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Preparing Gifted Learners for the 21st
Century
Today's
gifted learners will be entering a workforce that is
very different from the ones their parents had to
confront. With the globalization of the knowledge
industry, information that was once the domain of the
few, is available to everybody, every day, and at every
time. Factual information alone is trivial. What matters
is how it's organized and selected, and how value is
added.
Outsourcing used to be the worry of the unskilled labor
force, but with the churning out of half a million
scientists and engineers a year in China and India
compared to the paltry 60,000 in the United States.
The obvious worry is shift in the balance of innovation
away from the West, and poorer job markets for homegrown
knowledge workers (the gifted students of today) in the
future.
All this comes at a time when schools are focused on the
students are struggling to meet academic test standards.
Highly capable students are left on their own because
they seem to be successful enough, but they may be
caught holding the bag competing on a global level in
the workforce of tomorrow.
With the easy availability of facts-on-demand via the
Internet, there has never been less of a need for
information-only thinkers. It is not enough to know
that something is true, its useful to know how
it relates to other information and how it might be
applied or recombined with other facts or materials to
make something new.
There should be no quibbling about the importance of
learning facts for gifted students, but it's important
to consider what more they will need to find personal
success and self-fulfillment.
In order for students to be successful creators, and not
just consumers of technology and innovation, they need
new habits, not just skills or knowledge. They need
habits of expectancy and looking for opportunities for
making things better or more effective. They need to be
able to read between-the-lines to critique and look for
new or recurring themes, conflicts, and motives. They
should become problem-finders as well as
problem-solvers, and they should know more about their
own cognitive strengths and weaknesses, and how they may
work best with others.
For More Reading:
America Isn't Ready
A New World Economy
Education for a Flat World
Educating for the Future
Net Gen: What Will the Future of
Work Be?
Friedman's The World is Flat -
Free Video MIT OCW
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