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“Students and faculty .. need a curriculum that can
be defended in terms of the life skills and knowledge needed to be a fully
informed member of the ruling class of a democratic society—as a juror, a voter,
etc.” She went on to articulate a pet peeve of mine: “For example, maybe (such
a curriculum) would place expertise in dealing with probability and statistics
before being able to pass a test in algebra or calculus.”
What intrigues me about Meier’s perspective is that
she sees probability and statistics not in the context of a math curriculum,
but primarily as civic skills. Now
that I think about it, this has always been the point. To say it another way,
what our children learn in school should be useful
to them in the broadest sense.
In fact, this is actually the entire point of a public education – of which ‘accumulating the
skills to get a job’ is only an important subset. This has been largely
forgotten in the great education debate, but to quote Ben Franklin, public
schools were to be established for the very purpose of: "creating citizens
who could make wise political decisions”.
The good news is that people are beginning to
recognize that these two goals (job skills and citizenship) are not in
conflict. The critical-thinking, problem-solving, collaborative skills that are
central to becoming an engaged citizen are precisely
the skills that will be essential in a 21st-century economy.
There may be an even broader issue here. We also
tend to forget that a strong economy rests on the foundation of a strong civic culture.
One has only to look around the world to see that you cannot have the former without
the latter. Unless we intentionally work to increase the civic capacity of the
next generation, we may find that ‘good’ jobs will exist for only the
privileged few. Which, come to think of
it, seems to be where we’re headed.
To the ‘four Cs’ of a 21st-century education
(Critical-thinking, Communication, Creativity and Collaboration) we need to add
a fifth: Citizenship.
