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Workforce Readiness:

The Skills 2000 Challenge

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Our full employment has reached the point of diminishing returns: Companies need more workers than are available in the workforce. Many of the individuals applying for jobs don't have the training and skill sets necessary for the technology driven, teambased, high performance workplaces of today. In addition to technical skills, entry-level employees must exhibit a "soft skills set" that will allow them to grow and change with the company. Those skills include a commitment to quality; a focus on customers; problem-solving and critical thinking; communications--in writing, speech, and listening; mathematics' adaptability and flexibility; computer literacy; and the ability to work in a team-based environment.* Arnold Packer, formerly the director of the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) at the Department of Labor, describes the "four fundamental factors" that will shape the world of work in the 21st century: 1. the disappearance of routine blue-collar work and the movement toward a service economy; 2. the replacement of routinized mass production by manufacturing based on the demand for quality; 3. the economy's exit from the industrial age into the information age; 4. the domination of new technologies by the marriage between computer and communications.*

Looking at the "relevant workplace know-how" called for by the SCANS Commission, and the competencies listed earlier, shows just how valuable the arts are in preparing all students for today's competitive economic environment:

1. experiences in the arts teach skills that can be transferred to the workplace, among them the skills of allocating the resources of time, money, materials and staff; interpersonal skills such as teamwork, negotiating, leading and working with other cultures; information skills such as acquiring, evaluating, interpreting and communicating information; system skills, such as understanding, monitoring, correcting, improving and designing systems; and the skills required to select, use and troubleshoot technology;

2. knowledge of the arts enhances effective communication, and communication is more effective when it draws on the power of the arts to convey meaning. In the information age, ideas and information can profitably draw on visual, dramatic, music and bodily elements; 3. an "artful approach" improves problem-solving.

High performance firms strive for quality work and search for the kind of creative solutions that an arts education helps students understand and work toward. An arts education " puts knowledge to work" and indeed, the arts may rightfully be regarded as "the new science of information." It is important to remember: a one-time exposure or a single opportunity in the arts will not create skills. Only quality, sequential, comprehensive arts education can make a difference for kids.