Survival Skills!

The challenge we face is how do we create world-class learning consistently across our schools and release the talent and potential trapped and lying dormant in so many young people. This means reshaping our educational system to create outstanding institutions for every stage of learning; from early years and primary education through to college and university. We also need to rethink and re-imagine how we develop character, grit, determination and passion for learning.
We need to start young and use the available and highly successful toolkits to ensure that every child is a reader, writer and counter by eight, a powerful learner by eleven and on a learning pathway to success by the end of formal statutory education. Tony Wagner, author of “The Global Achievement Gap” and the first Innovation Education Fellow at Harvard University’s Technology and Entrepreneurship Center said recently that “If you don’t have intellectual skills in this global knowledge economy, you’re not going to be able to get a job that pays more than minimum wage. They’re skills that, for the most part, we don’t know how to teach nor test.”

“The challenge for schools today is not about successfully implementing another reform that boosts test scores,” Wagner said. “It’s about taking time to frame the problem, and then deciding how to change the paradigm so schools are teaching students what they need to be successful.” “Our schools are not failing, but our system of schools, which is more than a century old, is obsolete,” “And it doesn’t need reform. It needs reinvention.”

Wagner spoke at a three-day conference aimed at sharing research and practices for engaging students in their learning, increasing graduation rates and reducing dropout rates, and boosting students’ academic success. More than 200 educators from schools, after-school programs and the juvenile justice system attended. In his book “The Global Achievement Gap,” which was published in 2008, Wagner identifies the “Survival Skills” he says students should learn in school for the 21st century. He gleaned those skills from conversations in which he asked business leaders about what they look for in employees. Those skills are:
• Critical thinking;
• Problem solving;
• Collaboration across networks;
• Leading by influence;
• Agility;
• Adaptability;
• Initiative;
• Entrepreneurship;
• Effective oral and written communication;
• Accessing and analyzing information;
• Curiosity; and
• Imagination.