Students Being Told Not Taught

In Tony Wagner's article, Rigor Redefined he researches how well U.S. schools are preparing students for careers and citizenship and from his data, he has decided that schools fail at this. In the beginning of his article, he did research on what top companies look for in new employees and what he found surprised me. The business leaders he interviewed came up with a list of seven things all newly graduated students looking for jobs need to do. Number one on the list was critical thinking and problem solving. Once I read what this meant I realized that this is something I am learning right now in English which is preparing me for a successful future. The second thing on the list was collaboration and leadership. A question I have from this is, do students with a better education have less of a chance at a job than someone with just strong leadership? Is that all you need to qualify for a job? The third thing on the list was agility and adaptation or in simpler terms, flexibility to learn and try something new in a career position. Will these people create the need to change and have flexibility in society? The fourth was initiative and entrepreurialism. The fifth, effective oral and written communication. In this section, the business leaders talked about the fact that most college educated students don't have this basic skill so are we being taught lessons that will never matter? And are we not being taught basic skills? The sixth on the list was accessing and analyzing information. Finally, the seventh on the list was curiosity and imagination. This section talks about how us students need to be taught and to learn how to ask great questions that matter. So far we are not really taught these lessons in school but so is our education outdated? Will it keep us from possible jobs? And if education is changed so students acquire these skills, what happens to my workforce generation if we are less prepared than the generation after me?
In the next part of the article, Tony Wagner visited several AP classes at different high schools to see how the students are taught and how they are learning. He first visited an AP Chemistry class where students were performing a lab and when they did something wrong, they turned to their teacher, notes, and the chalkboard to figure out how to do it right. These students are believed to be great thinkers and yet they can not rely on them selves for answers, just what they have been told from textbooks and lectures. The next class he visited was an AP Government class where the teacher was reviewing questions for a sample free-response test. This teacher asked the students to answer a question that required their personal opinions and when no one answered, he asked what a certain term meant, and then a few students knew the answer. These students only know the answers to what they have been told. After this, the teacher asks a question that requires an opinion and surprisingly, a student answers but his response can not be heard over the fan of the projector. Once the teacher gets an answer, he moves on to something else clearly not caring if all the students comprehend the question and possible answers. Next, Wagner visited an AP English class where the students were going over character traits from a book. All the students know the answers to the questions she asks because they had been told what it was, written it down, and then recited it from their notes when asked. Once they didn't know an answer to a question, the teacher sighed and then began to write the answer up on the board. Finally, Wagner visited an Algerbra 2 class where the students were given a problem they had never seen before and were told that they needed to work in groups of four and create two possible solutions for the problem, and one student from each group would be called up to write the groups answer on the board. That right there is the way a classroom should be. This teacher let the students think for themselves, rely on group members for any questions they had, and all students would be held accountable for their learning because a student at random would be called on to give the answer.
From this article I have realized that our education isn't always preparing us for future jobs. We are sometimes taught things that don't even matter and the important skills don't have enough time spent on them. We are not always given the opportunity to learn, we are just told what the answers are and not asked if we have learned it. I think the main idea of this article was to show the reader that our educations are not perfect and not always giving us valuable skills but the teachers who take time to make sure each student understands the lesson or skill are the best ones.