Senior PaperTomhave 11

These skills can be broken into two distinct groups:Background (basic) skills and Life-

long skills. Background skills are just as they seem -- basic skills that are required

before any other skills can be acquired. Included in this category are Communication,

Math, Science and Computer skills. But, more important than identifying each skill

separately is the need to develop a composite approach that incorporates all these

skills into something akin to the "Liberal Arts" approach of education. Instead of just

teaching Reading, and just teaching Writing, and just teaching Arithmetic, is the vital

importance of teaching how Communication skills can be used in Math and the

Sciences, whether it be in writing quality reports about observations and theories, or

whether it be in terms of Computer skills, such as designing an application, however

simple. The point here is that the traditional approach of teaching children one skill at

a time must be reformed so that students begin to see the connections between

disciplines and learn to appreciate all areas, regardless of their personal levels of

proficiency.

Once these background skills have been taught, the next step is to start

teaching Life-long skills that will better enhance the educational process. Life-long

skills include learning how to learn, learning how to be self-sufficient, learning how to

think critically and structured, learning how to use creativity in problem solving, and

learning how to be motivated and focused. These kinds of skills are vital to the adult

as well as the student in that they allow a person to adapt to different situations and to

position themselves in life so as to better contribute to society as a whole. In terms of

security, these two skill groups provide the underpinnings. In order to implement

sound security, an administrator or professional must first understand the background

of a situation, identifying the challenges and so on, and then apply critical, structured

thinking and creative problem solving in order to produce a complete solution.

However, our picture of education is not complete with just learning these base skills.