Meaning Of The 21st Century Analysis

The 21st century is thought to be the era of change and advances, but thats not whats really happening. There are many major problems in the 21st century 's children and students. Which James Martin ouches base on in his book “The Meaning of the 21st Century”. One of which being the lack of wisdom and the abundance of skill in today 's children. The gap between skill and wisdom will be an issue we must solve in the near future because kids aren’t able to apply their skills, for example, knowledge in math, to day to day tasks, and they don’t have any common sense or wisdom to get them through life 's hard times, but we can solve it by teaching children about morals, applying problems to real life, and giving real answers to their many questions,

One of these major conflicts we face is the huge gap between skills and wisdom. “Science and technology are accelerating furiously, but wisdom is not.” (Martin). We have the technology and the materials to learn many new skills at a rapid pace, but without wisdom theses skills will be rendered useless. We learn many theoretical problems throughout our schooling, only to use them to pass the test, or to graduate, but we aren 't able to apply these lessons to our lives after graduation. These complicated word problems and odd equations just sit in the back of our heads to collect dust once we become adults. We have the skills to comprehend them and solve them, but we don’t need useless information, we need information we can use throughout our lives. Wisdom is often overlooked in schooling it 's just something teachers, or professors expect us to have already grasped, but without any prior knowledge this is impossible. These students are asking questions, they 're hungry for answers, but when the only answers they get are “just because” or other short answers, they don 't get the chance to expand their wisdom and common sense. These children feel “No parent, or teacher or caregiver has the time or patience to

Parents are pressuring kids to get good grades above anything else. They say good grades are the only way to succeed, but in reality success is not measured by your class average, GPA, or SAT scores. It’s measured by wisdom, meeting goals, common sense, most importantly happiness. Grades aren 't going to make you a good people person or give you morals and wisdom, their just going to get you into a college, that one you graduate won 't matter as much. When these children grow up to be adults they 're only going to know how to get good grades and memorize things for a short period of time just so they can pass a test. Schools are focused on making children memorize things to pass a test, but they need to actually learn, so they can carry it into their lives. We need to “Change the whole definition of what success in school, and out of school means.”(Kamenetz) School defines success as passing, or being top of the class. They want students to focus on school and nothing more, they want them to dedicate their youthful lives to school. Focusing on just school will make these children antisocial humans that don 't have any morals and don 't know who to communicate with others. These kids learn many skills that they will soon forget once out of college. If these kids were taught wisdom they 'd be able to carry that throughout their lives. Parents also