Old school counts in Google age, says Tom Alegounarias

THE focus in modern school curriculum on "21st century skills" such as critical thinking, group work and creativity is mistaken.

Tom Alegounarias

THE focus in modern school curriculum on "21st century skills" such as critical thinking, group work and creativity is mistaken, one of the nation's most senior education officials has declared in a dismissal of the push to teach generic skills rather than traditional subjects.

Tom Alegounarias, a board member of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority and president of the NSW Board of Studies, said focusing on generic skills without teaching students the facts in discipline-based subjects such as English, maths, history or geography was akin to teaching students how to think without teaching them anything to think about.

In a speech to the NSW Association of Independent Schools, Mr Alegounarias rejected the belief promulgated widely in the education sector that the advent of the internet and Google meant schools no longer had to teach facts because their students could always find them for themselves.

"I believe the current momentum toward the futurist world of integrated, generic skill capacity is overstated and will not be sustained," he said.

"I think 21st century skills are also 20th century skills and we are studying them in the disciplines."

Mr Alegounarias cited leading US education policy analyst Diane Ravitch, who said about the emphasis on 21st century skills: "We have neglected to teach them that one cannot think critically unless one has quite a lot of knowledge to think about."

Mr Alegounarias said the disciplines had proved themselves "pretty hardy" after about 2000 years and were unlikely to be supplanted by the agenda of 21st century skills and integrated learning approaches. "No one has made the case the 21st century skills are not richly represented within the existing content curriculum ... and no one has shown that these generic skills can be understood or acquired out of subject matter context," he said.

"Generic, un-contextualised 'relevant' experiences will be, and are increasingly, commonplace and the depth of knowledge and detail that is required to show capacity in analysis or creativity will be increasingly valued."

The Australian Curriculum includes seven general capabilities, "essential skills for 21st-century learners in literacy, numeracy, information and communication technology, thinking, creativity, teamwork and communication".

The curriculum is organised around traditional subjects, or "learning areas", but can also be reorganised according to the general capabilities, enabling programs planned around generic skills rather than fields of knowledge.

Mr Alegounarias said there was a substantial push to present the general capabilities as an "equally viable" frame for organising learning as subjects, with some arguing they should be assessed as part of the national testing regime, and for the OECD group of industrialised nations, which already tests reading, maths and science, to develop a test for 21st-century skills.

While the argument for teaching generic skills was based on the premise that skills could be acquired in one context and transferred to a different context, Mr Alegounarias said the evidence suggested the opposite was true.

"Skills of analysis and critique are developed through application and improvement through a variety of new and ever challenging contexts," he said.