“Preparing kids for the Real World” is a phrase that many educators and schools use without regard for the consequence of what they selectively choose as reality for their students. Both educators and institutions in many cases are still choosing for students by educating them traditionally, or more progressively using technology tools for learning. This probably begins with educators’ misconception of the real world.
We cannot prepare kids for the Real World when we still have a 20th century view of it. We are over a dozen years into the 21st Century and some kids in the system have another dozen years before they need their real world experience to hit the streets. That would take us a quarter through the 21st century. How time flies.
Yes, one can be a good teacher without technology. I will not dispute that claim. I believe it to be true. That however deals with a method of teaching, and not what needs to be taught. It is the how versus the what. If one buys into the preparation for the real world argument, teachers methodology choice should take a back seat to how kids learn and what kids need to learn.
First, I must say that the real world for kids does not begin when they graduate. They are living in the real world now. Their world is quite different from ours. Their world is even more technology driven than ours. Schools cannot be protective cocoons holding our youth until they are matured and educated well enough to spread out their wings and take on the reality of the world. It makes a nice picture, but the subject today is reality.
I remember how Math teachers at one time used the slide rule for calculations. It was even allowed to be used in class, and sometimes on tests. Calculators had a tougher battle getting into classes. Even today many teachers ban them from tests. I wonder if the math jobs in the real world ban the use of calculators? I wonder if students familiar with computer programs dealing with advanced math are disadvantaged in the job market?
When private companies tell us that employees today should be versed in collaboration and be willing to work in groups to fit into the models and structures of modern workspaces in today’s businesses, does that ring true with our students’ education experience? Do educators and schools understand the needs of business in order to prepare students for it in the real world?
When employers are seeking candidates for writing positions in business, will they interview candidates with pen and paper writing samples, or will they ask to see finished writing projects with style and flair produced for print quality? Mechanics having the ability to rebuild a ’58 Chevy may be in high demand in Cuba, but, in the real world that we must prepare our kids for, this is less desirable than a mechanic who knows how to address the automotive computer world of repairs.
We live in a technology-driven society. Unless we choose to live in a commune in the woods or the desert, that will not change. Technology has permeated every part of our lives. It takes one lightning strike on your house to learn that lesson. In addition to all phones and electronics, even your home heating unit and ice maker will have computer chips that will need to be replaced.
Education as much as any other industry has been deluged with technological tools for learning, communication, collaboration, and creation. These tools represent and are used with everything that we teach and hold dear. Some are good and some are not. Our choice as educators should be between the good and the bad, the useful and the frivolous, the productive and the time wasters. As educators we no longer get to choose whether or not we use technology. If our goals, as well as we as educators, are to be believed, and we truly are preparing our students for the real world, we must concede that that world abounds with technology and there are no other choices. We would be more than remiss in our obligation as educators if we chose not to employ technology where it fits. There are times when it may not.
Now the questions arise, are our teachers trained and supported in technology use. Are the buildings adequately tooled for technology? Are administrators devising new, and updating antiquated policies to meet the challenges of teaching with technology? If we are not doing these things, are we then lying to our children when we tell them that we are preparing them for their future?
Excellent thoughts and assertions. I would agree that good teachers can teach without technology, but I think that is becoming less and less so. I can imagine past statements like “good teachers can teach without a book” or “good teachers can teach without a classroom” or … And you’re absolutely correct in that it all goes back to teacher training, ongoing professional development and developing professional/personal learning networks such as this one. I wonder if even 20% of current educators participate in educational social media such as this?
“We would be more than remiss in our obligation as educators if we chose not to employ technology where it fits. There are times when it may not.” Thank you for a well balanced approach to technology. I, too, believe that we must use technology. We must first create a well-rounded literate student. In many ways, we are using the tools the students come to school already knowing how to use. Using these tools, we help them prepare for life and a series of literal and figurative tests. They must be able to score well enough on the ACT/SAT/AP tests to be accepted to and to achieve in college. We can’t hide in the cave and ban the tools they are already using.
Another wonderful posting Tom. On the flip-side we need to get industry to make educational outreach programs a “Top Down” management priority. I’m a retired manufacturer trying to promote manufacturing and “seamless” CTE-STEM in K-12/14. I hear the “Not adequate skills” complaints and I agree to a degree. However, without a ready supply of ELO’s (Extended Learning Opportunities) from industry it is very hard for educators to provide the “Real World” experiences. In NH we are forming a none profit dedicated to identifying, cataloging and promoting ELO’s statewide. NHELO’s goal is 10,000 in a few years. I have also developed a Pinterest Page you all may find helpful as well http://pinterest.com/mfgstories/
Thank you Tom for all of your hard and steady work on behalf of our children!
