Teaching in the Knowledge Society

Abstract

WE LIVE in a knowledge economy, a knowledge society.Knowledge economies are stimulated and driven by creativity and ingenuity.Knowledge society schools have to create these qualities, otherwise their people and their nations will be left behind.Like other kinds of capitalism, the knowledge economy is, in Joseph Schumpeter's terms, a force of creative destruction.It stimulates growth and prosperity, but its relentless pursuit of profit and self-interest also strains and fragments the social order.Along with other public institutions, our schools must therefore also foster the compassion, community and cosmopolitan identity that will offset the knowledge economy's most destructive effects.The knowledge economy primarily serves the private good.The knowledge society also encompasses the public good.Our schools have to prepare young people for both of them.Schools today serve and shape a world in which there can be great economic opportunity and improvement if people can learn to work more flexibly, invest in their future financial security, reskill or relocate themselves as the economy shifts around them, and value working creatively and collaboratively.The world that schools serve is also characterized by growing social instability.The bonds between citizens are increasingly strained by the fragmenting effects of economic flexibility.People who spend most of their time producing and consuming find less and less time for family or community.There is a loss of trust in, and growing suspicion about, political and professional integrity.The widening gaps between rich and poor fan the flames of terrorism, crime and mounting insecurity.Yet, instead of fostering creativity and ingenuity, more and more school systems have become obsessed with imposing and micromanaging curriculum uniformity.In place of ambitious missions of compassion and community, schools and teachers have been squeezed into the tunnel vision of test scores, achievement targets and league tables of accountability.And rather than cultivating cosmopolitan identity and the basic emotion of sympathy, which Adam Smith (1809) called the emotional foundation of democracy, too many educational systems promote exaggerated and self-absorbed senses of national identity.In many parts of the world, the rightful quest for higher educational standards has degenerated into a compulsive obsession with standardization.By and large, our schools are preparing young people neither to work well in the knowledge economy nor to live well in a strong civil society.Instead of promoting economic invention and social integration, too many

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