206 Teaching Minds
A good place to start is to ask what a highly functioning adult can do and moreover has to be able to do in order to live in this world. When we ask this question, the phrase “21st-century skills” will not come up. Every time that phrase comes up, somehow the answer turns out to include algebra and calculus and science, which, the last I heard, were 19th-century skills too.
In fact, let’s not talk about particular centuries at all. To see why, I want to diverge for a moment into a discussion of the maritime in- dustry, a subject with which I have become more fascinated over the years. What did a mariner from Ancient Greece have in common with his modern counterpart in terms of abilities?
The answer is an obsession with weather, ship maintenance, lead- ership and organization, navigation, planning, goal prioritization, and handling of emergencies.
Effective mariners from ancient times would have in common with those of today is an understanding of how to operate their ships, the basic laws of weather, tides, navigation, and other relevant issues in the physical world, and an ability to make decisions well when circumstances are difficult. They also would have to know how to get along with fellow workers, how to manage the people who report to them, as well as basic laws of commerce and defense.
In fact, the worlds they inhabit, from an educational point of view, that is, from thinking about what to teach and how to teach it, would be nearly identical except for one thing: how to operate and maintain the equipment. Their ships were, of course, quite different.
So, let’s reformulate this question that seems to haunt every mod- ern-day pundit on education (usually politicians or newspaper people). What are 21st-century skills? Can this question be transformed (for mariners) into what does a 21st-century mariner need to be educated about that his Ancient Greek counterpart was not educated about?
The answer, it seems obvious to me, is 21st-century equipment and procedures: engines, navigation devices, particular political situa- tions, computers, and so on. But, and this is an important “but,” none of this stuff is the real issue in the education of a mariner. The real issue is decision making. What one has to make a decision about is secondary to the issue of knowing how to make a decision at all.
You can learn about a piece of equipment or a procedure by ap- prenticeship. Start as a helper and move on gradually to being an ex- pert. But this is not what school emphasizes. School typically attempts to intellectualize these subjects. Experts write books about the theory
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