ABSTRACT
What skills and knowledge does someone need to fully participate in a modern, technological, and democratic society? Efforts to answer this question are a major part of the national debate over educational standards and the performance of schools. It is a difficult question to answer because what people need to know is constantly changing. For example, I joke with students that when I was in high school in the 1960s, we were not allowed to use pocket calculators in math class. This was not because teachers were stricter or educational standards were higher, but because miniature calculators had not yet been invented. As recently as 1983, when my in-laws offered to purchase a personal computer for my family, my wife and I did not know what we would do with one. Today we each have our own computer at home and at work plus a laptop and iPad we share, and we do not know how we would manage without them. Technological development has fundamentally altered what we mean by minimum competency skills.
