market in all fifty states (Fleming, 2016). Not only are these jobs in high demand, they offer good salaries and income mobility. Nonetheless, employees are struggling to find enough trained workers in occupations like law enfforcement, energy operations, aviation, and the construction and manufacturing trades. Unfortunately, educators, parents, state and federal policymakers, and the media perpetuate this misalignment by encouraging students to attend any university and major in anything under the pretext that there’s only one way to achieve job security, social mobility, and financial prosperity (Fleming, 2016).
As students, we have no say on what we learn or how we learn it. Yet, we’re expected to absorb it all, take it all in, and be able to run the world someday. We’re expected to raise our hands to use the restroom, then three months later be ready to go to college or have a full-time job, support ourselves, and live on our own. It’s not logical.
—Kate Simonds (2015), age 17, TEDx video “I’m 17”
In classrooms today it is evident that some practices have shifted on the surface, although the basic foundation of industrial-era schooling remains in place. Teachers now list assignments on a whiteboard instead of a chalkboard; they share content via document cameras instead of overhead projectors; they arrange desks in table groupings instead of rows. Chromebooks are now present and available for student use, but sit on carts waiting to be checked out. While instructional methods include “talk and turns,” group activities, and looking up information on the internet, most academic work remains teacher directed. Unless schools serve current students differently than they served previous generations, students will be confined to learning things because they have to, not because they want to or can.
Vital Skills for a Changing Economy
Social media manager, app designer, offshore wind farmer, and drone photographer are all jobs that didn’t exist prior to 2010. Today, these occupations are on the rise. Since job requirements change on a dime, the skills students need to secure a job aren’t necessarily the same skills they’ll need to keep that job. As such, employers are calling on schools to equip learners with skills and dispositions that can transfer to any line of work.
While a variety of frameworks describe the 21st century skills vital for success, seven themes stand out: (1) collaboration and teamwork; (2) creativity and imagination; (3) agility and adaptability; (4) critical thinking and problem solving; (5) initiative and entrepreneurialism; (6) oral and written communication; and (7) leadership and civic responsibility (Hanover Research, 2011; Wagner, 2008). Employers say the lessons students need for their future are less about reading, writing, and arithmetic, and more about influencing others, figuring things out, and engaging with people across time zones (Friedman & Mandelbaum, 2011). Additionally, these same employers expect new hires to be “creative creators or creative servers”—people who can refine and reinvent tasks as needed (p. 88). It’s hard to imagine how a student trained in passive listening can learn to create, collaborate, or think deeply about issues.
Regardless of how we define the vital skills for the 21st century, the 22nd century will be here before we know it. Although general cognitive ability is important, other attributes have moved to the head of the class in the employment arena. Let’s consider the hiring practices at Google. Receiving nearly three million job applications each year, Google is twenty-five times more selective than Harvard, Princeton, or Yale (Bock, 2015). However, in 2010, after an in-depth analysis of the company’s hiring data, Google ended its practice of using grades, transcripts, and college degrees as screening tools. In an interview with the New York Times, then–vice president of people operations Laszlo Bock called academic performance indicators worthless criteria for predicting future job performance (Bryant, 2013). Google finds the best among millions by looking at leadership ability, knowledge of the role, and “Googleyness.” Some might confuse Googleyness with culture fit; however, the company is strongly against hiring people who sound and act like everyone else. They want people who are offbeat, willing to challenge the status quo, and bring new perspectives to their team. Interview questions like Tell us what could go wrong in this situation or If you wanted to bring your dog to work but one of your team members was allergic to dogs, what would you do? help hiring managers determine if a candidate has the mindset to become a “Googler.” Academic excellence is just that—academic (Bock, 2015).
Present-day academic curricula assume that students will naturally develop the skills and dispositions employers seek as they matriculate through the school system. But nothing could be further from the truth. Knowledge remains inert unless it’s activated with deliberate, purposeful experiences. As educators, though we may not be able to dictate statewide or national curricula, we can still identify which parts of the curriculum are best suited to develop the essential dispositions to ensure these attributes receive the time and attention they deserve. Intentional, integrated professional development helps teachers recognize how to activate these skills inside and outside the classroom. There’s no reason teaching and learning have to be so isolated.
A Farewell to Average
Every segment of society is changing quickly. A major driver of this change is the free, always-open internet. New ideas zip across the planet at warp speed, creating an international network of connectedness. Back in 1874, Alexander Graham Bell invented the first telephone. It took seventy-five years for the telephone to reach fifty million users, the coveted mark of a technological revolution (Interactive Schools, 2018). Comparing this with the acceleration of other new technology reveals a trend. The radio reached the fifty million user mark in thirty-eight years. The television—which was initially deemed too expensive to become a popular consumer product—made it into fifty million households in thirteen years (Interactive Schools, 2018). The internet hit fifty million users in four years. Twitter took a mere nine months (Interactive Schools, 2018). Additionally, innovation is no longer confined to think tanks in the Silicon Valley. Twelve-year-olds now write code, build mobile apps, and start their own businesses.
As technology advances, the education necessary to utilize it grows too. In essence, education and technology are in a bit of a race (Fadel, Bialik, & Trilling, 2015). Moreover, the notion of education for employment has moved away from routine, impersonal tasks toward more creative, complex tasks that only humans can perform. It no longer matters if a good idea comes from the top floor, shop floor, or someone’s garage. In That Used to Be Us, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Thomas Friedman and coauthor Michael Mandelbaum (2011) explain:
In this hyper-connected world, there is increasingly no “here” and no “there,” there is no “in” and no “out,” there is only “good,” “better,” and “best,” and managers and entrepreneurs everywhere now have greater access than ever to the better and best people, robots, and software everywhere. This makes it more vital than ever that we have schools elevating and inspiring more of our young people into those “better” and “best” categories, because even “good” might not cut it anymore and “average” is definitely over. (p. 106)
Experts say there’s never been a worse time for people with “ordinary” skills to be looking for work (Tucker, 2017). This is because computers and automated systems perform “ordinary” tasks at extraordinary speed. The ability to learn new things, adapt to changing environments, and do imaginative work is the gold standard for high-demand, high-wage employment. While smart may get an applicant in the door, it won’t move him or her past the lobby (Friedman & Mandelbaum, 2011). Students need a sound academic foundation coupled with an ability to see beyond the obvious to recognize emerging trends and patterns, no matter what field or passion they may decide to pursue.
The Any-Collar Workforce
Despite huge employment shifts in the later part of the 20th century, claims that all of America’s blue-collar jobs have gone
