Four Things Every Student Should Learn?

Alan November an ed-tech consultant believes there are four things every student needs to know, but not all schools are teaching. He found that many schools are not taking the opportunity to educate students of the "Net Generation" on these important ideas.
1. Students need to learn about Global Empathy. He feels that since students have more opportunities today than ever before to connect globally students need to be more empathetic to other cultures. Students can easily access other points of view and since so many companies are world wide now, students will need to know how to work with people from other countries.
2. Social and ethical responsibility when online. November feels that by having schools simply block websites such as Facebook they are not taking the opportunity to educate students on being safe while on the internet. He points out that although they aren't using these sites at school they will still be using them at home.
3. He also feels that schools do not stress the permanence of information put out on the web. He gives an example of a deleted webpage that can still be found in the internet archive. Students need to understand that once something is deleted from the internet it doesn't go away, a person simply needs to know where to look for it.
4. Finally schools need to show students how to use critical thinking when using materials found on the internet. An example would be doing a Google search. The first website that pops up may not have the most important or relevant information in it, but just a wesite that is popular among surfers.

I believe all of these points are important, but I do feel that November is short changing schools if he thinks most are not teaching any of these. With schools being more diverse all the time students already understand that people have different cultures, attitudes and abilities. Any inclusive school is a perfect example of the understand students have for others. I also feel that schools do a good job with explaining the difference between a reliable and an unreliable source whenever research papers are written. Students know to look around and use internet databases instead of Google searches as the basis for their information. The other two points that he stresses are ones that should be discussed in classes such as social studies or ethics classes. These are the current events or a debate topic. Also many of these topics come up as teachable moments even if they are not directly in the curriculum. So as I do feel all these points are important to be taught I would not say that they currently aren't being discussed.