Fortunately there are some educators who are thinking and writing about this issue, including Tony Wagner whose 2006 book entitled The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need and What We Can Do About It addresses the problem in interesting and inspiring ways. Among other things, Wagner presents the material in a pattern that challenges the reader to action through a four step process.
First, the reader is confronted with a frank compendium of statistics and facts about the current state of
However before Wagner leads the reader toward those solutions, he presents us with a list of new world skills necessary for students and employees in the 21st century. This is Wagner’s what we need segment. This includes a trifecta of reasons young people need to excel in school: for work, for lifelong learning and for informed citizenship in a democracy. In this case, Wagner maintains that without this trifecta “children are at an increased risk of not being able to get and keep a good job, grow as learners, or make positive contributions to their community” (14). To this end, Wagner suggests Seven Survival Skills as a mechanism for achieving this trifecta. Of course, any discussion of education would not be complete without a nod toward critical thinking and problem solving. Wagner’s text is no exception. In fact, critical thinking serves as the first item on his Seven Survival Skills list and consists, primarily, as the “ability to ask good questions” (14). Importantly, though, Wagner also links critical thinking to the world of work when he asks CEOs of major corporations what they need in employees. It’s not surprising that what they want is an employee who can “approach problems and challenges as a learner as opposed to a knower” (17). Employees “need to be curious versus thinking ‘I know the answer.’ Yesterday’s solution doesn’t solve tomorrow’s problem” (17). This is relevant because, as Wagner tells us, “70% of the employers . . . ranked the high school graduate as deficient” in the area of critical thinking/problem solving (20). Furthermore, “companies face all kinds of challenges everyday – globalization challenges, talent challenges” (20). Without the critical thinking skills necessary for the 21st century workplace not only does the employee suffer, but the company for which the employee works suffers and, by extension, the country in which the company is housed suffers. Although Wagner does not go so far as to say it, this may explain why
Another one of Wagner’s Seven Survival Skills includes accessing and analyzing information. In this case, employers are clamoring for employees with the “ability to analyze information in order to discern new challenges and opportunities” (37). This need is related to the rise of the internet and the glut of information that resides there. Anyone can do a Google search and read posted information. Not everyone, however, has the ability to discern the accuracy of that information. Thus students need to be taught how to “access and evaluate information from many different sources” (37) in conjunction with their critical thinking skills in order to make decisions in the workplace, in their personal lives and in their democracy.
After outlining the Seven Survival Skills, Wagner then proceeds to walk the reader through the corridors of contemporary education. This is the what we are currently doing and how it fails us segment. Chillingly the reader is presented with a litany of worst practices: multiple choice exams (which, above all, teach the student how to beat the odds in test taking), film viewing as time filler, teaching to the test and busy work handouts. It’s enough to make even the most inquisitive young person feel intellectually choked. It could also depress even the most optimistic educator. To be fair, Wagner does discuss the role of (and inadequate preparation for) school principles, laws such as No Child Left Behind and the immense drain on resources posed by the need for remedial education. But overall, this section of his book is tremendously demoralizing when the reader considers that the standard for educational practice across the country right now can be summed up in one line: “there is only one curriculum in American public schools today: test prep” (71). Wagner claims “there is no strong evidence that any of the Seven Survival Skills are being taught at any grade level in American public schools. Instead, class time is narrowly focused on teaching only the skills and content that will be tested” and that there’s a “growing gap between what’s being taught and tested . . . versus what today’s students will need to succeed and be productive citizens in the twenty-first century – [this is] the global achievement gap” (72). Thus in this section Wagner identifies the heart of the problem. Not only is there the traditional achievement gap between Asian and white students with their Latino and African American counterparts, but there is also a global achievement gap between what students are taught in relation to what they really need to know in order to work, learn and engage in 21st century society. Or, to put it in Wagner’s words, “we are simply not developing our intellectual capital to the extent that many other countries are” (75). Furthermore, because “the needs of our society have changed dramatically” (256),
This leads us to the final segment: where we need to go and models for getting there. In this section, Wagner shows us some examples of education that appear to be working well. For instance, he introduces the reader to High Tech High, a charter school in
Perhaps most appealing about Wagner’s ideas is the way in which he frames work, life-long learning and citizenship in relation to education. To that end, Wagner states that “work, learning, and citizenship in the twenty-first century demand that we all know how to think – to reason, analyze, weigh evidence, problem-solve – and to communicate effectively. These are no longer skills that only the elites in a society must master; they are essential survival skills for all of us” (xxiii). The italics are Wagner’s, and they serve to highlight the skills which are most needed, and to some extent, most profoundly missing in education today. It’s not enough that a student knows how to memorize names and dates. Today’s worker-citizen must also know how to analyze the messages that bombard her too. The relationship between the educational system which teaches those skills and the individual who uses them is integral. And without those skills people cannot get the jobs they need to fuel a society that wishes to compete on the global stage. Indeed, as Wagner claims “Effective communication, curiosity, and critical-thinking skills . . . are much more than just the traditional desirable outcomes of a liberal arts education. They are essential competencies and habits of mind for life in the twenty-first century” (xxiii). What he is striking at here is the integral relationship between the competitive society and the competent individuals who make up that society. We can parse them out, yet they are integrally connected.
These skills are important at the individual level as much as they are at the workplace level. Thus life-long learning becomes code for maximized human potential: “Young people who want to earn more than minimum wage and who go out into the world without the new survival skills . . . are crippled for life; they are similarly unprepared to be active and informed citizens or to be adults who will continue to be stimulated by new information and ideas” (14). If we continue to teach 20th century skills to a 21st century student body, we are not only squeezing the air out of the nation’s ability to compete but also denying quality of life for the millions of American children who go through this system. Thus, “the main purpose of teaching [ought to be] the development of students’ core competencies for lifelong learning” (258). In the model schools Wagner puts on the display for the reader, this is the case. In the worst practices schools chronicled in the beginning of the book, students are starved for educational oxygen in cavernous teach-to-the-test 20th century models. Just because teachers can continue using old educational models doesn’t mean they should.
Finally, Wagner challenges the reader to think about the role of citizenship in relationship to the global achievement gap. He cites a corporate consultant who claims that there are “only three reasons why people work or learn. There’s push, which is a need, threat, or risk . . . There’s transfer of habits – habits shaped by social norms and traditional routines. [And there’s] pull – interest, desire, passion . . . [to which] increasing numbers of young people are seeking and responding to in school and at the workplace” (205). The take home message here is that in order to teach youth how to be engaged citizens, educators need to draw or pull youth toward the issues and ideas that inspire their passions. Relevant lesson plans dealing with current events would be one such way to do this. Without it, we have unengaged students who age into society as unengaged adult citizens.
Addressing the issues that this book presents is challenging. Educators are already grappling with the traditional achievement gap between Asian and White students and their Latino and African American peers. Although some movement has been achieved recently in some school districts, this traditional achievement gap appears entrenched in 20th century problems of race, class and geography. Thus it would seem that adding another achievement gap – a global one at that! – into the mix, might be the one straw too many.
On the other hand, the first step to implementation is awareness of the issues at hand. Each educator (and that would include administrators and classified support staff as well as teachers in the classroom) must make a conscious decision to personally strive for excellence. It’s not enough to expect students to rise to a 21st century standard; educators must also model that standard in their daily practice. Thus, in order to “fix” education, the adults in the room need to first inspect their own practices and check those practices to make sure the messages sent to our young people are the ones that we want to be sending. If multiple choice tests don’t really force students to learn content, but teachers use them because they are easy to grade, what does that say about the level of commitment to rigorous education embraced by the teacher who uses multiple choice exams? Hard questions like this are the ones that educators need to ask -- and answer -- before casting a gaze at our youth and blaming them for being bored and unruly in the classroom. As educators, are we modeling the lifestyle choices that project excellence individually, as a society, and as international players on the world stage? As educators, are we being the excellence we seek?
Another challenge to implementation is the absence of acknowledgement of the global achievement gap in teacher training programs. Educators cannot respond to a problem if they are not aware of the nature of the issue. Thus, when teachers are not being instructed in the dimensions of the global achievement gap, they cannot begin to address the issue in their classrooms. Arthur Levine’s 2006 report entitled Educating School Teachers highlights this problem succinctly: “More than three out of five (62 percent) [survey respondents] report that schools of education do not prepare their graduates to cope with the realities of today’s classrooms” (145). Ultimately, then, the problem is not just with teachers inadequately teaching youth to meet 21st century needs, but it is also teachers teaching future teachers inadequately. This must be addressed comprehensively if the United States
The one position or idea presented by Wagner with which this reader takes the most exception has to do with the role of unions and charter schools in education. Frankly, I am a devoted union maid. I believe in the power of unions and collective action. I would rather stand with others than try to go it alone. The greatest advances in American society correlate with the strongest union participation. Thus when Wagner repeatedly uses charter schools (non union schools) as the model by which we can solve the global achievement gap, I am skeptical. To be blunt, it’s the government rules and regulations (such as those found in No Child Left Behind) that are hamstringing regular schools into failure. Regular schools, caught in a web of government policies, are not agile and responsive to a changing educational environment. That’s not because of unions; it’s a result of politicians who have made rules in a discipline they often know little about. The result: charter schools – which are not caught in the same web of governmental regulations -- have the appearance of success because they are allowed to be nimble and responsive to issues in education without dancing the contortionist’s act of meeting government demands in the same way.
To be fair, Wagner does cite Randy Moore, an administrator in Hawaii, as saying “If you wave your wand and the union vanishes, all the problems are still there . . . The major problem in education is the adults, not the students” (144). With this, I whole heartedly agree. The failure in education is not the students, and it’s not due to the unions. The failure in education is much more complex and multi-faceted. And, increasingly, there is evidence to suggest that charter schools are also failing our youth. According to Diane Ravitch, a well known researcher and author on issues related to education, “Charter schools have been compared to regular public schools on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009, and have never outperformed them” (Ravitch, Op-Ed, The Washington Post, 2 April 2010). There is also evidence that suggests charter schools are perpetuating some of the traditional achievement gap problems with regard to race, class and geography. In a study released in February 2010, by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, researchers found “that charter schools are more racially homogenized than traditional public schools and asserted that those in the western United States are havens for white re-segregation” (The Civil Rights Project, Choice Without Equity, February 2010, http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/news/news-and-announcements/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/choice-without-equity-2009-report). Thus claiming charter schools are the solution and unions are the problem is an inaccurate method for addressing the ongoing, underlying issues in education today. While some charter schools (which are also non union) may be doing a stellar job at dealing with the problem, other charter schools are not. Their bag is as mixed as publicly funded schools, and therefore we cannot look to charter schools exclusively for the solution.
In conclusion, Wagner does a good job of laying out the challenges surrounding the global achievement gap. Those challenges are myriad and labyrinth-like for students, their parents, teachers, employers and policy makers. Also, to return to the opening metaphor, those challenges are prescient about the direction our country is heading. Students in the
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