I enjoyed reading this post and particularly like that you’ve kept it simple for sake of framing the ideas. One of the things that I don’t particularly enjoy, or get anything out of, are people who try to talk above their audience and use lofty research terms and data to prove a point. Life (humans) and relationships are messy, so learning and teaching will sometimes be messy and that’s OK. Add an exponential explosion of technology changes everywhere and we have to do our best to make sense of it and engage our students in this new learning process. It’s not the Industrial Age any longer! So I agree, there can be great teaching without technology, but I think it can be even better, and more relevant with technology! Thanks for taking the time to post. I’ve been following you on Twitter and enjoy your contributions. — @vandalgrad
Excellent post Tom! It reminded me of the saying; “the future is already here, it;s just not evenly distributed”. When it comes to education, it’s often the students who best grasp technology and represent the future that is already with us; social, connected and collaborative in everyday affairs.
A second thought relates to Vygotsky’s idea of legitimate peripheral participation. In terms of technology use, it’s often the students at the center and teachers at the periphery. The future will be here when teachers are connected, collaborative and comfortable in there everyday use of technology; emulating software engineers in design centered open access environments. Can we hack education!
Tom, I really enjoyed this post. I agree that teachers must use appropriate technology to prepare students for the future. I also think that it’s important that we remember that technology itself isn’t the end, either. Teachers have to use sound pedagogy, and embed technology into lessons appropriately. Technology for instruction and response has to be engaging and creative. I’ve seen too many lessons where the teacher has written the lesson with the sole purpose of using the technology, and it’s no better than the lesson would be without the technology. Students shouldn’t be using the technology solely as consumers, they need to creating, producing, and exploring. If we are simply teaching them how to use the tools that are available today, then we aren’t preparing them for the world in which they will be working, because the technology will have grown and changed by then. Instead, we need to teach them how to access, how to ask questions, and how to problem solve…USING TECHNOLOGY! If we teach them those skills, then I believe that our students will be prepared for their future.
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Reblogged this on elketeaches and commented:
I think the *elephant in the room* is that many teachers who “prepare students for the real world” have not actually experienced the “real world” themselves. Going straight from High School to Uni to study Education (especially if they didn’t have to take up part-time work) & then straight into teaching doesn’t help! Teachers should have to either come in with “real world of work” experience OR be forced to take 6 to 12-month leaves where they work outside of the school system. Plus, it doesn’t help when you’re working in an Education system that blocks everything GOOD about the Internet (like Twitter, WordPress, Wiki, FB etc).
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If we were preparing learners for success in the real world, we would teach them how to manage workplace politics. That is more a important factor in success in our new service economy than knowledge and skills.
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Reblogged this on Daniël Hoenderdos.
I question whether school has EVER actually prepared anyone for anything other than more school.
Schools are about learning.
Life is about achieving.
The former does not necessarily lead to the latter.
However the latter will always lead to the former.
[…] “Preparing kids for the Real World” is a phrase that many educators and schools use without regard for the consequence of what they selectively choose as reality for their students. Both educators and institutions in many cases are still choosing for students by educating them traditionally, or more progressively using technology tools for learning. This probably begins with educators’ misconception of the real world.We cannot prepare kids for the Real World when we still have a 20th century view of it. We are over a dozen years into the 21st Century and some kids in the system have another dozen years before they need their real world experience to hit the streets. That would take us a quarter through the 21st century. How time flies." […]
Wow- it was refreshing to know that I’m not the only one who remembers slide rules! As a classroom teacher for over three decades, I am optimistic that most teachers want to learn, and are striving to grow and change. More and more, through social media, teachers are sharing how they use technology tools in meaningful ways, and it is so much easier to have questions answered and design your own PD online. I too am weary of phrases such as “preparing for real world,” “teaching for the 21st century,” and getting kids “college-ready.” My continuous goal is to get out of the kids’ way (and perhaps some need to get out of the teachers’ way) so that we can benefit from the amazing tools and choices we have in learning!
Donna The thing I thought was the coolest about slide rules is how they actually work. Now that they are no longer used the students curiosity of how they work is gone. I realize that is also true for the abacus but they both are pretty neat insights into number sense. Thanks for reminding us all.
I agree totally. Slide rules were fascinating! My 2nd graders make their own abacuses with beads, pipe cleaners and styrofoam meat trays and they love using them. Curiosity is still alive and well in 2nd grade, and you are right that they offer a different type of experience with numbers! 🙂 I know this is a side converstaion, but I enjoyed your reply!
