The Without-A-Doubt / Monthly Top 3 List.
Skills We Learn In School That Will No Longer Be Taught
The TOP 3 school skills that will not be taught in the future. This monthly post is provided to provoke a little conversation. And, remember, the thoughts presented here are offered up as indisputable facts, not just opinions…😁 So here we go….Our sure-fire, without-a skills that will no longer be taught in school.
Do you agree? Seriously, you don’t want to dare question the indisputable and irrefutable monthly Top 3. 😁 Just saying.
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1. Note-taking
This is difficult to write because taking notes in school is such a long-standing and effective practice that it is hard to imagine a classroom without it. It is like picturing a school without chalk :). To be clear, note-taking has come and gone in popularity as many of us are still haunted by the pages and pages of notes we had to take in science, and the swollen, aching fingers that resulted. Notes by this example are not helpful learning tools. A complete waste of time, in fact. On the other hand (pun intended), note-taking as a method for capturing key ideas and synthesizing our learning is a great practice that improves learning. As with any practice, how we do it really, really matters. Still, in the end, generational changes and technology shifts will likely win out. It is hard to imagine schools in the next century using paper and pencil for anything, and note-taking as we know it may go the way of blackboards and chalk. No, not soon, but eventually.
2. Cursive writing
And so the debate continues. In some places, cursive writing has been banished as an outdated and useless skill. In other places, it has seen a resurgence as a useful process that builds cognitive function and spelling fluency. In the end, what we teach in school is decided by the adults who place value on such things, from Shakespeare to the Vietnam War. The truth is that the further we get away from certain time periods, the more likely that a younger generation may include different books and historical events. Actually, we have already evolved across generations as we no longer practice our penmanship with slates, dip pens, and ink and the study of farming and fertilizer is hard to find in our schools anymore. In the same way, cursive writing will someday fade away, not because it has no benefit but our young people will grow into adults and simply move on from something they don’t use or value.
3. Sourcing and citation
Teachers who really like things are resistant to giving them up. Yes, the long history of researching and citation in our schools go hand-in-hand, like rubbery pizza and school lunches. The funny thing is that original student inquiry and robust research endeavors may become central to what school looks like in the future. Just not the citation part. Technology always wins out. Period. Many, many people resisted ATM machines and insisted that we save the jobs of bank tellers. We have pushed back against space exploration, cell phones, and even self-service kiosks. And, until recently, many resisted AI as a threat to schooling. If we have learned nothing else, it is to except the fate of technology when the systems have become too big to ignore. One such system is finding and formatting in-text citation, footnoting, and references. Yes, we can still expect students to pursue sound inquiry and reliable research, but technology will do the work of finding the evidence and citing it for us, along with formatting our papers however we want.