Even our "best" schools are failingto prepare students for 21st-centurycareers and citizenship.

Tony Wagner

n the new global economy, with many jobs being either

automated or "off-shored," what skills will studentsneed to build successful careers? What skills will theyneed to be good citizens? Are these two education goalsin conflict?

To examine these questions, I conducted research beginningwith conversations with several hundred business, nonprofit,philanthropic, and education leaders. With a clearer picture ofthe skills young people need, I then set out to learn whetherU.S. schools are teaching and testing the skills that mattermost. I observed classrooms in some of the nation's mosthighly regarded suburban schools to find out whether our"best" was, in fact, good enough for our children's future.What I discovered on this journey may surprise you.

The Schooling Students NeedOne of my first conversations was with Clay Parker, presidentof the Chemical Management Division of BOC Edwards-acompany that, among other things, makes machines andsupplies chemicals for the manufacture of microelectronicsdevices. He's an engineer by training and the head of a tech-nical business, so when I asked him about the skills he looksfor when he hires young people, I was taken aback by hisanswer.

"First and foremost, I look for someone who asks goodquestions," Parker responded. "We can teach them the tech-

nical stuff, but we can't teach them how to ask good ques-tions-how to think."

"What other skills are you looking for?" I asked, expectingthat he'd jump quickly to content expertise.

"I want people who can engage in good discussion-whocan look me in the eye and have a give and take. All of ourwork is done in teams. You have to know how to work well

20 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP/OCTOBER 2008

with others. But you also have to know how to engagecustomers-to find out what their needs are. If you can'tengage others, then you won't learn what you need to know"

I initially doubted whether Parker' views were representativeof business leaders in general. But after interviewing leaders insettings from Apple to Unilever to the U.S. Army and reviewingthe research on workplace skills, I came to understand that theworld of work has changed profoundly

ASSOCIATION FOR SUPERVISION AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT 21

neaToday's students need to master seven survival skills to

thrive in the new world of work. And these skills are the sameones that will enable students to become productive citi-

zens who contribute to solving some of the most pressingissues we face in the 21st century

1. Critical Thinking and Problem SolvingTo compete in the new global economy, companiesneed their workers to think about how to continuouslyimprove their products, processes, or services. Overand over, executives told me that the heart of criticalthinking and problem solving is the ability to ask the

right questions. As one senior executive from Dell said,"Yesterday's answers won't solve today's problems."Ellen Kumata, managing partner at Cambria Associates,

explained the extraordinary pressures on leaders today"The challenge is this: How do you do things that haven'tbeen done before, where you have to rethink or think anew?It's not incremental improvement any more. The markets arechanging too fast."

2. Collaboration and LeadershipTeamwork is no longer just about working with others in yourbuilding. Christie Pedra, CEO of Siemens, explained, "Tech-nology has allowed for virtual teams. We have teams workingon major infrastructure projects that are all over the U.S. Onother projects, you're working with people all around theworld on solving a software problem. Every week they're on avariety of conference calls; they're doing Web casts; they'redoing net meetings."

Mike Summers, vice president for Global Talent Manage-ment at Dell, said that his greatest concern was young people'slack of leadership skills. "Kids just out of school have anamazing lack of preparedness in general leadership skills andcollaborative skills," he explained. "They lack the ability toinfluence."

3. Agility and AdaptabilityClay Parker explained that anyone whoworks at BOC Edwards today "has tothink, be flexible, change, and use avariety of tools to solve new problems.We change what we do all the time. Ican guarantee the job I hire someone todo will change or may not exist in thefuture, so this is why adaptability andlearning skills are more important thantechnical skills."

4. Initiative and EntrepreneurialismMark Chandler, senior vice president andgeneral counsel at Cisco, was one of thestrongest proponents of initiative: "I sayto my employees, if you try five thingsand get all five of them right, you may befailing. If you try 10 things, and get eightof them right, you're a hero. You'llnever be blamed for failing to reach astretch goal, but you will be blamed fornot trying. One of the problems of alarge company is risk aversion. Ourchallenge is how to create an entrepre-neurial culture in a larger organization."

