Reports about "what will change inside B.C.'s classrooms" miss the point. The more relevant question is "what has changed outside B.C.'s classrooms," because that is what is driving the evolution of B.C.'s public-education system.
The kids in today's classrooms with their Blackberrys, iPod Touches, iPhones, thousands of apps, Google and Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, GPS maps and their laptop windows on the world are bringing that "what has changed outside the classroom" with them to school everyday.
And they bring their impatience to learn more about everything and how to manage the "everything" they can access. They also bring their apprehension about the future and about their schools that they hope will be addressing what they will need.
What, you ask, is so different about the class of 2013 from the graduating class of, say, 1995?
Well,"digital" has always been in their cultural DNA. They've never written in cursive but can keyboard like demons. Their cellphones tell them the time, who wants to talk to them, where the nearest Starbucks or Subway is, how to translate any sentence into any language and, should they need it, what the War of 1812 was about and why we need to know that.
They are awash with a computerized technology that will not distinguish information and knowledge. So it will be up to their teachers to help them make that distinction.
And that is why a generation accustomed to instant access will need to acquire the patience of scholarship. That's about developing a set of skills - how to research diligently and thoughtfully. It is not about learning an accumulated compendium of facts.
Today's kids are looking to all of us and they cannot wait for us and our timidity about "taking risks." They just know that they will face a world none of us really understand but that will redefine education in the 21st century and their futures with it.
Kind hearts and good intentions won't do it.
What will do it are 21st-century skills developed through a curriculum that is interdisciplinary, integrated, project-based, and that will also be about the survival skills advocated by Tony Wagner, the first Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard.
Wagner's book, The Global Achievement Gap, identifies a curriculum that becomes the vehicle to help kids develop such things as critical thinking and problem-solving, collaboration across networks and leading by influence, accessing and analyzing information, and curiosity and imagination.
The Conference Board of Canada offers almost identical advice: "We are currently preparing students for jobs and technologies that don't yet exist - in order to solve problems we don't know are problems yet."
Does any of this mean that facts will not be taught? Of course not. But as theorist Benjamin Bloom pointed out so long ago, "knowledge," or the simple recall of facts and data, is the lowest rung on the learning ladder.
Much more important is "comprehension" - knowing what the facts mean. Then comes "application," how to use the knowledge and finally, and most importantly, "evaluation" - the best use of the facts to select the most effective solution, explain and justify, appraise, reach a conclusion, summarize and support a conclusion.
The new B.C. plan is not diminishing the importance of factual knowledge but aims to include knowledge as part of a far more important process.
Hopefully, the plan, when it is fully realized and articulated, will validate what excellent teachers have been doing all along and substantially support their efforts with the tools and the technology they need right now.
But along with kind hearts and good intentions, talk without substance will not do it either.
It is not news that a couple of years ago the world economy exploded, but now we need to understand that it is our public-school system, not just our economy, that needs a reboot and an upgrade.
Am I implying that the key to B.C. and Canada's economic development and the willingness to significantly pursue the development of public education are inextricably linked?
You bet I am.
Geoff Johnson is a retired superintendent of schools.
