the 4 Cs

CREATIVITY
CRITICAL THINKING
COMMUNICATION
COLLABORATION

We are not born knowing these things, but they have the be the cornerstone of a good education. 

When our parents sent us to school, they had a pretty good idea of what we'd need to know to survive in the adult world.  But we cannot know what challenges our students will face in their future because the world is changing literally at the speed of thought.

The first two concepts go hand in hand:
CREATIVITY is the ability to fuse existing knowledge in different ways.  Therefore creation is an action.
CRITICAL THINKING is a reaction to something that already exists.  After the creative process is exhausted, the next step is to analyse the result, to evaluate it, critique it and then to start the creative process again to improve and enhance the results.

The second two concepts also go together:
COMMUNICATION is not only the sending of the message, but also the reaction to it.  This can happen using many kinds of language: English, Spanish, music, dance, art, gesture etc.
COLLABORATION is working together to achieve a common goal.  (Interestingly, competitors can be said to be collaborating because they both agree to play by the same rules.  For example, football players collaborate with their teammates to score goals and win; but they also collaborate on a different level with their opponents in order to make the game happen.)  Obviously, collaboration cannot happen without communication.


For more information on these concepts, go to http://www.p21.org/
There's a cute video on this page that shows how the 4 Cs work: http://www.p21.org/our-work/resources/for-educators/1007
And here's a poster: http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/4csposter.pdf