21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our times

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Learning Past and Future

 

We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist . . . using technologies that haven’t yet been invented . . . in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.

—Richard Riley, Secretary of Education under Clinton

 

 

It happened quietly, without fanfare or fireworks. In 1991, the total money spent on Industrial Age goods in the United States—things like engines and machines for agriculture, mining, construction, manufacturing, transportation, energy production, and so on—was exceeded for the first time in history by the amount spent on information and communications technologies: computers, servers, printers, software, phones, networking devices and systems, and the like. ...