Is knowledge obsolete? Beware of replacing academics with 'new' skills

Don't believe the hype, writes Rick Hess in Education Next.

"Education impresarios" and tech bros claim “the age of AI” has made traditional academics obsolete and skills such as “communication, problem-solving, and collaboration” more important, he writes.

The World Economic Forum wants educators to forget about teaching knowledge and “embrace the 'how to think' model."

By 2050, predicts Harvard’s Howard Gardner, children will need just a few years of “reading, ’riting, ’rithmetic, and a little bit of coding” because “most cognitive aspects of mind . . . will be done so well by large language machines and mechanisms that whether we do them as humans will be optional.”

The "21st-century skills" crowd has been denigrating academic content for decades, writes Hess. It's old hat. They offer "vacuous, hand-waving incantations" about what students should learn instead.

In the early 20th century, in response to industrialization, the National Education Association issued Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, which called academics only one of seven priorities. Students needed "life skills," the old futurists claimed.

In 1989, Arnold Packer, co-author of the hugely influential “Workforce 2000” report, argued in the Washington Post that students should learn to use digital technology, not to dissect frogs. He praised a program that used computers and videodiscs to show students how to operate photocopiers, fax machines and telephones used in conference calls, writes Hess. "Learning how to operate a fax machine” would enable students to master “the higher skills that will enable [students] to operate tomorrow’s office equipment; in other words, they are learning to learn.”

It's unclear why Packer "thought using a fax machine helps students 'learn how to learn' but dissection does not," writes Hess.

Predicting future workforce needs is easy, he writes. "No one’s ever held accountable for being wrong." And it's "an excuse to dream up fun lists of nifty 'new skills,' which is more appealing than struggling to do better at teaching the old, boring ones."