Essential Things

School's about to start back up, and we're a decade into the 21st century.  The reason I mention that is because I expect to hear a lot about what number century we're in this year in professional development activities.  Such talk is frequent in public education today, with lingo like "21st century skills," "21st century learning," "21st century learners," "21st century teaching," "21st century teachers," "21st century classrooms," "21st century schools," etc. ad. nauseam.  Apparently, someone somewhere noticed that the odometer has turned over onto... yes, the 21st century. 


What there is not a lot of talk about, disturbingly, is precisely what these 21st century terms mean.
One suspects, after sitting through a number of professional development workshops and presentations, none of which have defined "21st century [fill in the blank]," that it has to do with more than a date on the calendar, that it somehow involves technology, computers, internet learning, mobile communications, social networking, and the learning and communications styles (not to mention the cognitive functions) that accompany them, as they relate to "the needs of today's learners." (Such a phrase assumes that today's learners are drastically different, in important ways, from yesterday's, whenever yesterday was).


Now these things are certainly worth considering, whether or not any educational decision-makers are actually considering them.  Certainly technology can, should, and will affect the ways schools work.  But how?  To what extent?  And for what purpose?  I hope I don't sound like too much of a Luddite here, but these questions, in my experience, are not asked enough.  Technology, it seems, is a 21st century virtue, and it might be pushing all the others (from those out-dated centuries) out of our schools' souls, in practice if not in word.

Those old things may prove more important to 21st century education than the perpetrators of 21st century lingo might think.  The "needs of today's learners" are best defined by first understanding the essential needs of all learners, yesterday, today, or tomorrow.  Any inquiry into "21st century education" must begin with essential things.  So there's a paradox emerging here.  A little Luddism, it turns out, might have a vital place in 21st century education by providing a haven for the essential, a way to figure out what's left when we turn out the lights.

Any thesis about the place of technology in schools necessarily rests on assumptions about the roles of schools in America and comes down to one of two possibilities: (1) A 21st century school can be a microcosm of larger society, complete with its value and prioritization of rapid and ill-considered Progress.  (2) A 21st century school can be a haven for fundamental and universal things, a place to preserve, reflect upon, and continually renew the fundamental aspects of human nature, which we meet in literature, history, science, and the arts. 

Time for me to play the teacher.  The correct response is (2).  But that doesn't mean schools should be devoid of technology; quite the contrary.  They should put technology in its rightful place, in service of higher and more meaningful goals than achieving 21st results with 21st century teachers who teach 21st century skills to 21st century learners in 21st century classrooms occupying 21st century schools.  That's just 21st century vomit.