@ Esteban Hernández .- 03.10.2011 (06:00 h) Confidential:
A senior financial sector executives recently admitted that the chances of productive reorganization of Spain in the knowledge was an illusion. "You try to be like Finland, and train many people to speak fluent English, have great knowledge of mathematics and graduated in engineering. But that would take thirty years, and we need to do things before. "
With this description, meant to underline how far it was imperative to reform and not waste time thinking about that knowledge would help us out of this situation. However, this is not the prevailing social beliefs: in our time, and even more so after the crisis, the knowledge seems the best chance we have to have a decent working life. In this sense, our societies and their members are obliged, if they want to run into the third row, to train and prepare properly, allowing them to occupy a good place in this new kind of economy that is brewing.
That theory also can be little dissent. Mats Alvesson knows well, a professor at Lund University and author of Knowledge Work and Knowledge-Intensive Firms (Oxford University Press), who was publicly rebuked by the Swedish Minister of Education when, in early twenty-first century, sent a letter to Scandinavian Journal in which echoed the forecasts pointed to the pre-eminent U.S. job growth in the services sector. The minister's reply was to ensure that Alvesson thesis belonged to the "ideological garbage."
And it was expected, since we are talking about an idea, the knowledge society, which ensures Alvesson, "looks very attractive, but in which there is a noticeable dose of fantasy and wishful thinking. It is certainly an alluring concept and sounds great. How can you be against knowledge? But the concept has to do with societies and their elites like to be perceived and offer an image of itself to cause admiration more with the description of a reality. "
seems clear, moreover, that the bright vision of the future that gives us the knowledge society will be the one that prevails in the near future. The crisis is not going to lead to a working environment consisting mainly of highly qualified academics. So says Alvesson, who believes that "things will not change much. Of course, some knowledge sectors like high technology, life sciences, health and consulting will likely grow in many countries, but low-skilled services related to tourism, catering, hotels, travel, security, cleaning and care of older people will grow even more. "
Therefore, for Alvesson, the Knowledge Society is surrounded by much hype. In large measure, because we can not clearly define what is knowledge, and how sometimes we value, especially since "almost all tasks, from public relations to agriculture, require the learning of ideas and concepts." Furthermore, because neither the knowledge society seal serves as a guide to understanding the actual work. "Taking the example of Sweden, which has seen more activity in sectors such as telecommunications, high technology or pharmaceutical industry than other countries. However, the majority of Swedish economic activity has nothing to do with collective intellectually prepared to operate with complex issues. "
However, we are fully confident that knowledge will be the solution to our problems, which led us to pay much attention to the weight of formal education. "In most countries there is a strong divergence between graduates, who have experienced strong growth, and labor market demands. Moreover, the idea that we need many people with university education is leading to a tremendous problem of educational quality in these strata. The over-formal and limited substantive qualifications are creating many problems. " Titles
striking little use
Moreover, Alvesson notes, "People are demanding for new areas of knowledge, which we believe will provide legitimacy and work, but in many cases, such as consulting and coaching are of questionable value." In the end, then, we are preparing people to get eye-catching titles but little practical application.
For Javier Borrego, professor of anthropology professor at the University CEU San Pablo, the English educational event is even more serious, because "we have chosen to study plans that favor specialization, and we ended up training people who only know one thing. These are people you can talk about marketing, or emotional intelligence coaching, but who only know the latest books on that topic. You can talk about values \u200b\u200band virtues, but do not know who was Aristotle. "
also notes Borrego, our college orientation, being less than knowledge and innovation, leads to a kind of knowledge more practical and immediate, less general, that causes people to lack a holistic approach. "Before, the education system to think you prepared, which allowed you to adapt to any situation. Now they shows a rapid, so we get people prepared for certain things and not for unskilled labor. They are people without coping mechanisms. "
This whole situation leads to the information society creates a world of two speeds, in which some graduates are unemployed or low-wage (not more than 800 euros), "while others earn much more and who are specialists in a very concrete, whether or not university graduates. " According to Borrego, "what the market wants is people who know what there is to know at the time you need to know. How we generate thousands of graduates and there are few jobs, we are forced to charge less. 30 years ago, there were four to college, and getting a title that had a very well paid. Today it is not so. "
The solution to this problem, however, is nearby. For Borrego, the curriculum change will cause significant effects, since "the four-year degree is going to become a specialized high school and then have two years of graduate English plus one or specialization. So those who want to work in management positions have to be forming over time, about seven or eight years, increasing age was not productive in three or four years, while those who not aspire to such meters will be sufficient for certification of degree. "
might wonder, then, if this is the society of knowledge, if down the road we found a massive degree ineffective and the establishment of a dual speed training related to time and investment. For Alvesson, beyond the actual effects, the seal includes a knowledge society that kind of pride does not want to resign, and that is widely disseminated by the most diverse social strata. "Individuals, organizations, professionals and politicians use the vocabulary of knowledge to create a positive sense of identity, appealing both to the individual aspects ("I am a knowledge worker") as the collective ("we are a society of knowledge"). " Faced with this enthusiasm, Alvesson notes, you better be skeptical ...
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