New Skills

Citizen Schools peeked my interest in the book their work is based on, Teaching the New Basic Skills by Richard J. Muranane and Frank Levy. Although written ten years ago, I think their insights are even more relevant today. They argue that a high school diploma should be enough to prepare you for the average middle class job in America. However, they have found that the skills that schools teach and the needs of corporate America are not aligning to help our graduating seniors find decent jobs.

They have identified three major types of skills that, if well done in the classroom, should prepare the average student to find employment. They are:

• basic hihg school level reading and mathematics
• soft skills like team work, problem solving and presentation
• and finally basic computer skills.

These seem like things that would be learned in high school, but unfortunately that's not always the case. As my husband, who works at the library laments, many recently graduated students lack basic typing and wordprocessing skills.

In addition to considering what our students need to learn, they share a five points of effective management in corporate America.

1. Ensure that everyone understands the problem. Sometimes you truly are working on two different issues but think they are the same.
2. Design jobs so that there are incentives and opportunities for people to contribute. I think we've all be in a situation where they have asked for our input but not really wanted it - this needs to be avoided.
3. Provide people with the training needed to pursue solutions. This might be learning specific skills, patterns of thinking, etc. The other point they make here is to FOLLOW UP on training - we've all been trainings where there is no follow through. It's a waste of everyone's time.
4. Measure progress on a regular basis. How are we doing, how do we know that we are reaching our goals, etc.
5. Perservere and learn from mistakes. I like this point because it emphasizes that if you are trying something new there will be problems, issues and kinks. This attitude allows you to see them as chances to learn not failures.

This book does not discuss "knowledge management" as a term - but that is basically what they are getting at. But that's another tangent. So this is a quick thumbnail of the book and it is a good read because they use great examples of these principles in action. They have done their research and boiled it down to a few critical elements that business and education should heed. I can see what Citizen Schools has adopted their format to build their programs.