You sound like someone who is experienced with Cognitively Guided Instruction! I loved your post … I missed the slide rule experience, but think I’m going to do a little research to find out what I missed. Never fear about the abacus, though… it may be out, but base-10 blocks are in!
So agree. This reminded me of a post I had written as a guest blogger for PJ Caposey. I have reposted that blog on my own website: http://partnerinedu.com/
Am surprised too. You should attend a form 1 computer lesson in my country. The introduction is for students who have no access to tech yet these students have cellphones with them. The teaching syllabus wil be 20years behind. I guess there’s need to design curricular with a short life span thus encouraging reviews as well as matching industry needs with education. There should be a correlation between industry and education
I recently watched this symposium lecture by Sir. Ken Robinson. It is about 1 hour long but Mr. Robinson interjects a reasonable amount of humor and side stories to keep your attention. I do believe it is germane to this discussion. I especially enjoyed his reference to Peter Brook’s book “The Empty Space…”
[…] “Preparing kids for the Real World” is a phrase that many educators and schools use without regard for the consequence of what they selectively choose as reality for their students. Both educators … […]
[…] “Preparing kids for the Real World” is a phrase that many educators and schools use without regard for the consequence of what they selectively choose as reality for their students. Both educators and institutions in many cases are still choosing for students by educating them traditionally, or more progressively using technology tools for learning. This probably begins with educators’ misconception of the real world. We cannot prepare kids for the Real World when we still have a 20th century view of it. We are over a dozen years into the 21st Century and some kids in the system have another dozen years before they need their real world experience to hit the streets. That would take us a quarter through the 21st century. How time flies. Yes, one can be a good teacher without technology. I will not dispute that claim. I believe it to be true. That however deals with a method of teaching, and not what needs to be taught. It is the how versus the what. If one buys into the preparation for the real world argument, teachers methodology choice should take a back seat to how kids learn and what kids need to learn. Click headline to read more– […]
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Hi Tom,
Not dropped you a reply before…but loved the title (and content) of this post.
Sadly, I thunk there are more and more of us that are getting more and more disillusioned with all the “lies” that we have been carrying around in education for quite some time. As you note, our institutions are TALKing more and more about “REAL” but their “walk” is, in fact, talking us further and further away from this EDU prerequisite – in favour of more and more “smoke n’ mirrors”.
Students want “REAL” in both what they do and how they do it – but they also want “REAL” in their teachers, too. This, in turn, requires “REAL” in our administrators and policy-makers – first.
Mmmm…dream much, Tony? 😉
T..
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I would go one step further (as have some other commenters to some degree done above) and question whether schooling according to the current paradigm can realistically prepare for the world/real life/whatnot. In many ways, school acts as a protective coocon insulating children, youths, and college students from real-life issues like workspace politics, the need to pay bills, uncertainties about what the future will bring, … In many cases, including my own, this insulated phase lasts/ed into the mid twenties.
A better way could be to cut down on schooling and give our youths more room to make their own mistakes and experiences, carry their own responsibility, earn their own money, and so on, making the transition from child to adult more gradual than it is today.
(I stress that I am very much in favour of education; however, I am also 1. skeptic towards conventional schooling and 2. feel that education must be a life-long process, not something done in a limited time-frame with the expectation of having a ready-to-spread-its-wings butterfly at the end of high-school or college.)
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I’m struggling with two pieces here. The first deals with the idea that in preparing students for the future, they ought to mirror the experience of the future. When getting students ready for college, should we have senior-year courses in tremendous lecture halls that don’t allow for questions? Should we base a course’s grade on a one or two major projects with due dates given well in advance and expected without any scaffolding or support? Should we put students on notice and then “fire” them (somehow) if multiple projects don’t come in to spec? Likewise, did it help the accounting majors in my college to spend most of junior and senior years in suits for their classes? Should we keep our kids out of classes they’re hoping to take even if they’ve met the requirements and tell them that nepotism and luck may likely be more important than their abilities, motivations, and interests when it comes to getting hired.
School is not the real-world, so I think we need to be cautious about the real-world experiences we attempt to replicate within school.
Piece two is about calculators and – at some level – technology in general (which I’ll save for a post on my own blog in the very near future). I’m no Luddite by any means, but I struggle with not recognizing the cost-benefit of having students count on tech to do things that they need to learn to do without it as well.
