Three Foundational Elements

The Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (1991) states that high school students must develop a three-part foundation consisting of basic skills, thinking skills, and personal qualities in order to succeed in work and life:

"Basic Skills: Reads, writes, performs arithmetic and mathematical operations, listens and speaks.

• Reading--Locates, understands, and interprets written information in prose and in documents such as manuals, graphs, and schedules.

• Writing--Communicates thoughts, ideas, information, and messages in writing; and creates documents such as letters, directions, manuals, reports, graphs, and flow charts.

• Arithmetic/Mathematics--Performs basic computations and approaches practical problems by choosing appropriately from a variety of mathematical techniques.

• Listening--Receives, attends to, interprets, and responds to verbal messages and other cues.

• Speaking--Organizes ideas and communicates orally.

Thinking Skills: Thinks creatively, makes decisions, solves problems, visualizes, knows how to learn, and reasons.

• Creative Thinking--Generates new ideas.

• Decision Making--Specifies goals and constraints, generates alternatives, considers risks, and evaluates and chooses best alternative.

• Problem Solving--Recognizes problems, and devises and implements plan of action.

• Seeing Things in the Mind's Eye--Organizes and processes symbols, pictures, graphs, objects, and other information.

• Knowing How to Learn--Uses efficient learning techniques to acquire and apply new knowledge and skills.

• Reasoning--Discovers a rule or principle underlying the relationship between two or more objects and applies it when solving a problem.

Personal Qualities: Displays responsibility, self-esteem, sociability, self-management, and integrity and honesty.

• Responsibility--Exerts a high level of effort and perseveres towards goal attainment.

• Self-Esteem--Believes in own self-worth and maintains a positive view of self.

• Sociability--Demonstrates understanding, friendliness, adaptability, empathy, and politeness in group settings.

• Self-Management--Assesses self accurately, sets personal goals, monitors progress, and exhibits self-control.

• Integrity/Honesty--Chooses ethical courses of action." (p. xviii)

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