As technology becomes more integrated into our lives and our education, we as a society have started to re-evaluate the skills that younger generations are being taught and if they will serve an actual purpose later on in life. This begs the question: are students being taught important real-world skills?

The NYC iSchool has been trailblazing this idea for almost a century now. One of their missions is that they want students to be able to leave this school having learned actual skills that can benefit them later on in life.

Mr. Borg, the technology coordinator of the iSchool, says, “I think they do this, because I was here since day one in this school, and that has been the notion. To be honest with you I feel they accomplish that most through modules.” Modules are very specific to the iSchool, really stressing the idea of teaching real life skills. Every day a week a student will go to their module class  which takes a real life idea or problem and makes a course out of it. He continues “There are a number of modules that take on current, social, and economic issues, and they do them very directly. When you do see the list of modules you’re see a lot of topics that really do hook into current problems they are not a typical curriculum.”

However, one student didn’t just explain why the school does this, but rather why these kinds of curriculums are more beneficial than the required ones. Aissata Diallo, a freshman at iSchool, says,“What you know about calculus, or trigonometry doesn’t really say what you as a student know. So with the addition of these other real-world classes, like the module Personal Finance, you are being taught skills that you will actually need in the future, and a standard education may not be able to provide.”

Some students want to push this idea further and deeply indulge in their classes. Sophomore Elise Hart says, “Staff can push it further by taking us on trips related to the class, so we can have even more hands-on experience. For example in the class Future of Teaching the Past, a videography module, we could go to a professional studio with high-grade equipment.”
iSchool is one of the numerous schools in New York City that does try to push real-world skills, equipping their students with skills useful outside of the classroom. As a school, we rank ourselves high on that list. However, that doesn’t mean our work is done.