21st Century Skills: Why They Matter, What they are, and How we got there

Ken Kay wrote the foreword for the book "21st Century Skills: Why they matter, What they are, and How we got there." Kay believes that there is about to be a turning point in education coming soon and in the foreword she describes what they are. Kay believes that the outcomes of the students should be the main focus of what educators focus on. She has the foreword broken into sections, and the first section is on why they need a new education model in the 21st century. She discusses that the world is changing, including technological changes, expectation changes, and personality changes. She believes that the U.S schools have not adapted to the changing world in that students are not encouraged to stay in school, there are more international students in classes who get left behind, and jobs are now requiring more degrees and students are not being prepared for that. She also thinks that the United States has no clear sense of purpose or direction for securing our future economic competitiveness. Basically, the US has the competitive mindset, but other countries such as Asia are educating  themselves and upgrading their country on skills they need to have to compete and staying with current technology. She thinks the 21st Century Education should have "sustained and enthusiastic support from leading education organizations, the business community, and policy makers, [and everyone should have big] reality checks." She thinks the new framework should be flexible in making students successful, competitive, and skilled in all areas.

I think this is a awesome and exciting foreword to the book. I think the 21st Century education needs to focus on having the children more skilled an prepared for the real world jobs. They need to focus on encouraging students to go to college, but they also need to really prepare them for it. I do not feel like my school prepared me for college because they were never too strict and did not have any guidelines for me to follow. The only time I felt competition with my peers was my senior year when the GPAs were showing us how we were ranked, and the first time we received I was ranked 21 out of 378. If I would have been encouraged more with rankings and GPAs, I, as well as other students, would have tried harder to be number one. I do not feel like my college education classes are teaching me how to be successful because each class is focused on creating lesson plans by the way the professor likes it, and in the real world, the department you will teach in will meet together and collaborate on lesson plans together. I do not feel like schools and educators focus on skills the students will actually need to prepare us to be competitive, skilled students in the 21st century.