The Knowledge Society

This post is based on the Gilberts book "Catching the knowledge wave? The knowledge society and future of education."

One of the main points that stood out for me was about how education is moving to a position that is not based solely on imparting knowledge to students but to provide skills for students to create new knowledge which is addressing the needs of society in todays post modernism society.

When I think of my own practice within the classroom, I can see how relevant this is and how my teaching is slowly evolving more into this kind of way. I do not stand in front of the classroom and impart all my knowledge to students, I do not just teach in one particular style or medium, I provide many different opportunities for students to form their own opinions. Within Science and Social Science students are provided with a scenario which they are to research and come to a conclusion based on my guidance for relevant information. I guide them with co constructing relevant questions, and that is one skill that I impart on them, the question asking skill. This is vital as for students to grow into people who benefit our society, they need to be able to ask relevant questions in order to create new knowledge themselves and test the boundaries of knowledge that they already own.

Gilbert also suggests that if we do not have state funded schooling, and leave the payments for students education up to parents, we are not providing equal opportunites and the cycle of the "haves" and "have nots" will continue. Our community will be segregated into two tiers.
Tier one will be well educated and more likely to leave New Zealand in search of more opportunies to increase their knowledge and find a place where they feel they are contributing to a knowledge society.
Tier two will consist of people that are under educated, under employed and not valued within the Global market. This will eventually lead to them having a lack of skills and knowledge and they will become dependant on the New Zealand welfare system.
With all the tier one people leaving New Zealand, we would have no chance of becoming a knowledge society that is valued within a global perspective. New Zealand will become an unproductive and unjust country which does not promote cohesion and progress amongst the community.

I see this relating strongly to the e-learning within a classroom, because there has been a huge increase in knowledge around what ICT has to offer us. There are still students out there who do not have access to computers within their homes, and if we weren't able to provide opportunities for them within the education sector, they would almost definately end up within the tier two people and that is what we want to minimise.

I found this reading really interesting. I had never really thought of knowledge having become more based on how it can help New Zealand on an economical scale.

Reference:
Gilbert, J. (2005). Catching the knowledge wave? The knowledge society and the future of education. Wellington: NZCER Press.