America’s economic future depends on educating its workforce to think critically and work collaboratively – while effectively communicating innovative ideas — because jobs that involve repetition or rote work are being sent overseas or automated.

Schools, however, are not teaching those necessary skills, according to author and educator Tony Wagner, whose book “The Global Achievement Gap,” addressing those issues, was the basis of the second in a series of education forums conducted Tuesday night by Whitman-Hanson schools and state Rep. Geoffrey Diehl, R-Whitman. Instead, schools are teaching to standardized tests which do not teach the necessary thinking skills, key among them being able to ask the right questions to solve problems.

Wagner is also an Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard. Diehl was unable to attend due to a late legislative session at the Statehouse.

Tuesday’s forum was sponsored by Rockland Trust with additional support from the Whitman-Hanson Education Foundation. The audience of about 100 people largely consisted of teachers and parents.

“Quite simply, in the new global knowledge economy, all students need new skills,” Wagner said. “I talked to a wide range of senior executives, from Apple and Unilever to the U.S. military, asking what are the skills needed today and what are the gaps that you see among recent graduates.”

He found that a set of new or changed skills every young person must possess to succeed in the future job market is lacking. He listed “seven survival skills” including critical thinking; leadership by peer influence; adaptability; entrepreneurism; effective oral and written communication; accessing and analyzing information; and curiosity.

The evening featured Wagner’s overview of his book along with a 15-minute segment of a documentary he made about Finland’s education system – deemed the world’s best by the United Nations – and an hour-long question and answer session.

The panel for the question and answer session included Wagner, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Ruth Gilbert-Whitner, W-H seniors Alex Winnett and Alyssa Hayes – both National Honor Society members – Anna Bradfield of Bridgewater State University and Michael Shipman, vice president/director of talent development at Rockland Trust.

Most of the questions centered on how Finland’s success can be imported to the United States.

Heavily unionized Finland is a parliamentary republic. Finland’s students start school at age 7 after preschool with little organized educational component. They spend fewer hours at school with less homework and only one test, on which they may chose the subjects, given just before they go on to higher education.

One educator in the audience asked if Finland’s homogeneous society can accurately be compared to the United States.

Wagner said Finland is more diverse than one might think, with 60 percent non native Finn speakers with 45 languages spoken in Helsinki alone, but added class issues are more comparative.

“The real issue here we don’t want to talk about is how much our achievement gap is really about race and class,” Wagner said. “There is a direct correlation between a community’s median income and test scores.”

Former W-H Superintendent John McEwan asked how American schools can get to that level of achievement.

Wagner pointed to the need for an alliance of business leaders, educators, parents and community leaders to arrive at a radically different accountability system and better teacher selection.

Finn students have the opportunity to take one-third of their class load as electives and only one in 10 applicants for teacher training are accepted.

“We’re going to have to develop a system with a different form of accountability,” Wagner said. “There is no need to test every student every year from third to eighth grade.”

Digital portfolios, where students include examples of their work over time to demonstrate how they have learned and progressed are among the assessment innovations Wagner wants to see more of.

Student panelists Winnett and Hayes agreed.

“All they focus on is what is going to be on the test,” said Hayes who is interested in psychology. “When we have projects to do, I feel we can actually use our skills. … I get more into it and I want to do the project because I can use my own skills, I can do what I’m interested in.”

“It seems like there’s so much information that I’m learning it’s hard to figure out what that information is,” Winnett said. “A lot of our formal tests only test what we’ve memorized and not how we’re learning it.”

Teachers, too, could be getting more out of the time they are putting in to their work. In Finland, a teacher’s work time is 60 percent classroom instruction and 40 percent collaboration and preparation with their peers. In America, 87 percent of a teacher’s time is spent in class and the time they get in faculty meetings is often monopolized by administrative issues best handled via e-mail, Wagner said

“Ultimately, I think it’s going to come down to what a community thinks is important,” Wagner said.

Homework loads were also questioned by a parent in the audience.

“So much of homework is busy work, it’s make-work,” Wagner said. “There’s no evidence that its value added to their learning and it contributes tremendously to their stress.”

A 20-minute online video, followed by an in-class project is often more effective, said Wagner. That point was echoed by a parent whose daughter often finds help for homework questions in online video sources.

A third forum is being considered for sometime in January.