21st Century Skills

I was walking to my car last week when the Cross Country team ran past me. I snapped this picture of Ella Rose making her way along the route talking on her cell phone. Back in the day when I ran track, we weren't allowed to use cell phones during practice. But that was before we realized the importance of multi-tasking and staying in constant touch. The world is different now, much "flatter," as Tom Friedman likes to say and lots of people like to say it after him. The kids on our Cross Country team are not that different from students across the globe. The other picture here is harder to make out. I took it a year ago in Tanzania, of a Massai youth making his way through the African countryside talking on a cell phone. You might not be able to see that he's talking on a cell phone, but he is. Trust me. Even as he is stalking a lion, he is talking on a cell phone, proving that he, like our dear Ella, is able to go about doing one important thing while doing another. And maybe, for all I know, another still. O brave new world, that has such people in it!