5. Effective Oral and WrittenCommunicationMike Summers of Dell said, "We areroutinely surprised at the difficultysome young people have in communi-cating: verbal skills, written skills, pres-entation skills. They have difficultybeing clear and concise; it's hard forthem to create focus, energy, andpassion around the points they want tomake. If you're talking to an exec, thefirst thing you'll get asked if you haven'tmade it perfectly clear in the first 60seconds of your presentation is, 'Whatdo you want me to take away from thismeeting?' They don't know how toanswer that question."

Summers and other leaders fromvarious companies were not necessarilycomplaining about young people's poorgrammar, punctuation, or spelling-thethings we spend so much time teachingand testing in our schools. Althoughwriting and speaking correctly are obvi-

The heart of critical thinking and problem

solving is the ability to ask the right questions.

ously important, the complaints I heardmost frequently were about fuzzy

thinking and young people not knowinghow to write with a real voice.

6. Accessing and AnalyzingInformationEmployees in the 21st century have tomanage an astronomical amount ofinformation daily As Mike Summerstold me, "There is so much informationavailable that it is almost too much, andif people aren't prepared to process theinformation effectively it almost freezesthem in their steps."

It's not only the sheer quantity ofinformation that represents a challenge,but also how rapidly the information is

changing. Quick-how many planetsare there? In the early 1990s, I heardthen-Harvard University president NeilRudenstine say in a speech that the half-life of knowledge in the humanities is10 years, and in math and science, it'sonly two or three years. I wonder whathe would say it is today

7. Curiosity and ImaginationMike Summers told me, "Peoplewho've learned to ask great questionsand have learned to be inquisitive arethe ones who move the fastest in ourenvironment because they solve thebiggest problems in ways that have themost impact on innovation."

Daniel Pink, the author of A Whole

,22 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP/OCTOBER 2008

New Mind, observes that withincreasing abundance, people wantunique products and services: "Forbusinesses it's no longer enough tocreate a product that's reasonablypriced and adequately functional. Itmust also be beautiful, unique, andmeaningful."' Pink notes that devel-oping young people's capacities forimagination, creativity, and empathywill be increasingly important formaintaining the United States' compet-itive advantage in the future.

The Schooling Students GetI've spent time observing in classroomsacross the United States for more than20 years. Here is a sampling of whatI've seen recently These examples comefrom secondary honors and advancedplacement (AP) classes in three schoolsystems that enjoy excellent reputationsbecause of their high test scores.

AP ChemistryStudents work in groups of

two and three mixingchemicals according to

directions written onthe chalkboard. Oncethe mixtures areprepared, studentsheat the concoctionwith Bunsen burners.According to thedirections on the

board, they aresupposed to record their

observations on a work-sheet.I watch a group of three

young men whose mixture isgiving off a thin spiral of smoke as it'

being heated-something that none ofthe other students' beakers are doing.One student looks back at the chalk-board and then at his notes. Then allthree stop what they are doing, appar-ently waiting for the teacher to comehelp them.

"What's happening to your mixture?" Iask the group.

"Dunno," one mutters. "We must havemixed it up wrong."

"What's your hypothesis about whathappened-why it's smoking?"

The three look at one another blankly,and the student who has been doing allthe speaking looks at me and shrugs.

AP U.S. GovernmentThe teacher is reviewing answers to asample test that the class took theprevious day The test contains 80multiple-choice questions related to thefunctions and branches of the federalgovernment.

When he's finished, he says "OK, nowlet's look at some sample free-responsequestions from previous years' APexams." He flips the overhead projectoron and reads from the text of a trans-parency: "Give three reasons why the IronTriangle may be criticized as undemocratic.How would you answer this question?"

No one replies."OK, who can give me a definition of

the Iron Triangle?"A student pipes up, "The military-

industrial-congressional complex.""OK, so what would be three reasons

why it would be considered undemoc-ratic?" The teacher calls on a student inthe front row who has his hand halfraised, and he answers the question in avoice that we can't hear over the hum ofthe projector's fan.

"Good. Now let's look at another one."The teacher flips another transparencyonto the projector. "Now this question isabout bureaucracy Let me tell you howto answer this one ..

AP EnglishThe teacher explains that the class isgoing to review students' literature notesfor the advanced placement exam nextweek. The seven students are deeplyslouched in their chairs, arranged in asemicircle around the teacher's desk.

The teacher asks, "Now what isVirginia Woolf saying about the balancebetween an independent life versus asocial life?"

Students ruffle through their note-books. Finally, a young woman, readingfrom her notes, answers, "Mrs. Ramseysought meaning from social interactions."

