Progress starts with respectful discourse. All must agree that both content and skills are important for serious schooling in the 21st century. For example, the American Enterprise Institute and others recently launched a set of volleys against the 21st century skills concept. These organizations fear that the "skills people" will lose sight of valuable content. They envision that the skills people will put an undisciplined emphasis in collaboration, teamwork, and project-based learning. They see students working with clay and toothpicks without actually mastering challenging intellectual content. On the other side, skills people are worried that the "content people" will try to reduce what is to be known and demonstrated to a list of dry, disconnected facts tested by multiple-choice items without attention to meaning or application.