Educators and business leaders have more in common than it may seem. Teachers want to prepare students for a successful future. Technology companies have an interest in developing a workforce with the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills needed to grow the company and advance the industry. How can they work together to achieve these goals? Play may be the answer.

        Focusing on STEM skills is important, but the reality is that STEM skills are enhanced and more relevant when combined with traditional, hands-on creative activities. This combination is proving to be the best way to prepare today’s children to be the makers and builders of tomorrow. That is why technology companies are partnering with educators to bring back good, old-fashioned play.

        In fact many experts argue that the most important 21st-century skills aren’t related to specific technologies or subject matter, but to creativity; skills like imagination, problem-finding and problem-solving, teamwork, optimism, patience and the ability to experiment and take risks. These are skills acquired when kids tinker (鼓捣小玩意). High-tech industries such as NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have found that their best overall problem solvers were master tinkerers in their youth.

        There are cognitive (认知的) benefits of doing things the way we did as children—building something, tearing it down, then building it up again. Research shows that given 15 minutes of free play, four- and five-year-olds will spend a third of this time engaged in spatial, mathematical, and architectural activities. This type of play—especially with building blocks—helps children discover and develop key principles in math and geometry.

        If play and building are critical to 21st-century skill development, that’s really good news for two reasons: Children are born builders, makers, and creators, so fostering (培养) 2lst-century skills may be as simple as giving kids room to play, tinker and try things out, even as they grow older. Secondly, it doesn’t take 21st-century technology to foster 2lst-century skills. This is especially important for under-resourced schools and communities. Taking whatever materials are handy and tinkering with them is a simple way to engage those important “maker” skills. And anyone, anywhere, can do it.

解析：B。根据题干中的acquire和skills needed for the 21st century可定位至原文第三段。该段开头提到了21世纪所需的技能都与创造力有关，并在第二、三句指出，这些能力都是孩子们在鼓捣小玩意时获得的。而且一些高科技产业发现他们中最有能力解决全局性问题的人在年轻时都是一流的动手大师。B项与此内容相符，其中的playing with things是对第三段第二句中tinker的同义替换，solve problems on their own对应第三段第三句中的best overall problem solvers，故B项为正确答案。

错项排除：A项利用文章第三段开头的specific technologies设置干扰，但这里说的是21世纪最重要的技能与某些特定的技术无关，A项与原文内容相悖，故排除。C项利用第三段中的tinker和High-tech等没有关联的信息进行细节拼凑，与原文意思不符，故排除。D项利用第三段中的teamwork、master和第四段结尾的key principles设置干扰，但文中并没有特别提到团队合作对于掌握21世纪所需技能的作用，teamwork仅仅是作为举例中的一项出现，D项对原文的理解有偏差，故错误。