38 years of experience working with Alaska Native parents and school boards has provided many examples of life-long learning.
I’ve enjoyed each of this year’s blogs. Thanks for writing them!