How should schools respond to the emergence of AI? One popular mantra urges educators to devote less time to “mere knowledge” and more to communication, collaboration, and other “21st-century skills.” It should surprise no one that I’m skeptical of this advice. So, I thought it worth reaching out to Charles Fadel, the author of the bestsellers 21st Century Skills and Education for the Age of AI, to get his take. Fadel is the founder and chair of the Center for Curriculum Redesign, a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, and the chair of the education committee at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). A former electrical engineer, he went on to serve as the global education lead at Cisco Systems. Here’s what Charles had to say.
—Rick
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Rick: Charles, how did you wind up involved in the push for 21st-century skills?
Charles: In 2002, I became the Cisco founding board member with the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21), a nonprofit coalition of business, education, and government leaders. When P21 published its framework in 2009, I and Bernie Trilling—who was also on the commission—thought a book for teachers and administrators would be helpful. So, we wrote the book 21st Century Skills.
Rick: So, what exactly are 21st-century skills—and why do you think they’re so vital?
Charles: The P21 framework was meant to describe a jobs-ready education. But to be honest, Bernie and I always felt it was incomplete. It didn’t sufficiently explain the importance of knowledge, which led to some accusations that we thought knowledge was unimportant. Moreover, issues of character and metacognition were underplayed, the former out of fear of political backlash and the latter out of a lack of conceptual clarity. So in 2015, Bernie and I decided to write a second book, Four-Dimensional Education, to clarify and develop the original concept.
Rick: What kinds of clarification did you try to provide in Four-Dimensional Education?
Charles: The basic idea is that there are four dimensions to teach and learn. The first is knowledge, which forms the foundation for the other three—skills, character, and meta-learning. Skills are how you use your knowledge. Character is how you behave in the world. And meta-learning is how you reflect, adapt, and learn how to learn. My argument is that knowledge, which education has historically treated as its near-exclusive focus, still matters, but it must be modernized and complemented by the other three dimensions.
Rick: In practice, what’s it mean to “modernize” and “complement” knowledge?
Charles: Here’s a simple example: If you’re teaching someone how to divide fractions, you make them reflect on the process, not just learn the procedure in a rote way. This does not mean, as detractors will claim, that the student has to “discover the procedure” for themselves. That would take multiple lifetimes! Rather, it’s about reflection.
Rick: As you know, I’ve long been skeptical of “21st-century skills,” especially when used to justify efforts to deemphasize traditional academics. What am I getting wrong?
Charles: Where you’re right is that 21st-century skills have often been framed as “knowledge no longer matters.” That’s absurd, and we never stated that. Unfortunately, the concept was co-opted by people with their own agendas. But here’s where you may need to adjust your thinking: Knowledge alone is inert and needs other capabilities to be useful in the real world.
Rick: If knowledge is still fundamental, what’s the right way to think about the relationship between knowledge and skills?
Charles: Knowledge is the base onto which skills are infused. For example, you can teach history in a rote fashion or in a way that develops critical thinking. This infusion is important. It’s like chewing before digesting; it forces the student to think before understanding.
Rick: When it comes to mathematics, say, how does that approach work in practice?
Charles: Let’s say you’re teaching students a math algorithm like addition. You’d teach them the standard rules: Line up numbers by place value, add each column from right to left, and carry values greater than 9 to the next column. That is the knowledge content. But at the same time, you can also use that content to teach students about the underlying concept of computability—a property of problems that can be solved using step-by-step procedures. Finally, by developing students’ problem-solving abilities, you are also teaching the competency of critical thinking.
Rick: You’ve noted that all these dynamics are heightened in the age of AI. How do LLMs and agentic AI change the knowledge and skills that students need?
Charles: In 2024, my colleagues and I at the Center for Curriculum Redesign authored Education for the Age of AI to answer that question. Reviewing 111 curriculum frameworks and 861 papers, we found that all three dimensions matter more than ever, but chief among them is meta-learning—learning how to learn continuously throughout life. On the knowledge front, it’s easy to automate both declarative knowledge, i.e., rote facts and concepts, and procedural knowledge, like how to multiply and divide. That’s precisely what schools emphasize. So, knowledge needs modernizing in two ways: updating existing disciplines—more data science, less trigonometry—and adding entirely new ones like engineering and entrepreneurship.
Rick: What do enthusiasts for 21st -century skills get wrong?
Charles: There’s the “magic thinking” that just because jurisdictions pepper their curricula with the right buzzwords, things will happen at the classroom level. Many people fail to realize that without modifying university entrance requirements and standardized tests for students, no teacher has the incentive or training to deploy the competencies in their classroom—not at the quality and scale that are needed. The curriculum is downstream of the assessments.
Rick: You’ve compared the precision of engineering to the imprecision of much educational change. How has that played out with curricular redesign?
Charles: Imagine designing a video messaging system when no one agrees on what “video” means. That’s curriculum design today. Jurisdictions build their own “learner profile” or “portrait of a graduate,” as if students’ needs changed from one town to the next. That fragmentation is what the Center for Curriculum Redesign set out to fix. Our framework cross-references with virtually any existing one, from CASEL to ACARA to Jubilee, so redesign starts from a common foundation.
Rick: If you had one tip for school and system leaders about getting 21-century skills right in the age of AI, what would it be?
Charles: Don’t fall prey to trends and hype but don’t be reactionary, either. And don’t use “21st-century skills” anymore. We’re in 2026; use “4D education” instead.
