July 27, 2022
Quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg wrote, “What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” I think the same can be said about what we look for in our students, it’s all about the questions we ask.
When you pose the question “What are the skills and mindsets that students need to thrive in our ever-changing world?” you’ve already framed the answers. I’ve gone through the portraits of a graduate of dozens of schools and it seems like they all drew from the same hat of fewer than 20 words. A graduate should be some combination of resilient, adaptable, responsible, a learner, an effective communicator, innovative, collaborative, creative, a critical thinker, ethical, a global citizen, etc. I’m sure these schools all went through a rigorous process of engaging community members in discussion to come up with their vision of which “knowledge, skills, mindsets, and literacies [are] essential for 21st-century student success.” So did all the schools that have portraits but don’t call them such, schools that want to cultivate the 4, 5, or 6 Cs that are just the same story. I use the term portrait as a catch-all for competencies and characteristics sought out in this vein.
Several things strike me about creating a portrait. First, a portrait is fixed. It doesn’t take into account what happens the moment a student leaves school. A portrait is static and draws on the past, not the present. It tells us nothing more than what we want to believe is permanent but is not. A portrait doesn’t consider that humans are becomings, that is, that our futures lie ahead of us and we flow into them. Of course, we can make predictions based on patterns of the past, but patterns and portraits are different things. All the more so when we seek to make everyone look the same by making one portrait for everyone.
Second, many of the skills that a portrait paints feel like they’re about getting students “work ready.” I’m not suggesting that this isn’t important, I’m just noticing and asking myself whether making sure kids are prepared for the professional world should be the main purpose of schools. You could make the argument that each of these skills is important in day-to-day life, but if we zoom back, we notice a pattern that most of these mindsets and…