I am deeply honored to join you at this conference celebrating KSSE’s 50th “golden” anniversary. My ACT colleagues and I greatly admire KSSE and congratulate its staff on the important role they have played in Korean education during the past half century. I am especially appreciative of the efforts of Dr. Do-Soon Park, chair of the conference, and Dr. Jong Seung Lee, president of KICE, who extended the invitation for me to speak about the challenges and opportunities for education in the 21st century. This visit to Korea has enabled me both to renew old friendships and to make many new ones. In that regard, ACT has long enjoyed and valued its ties with Korea. During the past 44 years, we have hosted visits by many visiting Korean educational professionals. We also have many Korean citizens on our staff, including five Research Associates at our headquarters in Iowa. We value their talents, as well as the global perspectives they bring to our work.
CHALLENGE 1: We must ensure that all of our students develop strong reading, writing, math and science skills. Challenge 2 – Our children must develop higher-order critical thinking skills, must be creative and must be motivated to and know how to continually learn new things. Challenge 3 — We must better coordinate the entire educational system, from preschool through college Challenge 4 – Our nations must develop and disseminate new models of learning and harness the power of technology to meet our educational goals. Challenge 5 – Teachers must be trained, and regularly retrained, for entirely new ways of teaching and mentoring Challenge 6 – We must make education affordable for all of our citizens Challenge 7 —We must coordinate our workforce needs with student training Challenge 8 – Our citizens must continuously learn to keep up with the pace of change