"Yes, that's right. Now what about Lily,the artist? How did she constructmeaning?"

"Through her painting," anotherstudent mumbles, her face scrunchedclose to her notes.

"So what is Woolf saying about thechoices these two women have made,and what each has sacrificed?"

No reply The teacher sighs, gets up,goes to the board, and begins writing.

A Rare ClassOnce in a great while, I observe a classin which a teacher is using academiccontent to develop students' corecompetencies. In such a class, thecontrast with the others is stark.

ASSOCIATION FOR SUPERVISION AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT 23

At the beginning of the period in anAlgebra 11 class, the teacher writes aproblem on the board. He turns to thestudents, who are sitting in desksarranged in squares of four that face oneanother. "You haven't seen this kind ofproblem before," he explains. "Solving itwill require you to use concepts fromboth geometry and algebra. Each groupwill try to develop at least two differentways to solve this problem. After all thegroups have finished, I'll randomlychoose someone from each group whowill write one of your proofs on theboard, and I'll ask that person to explainthe process your group used."

The groups quickly go to work.Animated discussion takes place asstudents pull the problem apart and talkabout different ways to solve it. Whilethey work, the teacher circulates fromgroup to group. When a student asks aquestion, the teacher responds withanother question: "Have you con-sidered ... " "Why did you assumethat?" or simply "Have you askedsomeone in your group?"

What makes this an effective lesson-a lesson in which students are learning anumber of the seven survival skills whilealso mastering academic content? First,students are given a complex, multistep

problem that is different from anythey've seen in the past. To solve it,they have to apply critical-thinking andproblem-solving skills and call on previ-ously acquired knowledge from bothgeometry and algebra. Mere memoriza-tion won't get them far. Second, theyhave to find two ways to solve theproblem, which requires initiative andimagination. Third, they have to explaintheir proofs using effective communica-tion skills. Fourth, the teacher does notspoon-feed students the answers. Heuses questions to push students'thinking and build their tolerance forambiguity. Finally, because the teacherannounces in advance that he'llrandomly call on a student to show howthe group solved the problem, eachstudent in every group is held account-able. Success requires teamwork.

Rigor for the 21st CenturyAcross the United States, I see schoolsthat are succeeding at making adequateyearly progress but failing our students.Increasingly, there is only onecurriculum: test prep. Of the hundredsof classes that I've observed in recentyears, fewer than 1 in 20 were engagedin instruction designed to teach studentsto think instead of merely drilling for thetest.

To teach and test the skills that ourstudents need, we must first redefineexcellent instruction. It is not a check-

list of teacher behaviors and a modellesson that covers content stan-

dards. It is working withcolleagues to ensure that allstudents master the skills theyneed to succeed as lifelonglearners, workers, and citizens.I have yet to talk to a recentgraduate, college teacher,community leader, or business

leader who said that notknowing enough academic

content was a problem. In my

0 STEFANIEFEUX

interviews, everyone stressed the impor-tance of critical thinking, communica-tion skills, and collaboration.

We need to use academic content toteach the seven survival skills every day,at every grade level, and in every class.And we need to insist on a combinationof locally developed assessments andnew nationally normed, online tests-such as the College and Work ReadinessAssessment (www.cae.org)-thatmeasure students' analytic-reasoning,critical-thinking, problem-solving, andwriting skills.

It's time to hold ourselves and all ofour students to a new and higher stan-dard of rigor, defined according to 21st-century criteria. It's time for our profes-sion to advocate for accountabilitysystems that will enable us to teach andtest the skills that matter most. Ourstudents' futures are at stake..

'Pink, D. (2005). A whole new mind:Moving from the information age to the concep-tual age. New York: Riverhead Books, pp.32-33.

Copyright © 2008 Tony Wagner.

TonyWagner is Codirector of the ChangeLeadership Group at the Harvard Grad-uate School of Education; tony-wagner@harvard.edu; www.schoolchange.org.The themes of this article are discussedmore fully in his book The GlobalAchieve-ment Gap: Why Even Our Best SchoolsDon't Teach the New Survival Skills OurChildren Need-and What We Can DoAbout It (Basic Books, 2008).

G JON FEINGE RSH/GELY IMAGES

2008

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TITLE: Rigor RedefinedSOURCE: Educ Leadership 66 no2 O 2008

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