【Speech】The Globle Achievement Gap

Tony Wagner is a peofessor from Harvard, he pointed out at the very beginning that it becomes more and more important to learn how to learn and how to express in now society. The idea is samilar to "Metacognition" which I learned at education class in college. Memorization is prabobly not the crucial skill we need now, so he was trying to ask "what skills does our new generation need?" And later he talked about seven survival skills for careers, college and citizenship.

1. Critical thinking and problem-solving
2. Collaboration across networks and leading by influence
3. Agility and adaptability
4. Initiative and enterepreneurialism
5. Effective oral and written communication
6. Accessing and analyzing information
7. Curiosity and imagination

We must learn how to improve, how to make it matter and how to get higher quality. The ability to ask right questions is important as well. Besides, now we oftenly need to work with a group of peers. And we have to organize all things together, lead a group and inspire or guide others. Also, One needs to know happening around the world and to learn how to do analysis among millions information and make his/her own statement more persuasive. At the same time, One have to be an initiator.

Wagner mentioned that, our kids now need to memorize lots of thing for taking test. Our students are not learn the skills they need. In fact, the skills they need can not be tested. But here comes my question which is same as I raised in Yivonne's speech few months ago. Take "critical thinking" for example, how do we assess our students' ability of critical thinking? Wagner said we can find out something from profolio they made. Is that quite simple?

He told some motivatives of net generation including "always-on" connection, less feer and respect for authority, learn much from peers, want to make a difference and have their own way of self-expressing. So what can now parents and teachers do? He thought to be a educators, we must help them understand the 21 century skills matter most. That's the reason why he wanted to make some possible action items for reinventing education. What's more, we must create opportunities for teachers to work in teams to create new approachs to education.

He wanted new generation to ask themselves "what's your dream?" and reminded us to keep encouraging young people to persue their dreams and passion. After the speech, we watched a vedio about school lives at Taroko. Click the picture for complete vedio and check more details here.