We are living in an era of high-stakes testing and global comparisons, which has engendered an urgent need to re-examine the world’s educational systems. The educational foundations that one could once point to with pride are now being brought into question as to whether this is an education worth having. The tectonic shift from didactic to heuristic pedagogy has left most school systems woefully unprepared to scale up for this progressive mindset and universal reality; the departure from predicated skillsets ideal for an industrial construct, and the shift to creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship and non-cognitive skills is proving to be more apt and desirable for 21st Century life opportunities. Today’s youth need to accelerate to keep up with the pace of change and the confluence of mitigating factors that have tilted the trajectory of the future. The influx of new ideas and educational thought, the diversity of our new reality requires resilience and the right tools in order to embrace and thrive in a world that is not static, but exponentially evolving. As Friedman (2016) states, “Average is officially over. When I graduated from college I got to find a job; my daughters have to invent theirs (p. 204).”
The real challenge for today’s schools is threefold: to prepare students to thrive in a competitive global labor market after completing their education; to achieve community harmony on a global scale; and to promote cultural diversity and the value of universal citizenship in a global community.
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