21st Century Skills out of our 19th Century classroom

In retrospect, this is not only a commentary but kind of a rant....but it starts out well enough : )

Oh my gosh! I swear, someone out there is reading my mind! From that perspective, Will Fitzhugh, Senior Columnist EducationNews.org, The Concord Review
http://ednews.org/articles/36740/1/19th-Century-Skills/Page1.html blog begs for comment. According to Fitzhugh, "...the 19th (and prior) Century Skills of reading and writing are still a job for human beings, with little help from technology. Computers can check your grammar, and take a look at your spelling, but they can't read for you and they can't think for you, and they really cannot take the tasks of academic reading and writing off the shoulders of the students in our schools." I'm glad to see him point this out, because so much of what we've learned so far implies that these skills are not the focus in web creations, yet without fluency in these basic, centuries-back skills, students and everyone else will struggle with information that they deal with online. He also states, "Neither group (one group who wants to make the students more accountable, the other which thinks that is not enough) gives much thought, in my view, to whether any of our high school students have read one complete nonfiction book or written one serious research paper before they are sent off to their college remedial courses." Fitzhugh shows that our reliance on 21st Century Skills first requires of students to know the good ol' 3 'Rs, as outdated as that may seem.

And this is where the rant comes in....I was doing ok til then!

Where I really connected with Fitzhugh's words--what caused the flutter in this English teacher's soul--was when he stated in words he stole from my mind..."While almost all high schools would say they want students to be able to do academic essays, they set aside no time for teachers to work on them. More time is available in most high schools for tackling practice on the football field and layup drills on the basketball court than for working on term papers in English and history classes." OOOOOh. And Amen to that! Why is it that there seems to be a popular outcry about students in America suffering from their public school teachers (who obviously are shirking their duty of teaching these students skills that will help them in college and real life both!). We can work on these papers all we want, but when it comes down to it, who has time to grade 90plus ten page research papers? If it's multiplied by 15 minutes, that equals to over 20 hours just on those papers alone, and then there is the lesson planning, the student who needs help after school, the make-up quiz before school, the extra-curricular the teacher is advisor for (providing that is only one, which is doubtful), the parent phone calls that have to be made, the discipline that has to be taken care of, the fundraisers that have to go to the accounting office for, the mandatory once-a-week collaboration with your peers (during the prep period of course so it doesn't impact anyone's teaching time!) and of course all the unaccounted little time consuming disruptions such as answering email, computer failure, etc...OH and now we are going to include 21st century skills for both teacher and student. Learn it learn it learn it learn it.....arggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg