Teaching Social Responsibility... Sounds good to me!

I have been spending some time perusing the website for The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills. I really enjoy their mission and agree that it is so important for educators to help prepare students for their inevitable future by helping them to develop the skills that they will need to succeed. I think that it is really interesting to have schools collaborating with business, community and government leaders; giving students a chance to hear first hand from their potential employers and colleagues what skills they will need to have.

One thing that I found surprising on this site was that listed among the skills that they are trying to develop in students is social responsibility and civic literacy. Looking at the not-so-distant past, we see examples in business that ethics really do play a large part. It was a pleasant surprise to me that social responsibility was mentioned, as so many times we think of business and government to be cut-throat arenas where anything goes in order to “make a buck”. So, as the Partnership tries to bring these worlds together into the educational upbringing of our students, it is great to see that they are trying to change this stereotype by bringing up a new set of entrepreneurs and workers who are aware of and who work towards achieving social and civic responsibilities. Teaching this as if it were a skill as tangible as technological literacy will hopefully embed in our youth how important this really is.

I did not really see anything on this site that I disagreed with, on the contrary, I seem to really see the merit behind most of what I saw. Working with state standards and curriculum to integrate the skills that are needed for success in the 21^st century seems to be the best way to prepare our students at this point, while also integrating technology and the related skills into the classroom. Also, while I could maybe see some argument as to the Partnership’s want for educators to themes such as health and economic literacy into every subject, I think that this is an interesting idea and will help to make our student better citizens in our society and in the global community as a whole.

As an educator, this site gives me a place to go for resources on how I can integrate some of these skills into my own classroom. For my students, hopefully this means that they will be getting experience developing and using these different skills.