The 21st Century skills are ones that look towards a future in which life for most on this planet is different than from the 20th Century. The 1900's can be categorized as a century of great ingenuity and creation in mechanical arts (sure, they're a type of arts). Over time society became relatively based on the life-skills necessary for a mechanical work. We did not perfect the mechanical arts, but we have begun a new century and a new era that uses mechanics, but focuses on higher order thinking skills. The ability to create, collaborate, communicate, and critique is becoming more important.

These skills are being recognized as important, but the systems that use and manage them are slow to change. Old systems punish the bad and reward the good (after the job is done in the box designed for the job and only in that box - of course, you can deviate a little, but at the peril of rocking the boat and losing that job...). The rewards here are mostly extrinsic - the rewards offered by employers were deemed worthy of high quality work, thus extrinsic rewards became intrinsic.

However, that won't work anymore.

Students question why they're told to do things and with information at their fingertips, they feel that they have ground to make the question. It's the teacher's job to facilitate the chance for students to create their own intrinsic motivation to do things. It's a kind of post-post-modern world that's growing - "order is ok, I'm just going to question it and want to do things my way." If people learn creative, collaborate, communicate, and critique properly, they find the reason and motivation to accomplish a task. And measurable scientific fact tells us that intrinsic motivation increases all those "C" skills.

A relatively simple concept... but are we ready to make the change?