The core of Jay Matthews's objection to "21st Centruty Skills" is actually found in a previous column: "it never explained how teachers are going to find the time to introduce all these skills to students who, at the moment, are still struggling with plain old reading, writing and math." But it never occurs to him that the reason students are struggling with reading, writing and math is that they don't have these "21st century skills." We should stop trying to cram facts into students' heads, and instead give them the means and motivations to learn through practice and reflection. But the crank from the Post isn't interested in that. Related: Will Richardson responds to Matthews. And Darren Kuropatwa shows why the '21st century' approach is important: "Mathematics is the science of patterns. It's not the particular facts that are so interesting, it's the patterns."
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