Twenty-first-century skills are a hot topic in education today; some even call them the new building blocks for learning. The skills that can help one prepare better for an unpredictable future in this information age are called 21st-century skills. The 21st century is an era of changes and challenges. With new milestones being achieved in science and technology every day and with an ever-changing economic and political climate of the world, the question that arises is how to prepare a child for the challenges lying ahead in today’s world. And, the answer probably lies in understanding the skills one needs to cope up with these revolutionary times and gearing up our children to face these. Children will need to survive and thrive in an increasingly competitive global landscape, and at the same time be able to collaborate with others from all over the world. Creativity and innovation will be highly prized, both for developing technology and new media and for solving challenges with more limited resources.

The question then arise - what new skills will kids need for this?

Today’s children need more than the traditional 3 Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic) to prepare for 21st-century careers that include the 4 Cs:

·        Collaboration

·        Creativity

·        Communication

·        Critical thinking

21st-century skills are a mix of new and old, encompassing traditional academics (literacy, mathematics, science, and social studies), life skills such as collaboration, problem solving and creativity, and career skills such as innovation, technology, and global awareness. The most important prerequisites to learning these skills are that the learner is at the centre of the learning process and that the process of learning is driven by curiosity rather than fear. Also, for the 21st-century skills, a richer learning process is far more critical than correct learning outcomes.

Here are the different methods for inculcating 21st-century skills to the kids:

1.      Project works

Project works are a great way to get children to think of many new and thought-provoking ways of doing things. Especially, projects on real-world problems allow children to understand the issue from its roots giving them a deeper perspective of things. Projects also allow for open-ended thinking that is a key practice to becoming a good 21st-century learner.

2.      Discussions and debates

Discussions and debates are a good medium to learn 21st-century skills. When children discuss and debate on real-world problems, it helps shape up not only their thinking process but also the ability to communicate their thoughts in the right manner as well as build empathy.

3.      Collaborative and peer to peer learning

When children learn with or do intellectual work with their friends and peer, they are learning to solve problems, present their ideas, listen to other people’s ideas, and work together with other children by giving space and respecting their thoughts too. Also, it has been seen that children are much more comfortable trying different things and making mistakes in their learning process when around a peer as compared to being around an adult, including their parents and teachers.

Fostering 21st-century skills at home

While schools are beginning to make the shift toward 21st century standards, there’s a lot that parents can do to foster these skills at home.

• When children play together, parents can offer them a collective set of play materials (such as a bin of crayons) rather than individual sets to encourage sharing, turn-taking, and social skills.
• Parents can introduce phrases from different languages around the world, such as the words for “please” and “thank you,” and expose the child to ways of thinking that come from different cultures. The goal is to show the child that there are many different ways to think, speak, eat, and celebrate, all worthy of respect.
• Parents can encourage out-of-the-box thinking by asking the child to come up with one or two new rules to a familiar game.
• Parents can invite the child to help them solve common household problems by engineering new solutions.
• Parents can encourage their child to participate in family decisions and problem-solving, and then praise their child’s efforts to reason through different situations.

With the changing world environments when it comes to human capital requirements, it is not optional any more to help children acquire valuable 21st-century skills. It is a brave new world that we are entering today and definitive action on bringing 21st-century skills to children would go a long way in ensuring that they will not only survive but thrive in that future.