I now see calculators in all math classes, mostly passed 5th grade. These aren’t little, simple ones, either. Kids have the full-on scientific, graphing versions that store formulas and share problem sets. My issues are simple. 1) The device is far meatier than the math the kids are doing, which isn’t that big of a deal, really, IF districts are helping to pay for them. 2) Many apps replicate all of the calculator functions, but the teachers and schools still draw the line there. 3) Most importantly, there is a loss we need to consider. Yes, pros will all be using the calculators and software, but they hopefully know how to do the math without them. I’m okay with being traditionalist when I say that I – as a student and a person – learned a lot and developed a ton of skills from having to do the math by hand, over and over again. I understand what happens with numbers and values during equations instead of merely knowing how to get to the answers. I’ve now been in multiple districts where the high-school students struggle to equate their class averages, don’t know how to do long-division without a calculator, don’t understand the connections between decimals, fractions, and percentages and struggle with linear processing in general, all – or at least a lot – of which I feel falls on the over-dependence on calculators.
Even as far back as 12 years ago, in a grad class on EDU Stats, the “professor” couldn’t remember how to do some of the math that she’d always used software for. Thankfully, we had a math teacher in the room who was happy to show us how sharpen our pencils and work through the problem.
Good teachers can teacher without technology, but technology has the potential to make their teaching better. There are so many things that have been flagged for change at times that for some it is hard to work out where to begin.
I really like your comment about understanding the needs of business. I feel that everyone ‘knows’ the needs of business, but there is an underlying belief that business does not know what it needs and therefore we are somehow helping business by taking calculators away from students etc … One of my biggest gripes is with workbooks in today’s day and age of 1 to 1 access, it confuses me that the good old handwritten workbook is still port of call. I wonder how many businesses would get their works to send out a hand written letter in the post?
People like Sir Ken and co have called for a revolution, not an evolution, and this may well be e biggest problem, that we in fact need a drastic change to much of what we do. Associated with this nothion of revolution, I was listening to a program on the Industrial Revoultion in Britian the other day and it spoke about the Luddites. I feel this is the biggest threat to the 21st century at the moment. Those who wholly and solely don’t want or believe that there is any need for change and want to conserve this moment in time forever.
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As a math specialist, I have to put in my 2 cents. Students need to understand the math going on “behind the scenes” of the technology they are using. Otherwise, they will not understand the tool they are using. For example … how do you enter three and a half into your calculator? or if you have a graphing calculator, do you understand the importance of parentheses? do you understand what that graph means that you are looking at? If you don’t know the math behind the tool, the tool becomes virtually useless.
Forgot to address “real world”. The real world needs problem-solvers, not just answer-getters. I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with the article. I’m just concerned that some important information might have been lost between the lines.Ask any employer what he would prefer: someone who can input data into a computer or someone who can solve an unexpected problem. They prefer the latter because almost anyone can perform the former.
There are always lines. I let my students use graphing calculators because my (Saskatchewan) curriculum does not allow them to be successful without it. However when you walk into my Grade 9 Math class and cannot multiply numbers up to 12×12, you are going to be in a world of hurt, which is the problem today. There is too much depending on calculators (and trickery, like multiplying with your fingers) to get an answer instead of knowing. If you can’t process your times tables, what hope to do you have to grab harder concepts. I contend, not much.
lets see your computer dig a ditch, build you a house, and actually think for you! I agree technology has a place but we are raising too many kids that have never learned how to sweat without catching or hitting a stupid ball!
Jeff–I understand where you are coming from. I live in a farm and more specifically, on a family farm. Many “city” people have asked why my sons went to college. Yes, my husband and sons are involved in demanding physical labor EVERYDAY but they also use 3GPS monitors in one tractor cab while planting as well as global positioning telemetry devices in digging ditches. And that’s the beginning of a much broader list of knowledge & technology they use daily, from market projections to hauling manure, technology supports their labor. My point: kids (and many adults) need to learn how to work AND they need to know how to use technology to make their work most efficient: balance.
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I have used many programming languages and there are certain core concepts that carry over from language to language. Fortran and modern languages have if statements and loops. Schools should teach a programming language of some kind to 12 year olds. They may switch languages later on, but they will understand certain core concepts.
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[…] “Preparing kids for the Real World” is a phrase that many educators and schools use without regard for the consequence of what they selectively choose as reality for their students. Both educators … […]
Not about teaching, but about learning. Lets focus less on teacher and focus on learner.
Paul
I truly believe for students to become better learners we need to better educate the educators. We can affect a greater and more lasting change in education that way. I too emphasize learning, but I want it for all teachers, as well as students. As life long learners, we are all students.
Thanks for your comment.
The claim “But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.” (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/e/edwardgibb389013.html) contains a lot of truth in my observations.
The effects (which explain a thing or two about school and attempts at school reform) include:
1. The effect of better educated teachers on the students will not be as large as hoped for.
2. The efforts of educating the teachers, themselves, better will not be as successful as hoped for.
(Which is not to say that we should shrug our shoulders and surrender—absolutely not.)
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