These Are Exciting Times!

When the Boomers were in middle and high school, they were concerned about the military draft, the social protests, and if the hippies would still be on the move. When today’s elementary students graduate from high school, today’s world will be a memory to them.

The times they are a changing and if you do not learn to swim you will sink like a stone. (Now that sounds like something the Boomers were saying. Oh yes, it was!)

Yes the times are changing very rapidly and these are exciting times for education. Today we are preparing our students “for jobs that don’t yet exist using technologies that haven’t yet been invented in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet” (Shift Happens). They will be living and working in a world were they must compete for jobs with every person from all corners of the globe. These new jobs will require a new level of technological skills we have not seen yet. “Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world” (Albert Einstein). They will need to begin now at the elementary level to develop the capacity to access those skills.

The elementary students today will be living and working in a world that will be changing so fast they will extend the limits of the possible beyond what they can imagine now: genetics, next generation energy sources, next generation environmental balance and control, nanobots, robotics, intelligent biotechnology, invisibility cloaks, and digital Lego's — to mention a few things.

The “21st Century Skills” initiative will enable the schools in North Carolina to implement the “Future Ready Student” vision of the North Carolina Board of Education. The commitment to make our students ready for the world they will live in must be made in partnership of the schools and parents. For more information about this initiative, visit  www.21stcenturyskills.org.